“Of swallows, hares and horrors” – Simon Barnes on nature in the Age of Terror
Original here: Wild June moves into Day 5 and I’m spoiled for choice again. Shall I write about the swallows above the meadow? Or the hare in the garden? We…
Category: commonplace book
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers”
There are quotes – like “Let them eat cake” and an awful lot of things supposedly said by Mark Twain – which are indestructibly associated with the wrong person, or the completely wrong context. This…
Maren Meinhardt on an urban tree
From the TLS, June 2nd: Outside my window, there is a tree. Even without it, the view is not at all unpleasant: a row of Victorian houses, cars, a skew-whiff…
“The Glamour of the West” D L Kelleher, 1928
The Glamour of the West seems to be part of a series by D L Kelleher, following on from The Glamour of Dublin and The Glamour of Cork. Kelleher is an obscure figure now.…
“Reciprocity”, John Drinkwater
From the ever wonderful First Known When Lost blog, a meditative post which features the poet John Drinkwater. All I knew of Drinkwater before this was a school text which…
“it is astonishing that each morning we wake up sane – that is, relatively sane -after having passed through that zone of shades, those labyrinths of dreams”
Lately I’ve been rereading psychology books, and have felt singularly defrauded. All of them discuss the mechanisms of dreams or the subjects of dreams, but they do not mention, as…
“While there is still time”
The Mower BY PHILIP LARKIN The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found A hedgehog jammed up against the blades, Killed. It had been in the long grass. I had seen…
Jorge Luis Borges on poetry and prose
“It is said that prose is closer to reality than poetry. I think this is wrong. There is an idea that has been attributed to the short story writer Horacio…
Séamus Sweeney 