Poetry, History, Mythology
Here’s one of my favorite bits from the Hindu Upanishads, chapters three and four from the Kena Upanishad. The goddess Una takes the male gods to school: Brahman, according to the story, obtained a victory for the gods; and by that victory of Brahman the gods became elated. They said to themselves: “Verily, this … Continue reading The Goddess Instructs the Gods (Kena Upanishad)
The Making of an Irish Goddess Ceres went to hell with no sense of time. When she looked back all that she could see was the arteries of silver in the rock, the diligence of rivers always at one level, wheat at one height, leaves of a single colour, the same distance in the usual … Continue reading “The Making of an Irish Goddess,” by Eavan Boland
from 21 Love Poems: 1 Whenever in this city, screens flicker with pornography, with science-fiction vampires, victimized hirelings bending to the lash, we also have to walk . . . if simply as we walk through the rainsoaked garbage, the tabloid cruelties of our own neighborhoods. We need to grasp our lives inseparable from those … Continue reading Adrienne Rich: 4 Love Poems
After finishing To the House of the Sun, a poem mostly reliant on translations of ancient poetry (and in some ways the book now feels like something I translated), I had to find my way back to English poetry. One way was through the Penguin anthologies of Renaissance, Metaphysical, Romantic and Victorian poetry. They included … Continue reading Mary Robinson’s Poem “A London Summer Morning”
About a hundred pages into writing a novel that takes place in Vienna and Paris between 1897 and 1943, one of the best sourcebooks on the early part of the story has been Philipp Blom’s The Vertigo Years: Europe, 1900-1914. Below are a few dozen voices from that time, and while some of the accents … Continue reading Voices from 1900-1914
