Literary Celebrity, Mussolini’s Mouthpiece, and American Traitor: Who Was Ezra Pound?

Stephen Harding on the Modernist Poet and His Fascist Politics By the spring of 1939, the widely acknowledged dean of Anglo-American Modernist poetry, fifty-three-year-old Ezra Pound, had lived in Europe for three decades. After leaving the United States in 1908 at the age of twenty- three, the poet had initially settled in London, then moved… Read More Literary Celebrity, Mussolini’s Mouthpiece, and American Traitor: Who Was Ezra Pound?

7th March 2026 Dilip

The Garden of Forking Paths (1941)

Beneath English trees I meditated on that lost maze: I imagined it inviolate and perfect at the secret crest of a mountain; I imagined it erased by rice fields or beneath the water; I imagined it infinite, no longer composed of octagonal kiosks and returning paths, but of rivers and provinces and kingdoms . .… Read More The Garden of Forking Paths (1941)

11th January 202611th January 2026 Dilip

Wallace Stevens: Meditation Celestial and Terrestrial

NB: The bitter pain inflicted upon the Palestinian people over the past two years, and indeed for over eight decades remains with many of us. It continues to unfold. We can only hope that the people of the world will see this terrible and undeserved fate for what it is; and (especially) make amends to… Read More Wallace Stevens: Meditation Celestial and Terrestrial

1st January 202631st December 2025 Dilip

Wallace Stevens: Description without place (1946)

The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake. Wallace Stevens’ “Description without Place” was composed for and delivered at the Phi Beta Kappa ceremony at Harvard in 1946. Here are a few lines from this remarkably abstract but in fact… Read More Wallace Stevens: Description without place (1946)

24th December 2025 Dilip

Clearest Blue

A very unusual song, both for its lyrics and its melody. It comes at the end of a new film with a superb child actor, Ana Sophia Heger, in She Rides Shotgun. Quite something. This is a Scottish group Clearest Blue Song by CHVRCHES ‧ 2015 Light is all over usLike it always wasLike it… Read More Clearest Blue

14th December 2025 Dilip

Paul Celan: Todesfuge

By Paul Celan – Translated By Dean Rader Black milk of daybreak we drink it at dusk we drink it at noon in mornings we drink it at night we drink and we drink we dig a grave in the sky there is plenty of room A man lives in the house he plays with his snakes… Read More Paul Celan: Todesfuge

12th December 202512th December 2025 Dilip

We Have Not Long to Love

By Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) We have not long to love.Light does not stay.The tender things are thosewe fold away.Coarse fabrics are the onesfor common wear.In silence I have watched youcomb your hair.Intimate the silence,dim and warm.I could but did not, reachto touch your arm.I could, but do not, breakthat which is still.(Almost the faintest whisperwould be… Read More We Have Not Long to Love

12th November 202512th November 2025 Dilip

Drive / Broken Wings

Two of the most soulful love ballads of the 1980’s. This is a tribute for the broken people. I think tonight / We can take what was wrong and make it right The Cars – Drive Who’s gonna tell you whenIt’s too late?Who’s gonna tell you thingsAren’t so great? You can’t go onThinking nothing’s wrong,… Read More Drive / Broken Wings

12th October 202512th October 2025 Dilip

Time

SOURCE: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/6NDZdw Best of Joachim Heinrich | Beautiful Ambient Mix TIME: Pink Floyd Wish you were here: Pink Floyd Project The Adventures of Mr Cogito beware of dryness of heart love the morning springthe bird with an unknown name the winter oak light on a wall the splendour of the skythey don’t need your warm breaththey… Read More Time

25th September 202523rd October 2025 Dilip

The Solution: Bertolt Brecht

NB: In 1953, eight years after the end of the Second World War and the partition of Germany, there took place an uprising of workers against abysmal working conditions and low wages in the Communist-ruled German Democratic Republic. The uprising was brutally crushed, and soon afterwards the famous left-wing playright and poet Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956),… Read More The Solution: Bertolt Brecht

7th September 20257th September 2025 Dilip

After the truth-shower

Philosophy, history, literature, current affairs, and other stuff. Posted by Dilip Simeon

Tag: Poetry