In an earlier piece ('For us, there is only the trying') I observed that one of the insights that come with being a writer is the tentative nature of all writing, that it is always an attempt, and to that degree, never certain of success. I have been considering the implications of this insight since. … Continue reading Expressing conviction
Tag: Eliot
Gearing dreams and reality (another one for epicyclists)
Sometimes, you do not fully appreciate why something is the way it is till you try to do it differently (as a writer and a lover of books, I hope that may be the lasting effect of e-readers such as the Kindle: they will make people appreciate just what a clever piece of technology a … Continue reading Gearing dreams and reality (another one for epicyclists)
Repentance, or, embracing Subjective Reality
The sun moon and planets are unwitting actors that we have cast in a drama of our own contriving. Wagner’s Lied an den Abendstern (‘O Star of Eve’ - here intriguingly rendered on the musical saw) is not addressed to the second planet from the sun, inhospitably wrapped in clouds of sulphuric acid, but the … Continue reading Repentance, or, embracing Subjective Reality
Not waving…
Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning. I first read Stevie Smith’s poem at school and could make neither head nor tail of it, yet this morning, lying in the dark, the lines above came to me and … Continue reading Not waving…
COMPLEAT TROWZER 