Category Archives: quotes

poetry, quotes

that is why people make poems about the dead

…some things are not possible on the earth.
And that is why people make poems about the dead.
And the dead watch over them, until they are finished:
Until their hands feel like glass on the page,
And snow collects in the blind eyes of statues.

– Larry Levis, “For Zbigniew Herbert, Summer, 1971, Los Angeles” from The Dollmaker’s Ghost, Selected: 60-61.

Today is the last day of a 3-day Larry Levis festival at VCU, featuring readings by Philip Levine, among others. I wish I had been able to go, but I have been AWOL enough from the program.

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quotes, theater

Dissemble all your griefs and discontents

TAMORA
My worthy lord, if ever Tamora
Were gracious in those princely eyes of thine,
Then hear me speak indifferently for all;
And at my suit, sweet, pardon what is past.

SATURNINUS
What, madam, be dishonoured openly
And basely put it up without revenge?

TAMORA
Not so, my lord; the gods of Rome forfend
I should be author to dishonour you.
But on mine honour dare I undertake
For good Lord Titus’ innocence in all,
Whose fury not dissembled speaks his griefs.
Then at my suit look graciously on him;
Lose not so noble a friend on vain suppose,
Nor with sour looks afflict his gentle heart.
[Aside to Saturninus] My lord, be ruled by me, be won at last.
Dissemble all your griefs and discontents;
You are but newly planted in your throne;
Lest then the people and patricians too,
Upon a just survey take Titus’ part
And so supplant you for ingratitude,
Which Rome reputes to be a heinous sin,
Yield at entreats, and then let me alone
I’ll find a day to massacre them all
And raze their faction and their family,
The cruel father and his traitorous sons,
To whom I sued for my dear son’s life;
And make them know what ’tis to let a queen
Kneel in the streets and beg for grace in vain.
Come, come, sweet emperor; come, Andronicus,
Take up this good old man, and cheer the heart
That dies in tempest of thy angry frown.

– Titus Andronicus (1.1.427)

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books, quotes, writing

a comparatively settled and domestic routine

“For whatever reason–success, removal from Ireland, the realities of the war years, a comparatively settled and domestic routine–the number and variety of Beckett’s complaints had diminished. He would still get cysts from time to time, his teeth would give him trouble and so would his eyes, but the panic attacks which had impelled him into psychoanalysis were now a thing of the past.”

-Anthony Cronin, Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist, (27.439)

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books, quotes, theater, writing

their siren voice

“In June [of 1958], however, he [Beckett] was still resolutely struggling with the new prose work and finding it horribly difficult. Even though he could see clearly what he wanted to do, and that it should be only about 100 pages, he felt he was making very little progress, or only just enough to keep him from giving it up in disgust. ‘I rely a lot on the demolishing process to come later and content myself more or less with getting down elements and rhythm to be knocked hell out of when I am ready…It all takes place in the pitch dark and the mud, first part man alone, second with another, third alone again. All a problem of rhythm and syntax and weakening of form, nothing more difficult,’ he told Barney Rosset. Yet, comically perhaps, he was once again hankering after other forms of composition–theatre or radio. ‘I hear their siren voice and tell them to stick it up.’ “

– Anthony Cronin, Beckett: The Last Modernist (30.489)

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poetry, quotes

when I think, I am very apt to do it in rhyme

This quote is from the letters of the poet William Cowper, which I’ve been enjoying reading despite the fact that I’m not very familiar with this poetry. The man writes some good letters, though. So good that I find myself recognizing passages from them, like this one, and realizing that they must have been quoted elsewhere. Here, he is apologizing for his work on account of the season in which he wrote it.

“My labours are principally the production of the last winter; all indeed, except a few of the minor pieces. When I can find no other occupation, I think, and when I think, I am very apt to do it in rhyme. Hence it comes to pass that the season of the year which generally pinches off the flowers of poetry, unfolds mine, such as they are, and crowns me with a winter garland. […] This must be my apology to you for whatever want of fire and animation you may observe in what you will shortly have the perusal of. As to the public, if they like me not, there is no remedy. […] …it would be in vain to tell them, that I wrote my verses in January, for they would immediately reply, ‘Why did not you write them in May?’ A question that might puzzle a wiser head than we poets are generally blessed with.”

– William Cowper, letter XXX, to Joseph Hill, 9 May 1780, from The Centenary Letters, a selection ed. by Simon Malpas, Great Britain, Carcanet: 2000 (40-41)

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books, quotes

as telescoped and important as “Montaigne”

“Recalling the urgency I felt about my Work as a young sprat makes me laugh inwardly, a long, low, mocking guffaw that would curdle the blood of anyone who heard it. My Work! I still have it all somewhere, all the reprehensibly impish doggerel, the self-serious philosophical grandiosities. The arrogance of youth–those poems I wrote stank like soiled diapers in the sun, the essays were so snot-nosed they might as well have been written with colored chalk on a sidewalk in a hopscotch pattern. […] I cringe to think of the way I used to whisper aloud my own name, Hugo Whittier, the smarmy thrill I would feel at my breathless intimations, soon-to-be renowned. . . .As I recall, I intended that it would be shortened, in seminars and in conferences, to a crisp ‘Whittier,’ as telescoped and important as ‘Montaigne,’ or (the happy young Hugo inside me whispers urgently) ‘Shakespeare.’ ”

– Kate Christensen. The Epicure’s Lament. Doubleday: 2004. (204.)

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books, fiction, quotes

all this phrase-making

    ” ‘Poor little place,’ he murmured with a sigh.
    She heard him. He said the most melancholy things, but she noticed that directly he had said them he always seemed more cheerful than usual. All this phrase-making was a game, she thought, for if she had said half what he said, she would have blown her brains out by now.
    It annoyed her, this phrase-making, and she said to him, in a matter-of-fact way, that it was a perfectly lovely evening. And what was he groaning about, she asked, half laughing, half complaining, for she guessed what he was thinking–he would have written better books if he had not married.
    He was not complaining, he said. She knew that he did not complain. She knew that he had nothing whatever to complain of. And he seized her hand and raised it to his lips and kissed it with an intensity that brought the tears to her eyes, and quickly he dropped it.”

– Virginia Woolf, TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

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books, fiction, quotes

breeding living fiction exempt from all the subjugations of the page

“…During the four days away, his answering service had taken no message from either an ominous palooka or an addled Alvin Pepler. Had his landsman spent into Zuckerman’s handkerchief the last of his enraged and hate-filled adoration? Was that the end of this barrage? Or would Zuckerman’s imagination beget still other Peplers conjuring up novels out of his–novels disguising themselves as actuality itself, as nothing less than real? Zuckerman the stupendous sublimator spawning Zuckermaniacs! A book, a piece of fiction bound between two covers, breeding living fiction exempt from all the subjugations of the page, breeding fiction unwritten, unreadable, unaccountable, and uncontainable, instead of doing what Aristotle promised from art in Humanities 2 and offering moral perceptions to supply us with the knowledge of what is good or bad. Oh, if only Alvin had studied Aristotle with him at Chicago! If only he could understand that it is the writers who are supposed to move the readers to pity and fear, not the other way around!”

– Philip Roth, “Look Homeward, Angel,” Zuckerman Unbound, Zuckerman Unbound: A Trilogy and Epilogue 1979-1985, New York: The Library of America (2007): 245.

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