What other series would dare take us back to Creation after the Christmas Turkey? This Xmas special was littered with ironies – grandiose and poignantly small. ‘Human….is that optional?’ Catherine… Read More »Dr Who and Creation Theory?
‘O, full of scorpions is my mind…’ ( Macbeth) If each man kills the thing he loves, then Macbeth’s murder of King Duncan propels him into terminal nightmare. The haunting… Read More »Oliver Twist Charles Dickens
He was eating pig. He knew this because he had been told by a man in a hat. The pig had no reason to bear him a grudge yet he… Read More »Eating
Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief… Read More »A Christmas Carol Dickens
MATTENS I cannot ope mine eyes,But thou art ready there to catchMy morning-soul and sacrifice:Then we must needs for that day make a match. My God, what is a heart?Silver,… Read More »a healing
Syntax I want to call you thou, the soundof the shape of the startof a kiss — like this, thou —and to say, after, I love,thou, I love, thou I… Read More »Rapturous to a fault!
Any thoughts on this revisionist biography?
In a wild essay entitled,’ Lorenzo the closet Queen’ Carter provocatively suggests of Women In Love that ‘ Lawrence enjoys being a girl. If we do no trust the teller… Read More »Angela Carter on DHLawrence/DHL and swingers
Reading the story again after looking at KMansfield’s study in marital horror – ‘A Married Man’s Story.’ Fascinating to notice the similar preoccupation with airlessness and the outside. DHlawrence renders… Read More »Illness and DHLawrence Virgin and Gypsy
CHILDSONG: ARE YOU LISTENING? Some Poems by Carol Ann Duffy, Walter De La Mare, Blake & Lorca., Listening is basic to human communication. If we don’t listen… Read More »Barry Wood on Carol Ann Duffy and Listening.
I do believe the root of all my sickness is a sort of rage,” D.H. Lawrence wrote during the last months of his life to the poet Wytter Bynner. Whether… Read More »More ON DHL and death and rage
Do you feel rather at sea with your extended piece of written work,dissertation, or essay? How effective is your language? Do you want to change your essay style for the… Read More »Are you concerned about your writing?
I wonder if the date of the story is significant in that it was ‘found’ in 1930 after DHL’s death and thus was a ‘last text’…as such it would be… Read More »DHLawrence and Illness in The Virgin and the Gypsy
‘It is evening. Supper is over.We have left the small, cold dining room, we have come back to the sitting room where there is a fire. All is usual. I… Read More »A Married Man's Story by Katherine Mansfield
My overridng impression of the story is that it deals with ani individaul trying to escape suffocating restriction, Ironically perhaps these restrictions are ‘housed’ in a home, and need to… Read More »DHLawrence Virgin and Gypsy
He did have a real ‘thing’ for fairytales: There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck. She married for… Read More »DHL and fairytales
You know that I need to go away, away, away: yes, yes, I can’t go on here anymore. You know there are always the angels and the archangels, thrones, powers,… Read More »More DHLawrence
Realism is just one of the arbitrary views man takes of man. It sees us all as little ant-like creatures toiling against the odds of circumstance. . . . I… Read More »DHL views on realism
After a visit from the Lawrences to her villa in Tuscany, Lady Ida Sitwell wrote, “A Mr. D.H. Lawrence came over the other day, a funny little petit-maitre of a… Read More »Views On DHL
Did you know? Poets & Writers John Keats, the English Romantic poet, died of TB in 1821, only a year after his first symptom. Robert Lewis Stevenson, author of “Treasure… Read More »Writers and TB
‘Took me about a year to figure out it was that I shouldn’t a let you out a my sights.Too later then by a long, long while’ Perhaps all love… Read More »Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain
A short story,” he writes in an essay on Flannery O’Connor, “ought to be faultless without being mechanical. The wrong word, a misplaced paragraph, an inadequate phrase or a convenient… Read More »V S Pritchett on the short story
Prayer Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayerutters itself. So, a woman will lifther head from the sieve of her hands and stareat the minims sung by a… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy Prayer – a perfect poem?
Any thoughts on DHL’s novellla?
The Decemeber Blog birthday will be on Carol Ann Duffy. For a prequel here is a lively review of the new selected poems. More in December. Polly Clark reviews… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy
This is a marvellous article by the writer Jackie Kay -quite inspirational! Jackie Kay is the author of a number of short story collections. In this article she explains why… Read More »Jackie Kay on the Short Story
Reading through the opening description of Utterson in the novel, I am once again struck by the profound duplicity of the character description. This duplicity or narrative contradiction ‘anchors’ the… Read More »Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Demeter was walking in her favourite wood. She had left school for the dentist and then found no reason in her sixth form diary to return. All the golden leaves… Read More »Demeter takes a walk
The silence surrounding RLS will end today! My computer had an unhealthy number of viruses and needed a real clean up and then I was ill too. So …..
