He was a man of immensely strong faith. A faith that balanced well with his reason.
Malcolm Guite on Dr. Johnson
Tag: reading
-
-
She shows us that simply deciding to act when faced with a challenge can reveal new depths of capability. The more she did, the more capable she became. ‘Do your work,’ said Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘and you shall reinforce yourself.’
Henry Oliver on Katharine Graham
That from the introduction to Henry’s new book: Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life
-
What Emerson kept, and what he recommended enthusiastically to others, were what used to be called commonplace books, blank bound volumes in which one writes down vivid images, great descriptions, striking turns of phrase, ideas, high points from one’s life and reading — things one wants to remember and hold on to. A commonplace book is not a diary, an appointment calendar, or a record of one’s feelings. If your journal consists of the best moments of your life and reading, then rereading it will be like walking a high mountain trail that goes from peak to peak without the intervening descent into the trough of routine. Just reading in such a journal of high points will tighten your strings and raise your pitch
– Robert D. Richardson
This is the aim of Floodlights and Goalposts. I hope its a high mountain trail that goes from peak to peak.
If you’re keeping a commonplace book, which I hope you are, or any notebook, be sure to go back and re-read what you’ve captured.
Richardson, Robert D.. First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process. United States, University of Iowa Press, 2015.
-
Though I urge possession-by-memory of poems, through repeated readings, I suspect that reading aloud is also a valid test for poetry and fictional prose alike. Reciting a bad poem is a distressing experience, reading aloud a poor story is scarcely better. But it can be astonishing how an excellent story or poem suddenly expands into a cosmos of absolute illumination when one listens to its recitation. I remember then that the Homeric epics were chanted aloud to audiences, and that Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in order to read his work at the royal court and in the house of the great nobles.
– Harold Bloom
How can you tell if your story or poem has potential? Read it aloud to your self.
Do you cringe?
Are you distressed?
Bloom, Harold. Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages. United States, Scribner, 2002.
-
“Go and do your duty; and be hanged, if you must, like a gentleman. There are worst things in the world than to be hanged.”
– Lawyer
Go and do your duty today, despite the pain.
Make yourself proud.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. Kidnapped. New York: Running Press, 1989. pp286
-
A child, lonely and gifted, will employ a marvelous story or poem to create a companion for himself or myself. Such an invisible friend is not an unhealthy phantasmagoria, but the mind learning to exercise itself in all its powers. Perhaps it is also the mysterious moment in which a new poet or storyteller comes to birth.
– Harold Bloom
Introductions to books get a bad wrap, but often I find them inspiring.
Bloom, Harold. Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages. United States, Scribner, 2002.
-
You won’t be surprised given my proclivity to sailing, and poetry, and the occasional pipe, that it’s Ratty, is the figure with whom I identify most strongly. Although there’s a bit of Moley in me as well, I think.
– Malcolm GuiteSometimes the algorithm is correct. Malcolm Guite on YouTube might be the find of the year.
-
Never in his life had he seen a river before – this sleek, sinuous, full bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again.
An original description of a river is rare, but Kenneth Grahame unlocks one here. Since it’s a long one, I’ll break it up into three parts.
Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. United Kingdom, Welbeck Editions, 2021. pp11
-
But readers persist, silently making their way though the great works, keeping unbroken the chain that takes us back, generation by generation, through human history. It is not just scholarship that keeps great texts alive, but the life of the common reader, the silent, unheralded reader, who finds herself unable to complete a bus journey without resorting to her scrawny old copy of Bleak House
Henry Oliver, from The Life of a Common ReaderYou, dear reader, can be part of that unbroken chain.
Persist!
-
There are two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get none too much of them in this rough world among cold, proud people;
– David BalfourStevenson, Robert Louis. Kidnapped. New York: Running Press, 1989. pp147
Floodlights and Goalposts 