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I think a lot about rhythm and structure when I teach poetry - mainly because so often students just want to talk about the 'meaning' rather than the manner in which it is written - the shaped and structured nature of a text. In terms of how 'natural' it is - well, my guess is that it was...

I don’t think I even knew this thread existed and now I feel bad for not acknowledging it.

Billy Budd Benito Bartleby There’s some short stories but those three - two novellas and a short story are the best things in my opinion

I think @woops would agree that Alvarez’s Savage God is a great book on the literary treatment of suicide. When you get to my advanced years, you’ve known a few who have taken that decision and I cannot begin to imagine how you get to make that choice but as tough as it’s for us who are left...

The OED - the widely accepted authoritative source of English in the world. But of course you don’t accept it. Obviously.

As two Spurs fans watching Arsenal last night, my son and I had to admit those two Rice goals were ridiculous. Courtois possibly slightly at fault for the second as he moved as if it was going over the wall. The first one though just kept getting better from every angle. Looking forward to RM...

Frost sought Pound out when he arrived in London on the 1910s - it wasn’t a great success “when Frost and Pound met, Pound looked at one of Frost’s poems, made a few corrections and said, “Not bad. Not much fat on that one.” Frost reportedly protested, “But you’ve messed up the rhyme! You...

Anyway. Back to Frost. Found this from Paris Review that I found interesting about how Frost is more complex than he’s often given credit for https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2025/03/17/is-robert-frost-even-a-good-poet/

As I said I don’t think Frost lacks art, knowledge or skill.

Meg Cox

Out, Out– Robert Frost 1874 – 1963 The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. And from there those that lifted eyes could count Five mountain ranges one behind the other Under the sunset...

Mending a Wall BY ROBERT FROST Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they...

I was thinking that about Frost too. He was determinedly a blank verse kind of bloke - if it is ‘conversational’ in anyway it’s not in an artless fashion. Ruminative and occasionally a little folksy possibly but not artless, not even studied artlesssness.

[Buffalo Bill ‘s] By E. E. Cummings Buffalo Bill ’s defunct who used to ride a watersmooth-silver stallion and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat...

Foster is perfect.

You can hear the Irish in the prose - the rhythm and rise and fall of that rural accent. It’s mesmerising. I think Clare Keegan is the same. Slowly telling you a small story that is actually devastating. You get a different garrulous Irish voice in something like Pogue Mahone and in some of...

What I think about this is that again it has the feeling of truth rather than actually being true. Someone like McGaherne is about as different from Flann O Brien as you can get. Wendy Erskine and William Trevor both short story writers but again stylistically and subject matter totally...

Yeah I’ve read a few. Earthly Powers is the pick of the longer ones. Bizarrely enough he reminds me of Genesis P Orridge - a brilliant self mythologiser who lives to insert himself into a story about someone more famous than he is. I think his attitude to literature is the great broad sweeping...

I think what I love is his unembarrassed sincerity which is awkward for many modern readers who require a veil of irony or some such but WW is innocently wholehearted and open hearted. And I love that. And I think it allows the art in his poems to be concealed.