I’ve been trying hard – so hard – to force a change of mentality in recent weeks. But it doesn’t half bring forth its challenges, and that was truly epitomised this week. Continue reading »
Tagged with Poetry …
Epic Fail
It’s the time of the year when, either in pleasure or platitude, we are naturally drawn to reflect upon companionship (or the absence of it). And though I’m rather at a loss after an already tribulation-filled February, it almost goes without saying that the good poet finds such a beautiful way of coming to terms with this absence. Continue reading »
Broken Dreams
It feels like the final chapter of my thesis, on Andrew Marvell’s ‘Poetics of Privacy’, has been a traumatic experience. Not simply because writing by day and by night on different subjects is gruelling, but because the private internal negotiations that Marvell constantly faced and the impossibility of choice he so often found himself with leave a man permanently trapped in a life that offers so little solace and almost nothing except a desperate rush towards the end. Continue reading »
Reading the Small Print: Marvell’s Horatian Ode
New material on Marvell’s ‘Horatian Ode’ excites me more than any other subject, I would wager. It is one of the iconic poems upon which every Marvellian faces his or her own judgement day. Continue reading »
Writing Lives: Marvell and Biography
I’ve thought many times before that Andrew Marvell’s life and my own show distinct traces of overlap, and it’s never escaped me that this may be one of the reasons why I identify so closely with his writing. Continue reading »
The Fairfax 400 Anniversary Conference
The Fairfax 400 Conference took place at the Centre for English Local History, University of Leicester, on June 30th and July 1st, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the birth of Thomas, Lord Fairfax (1612-1671). Continue reading »
Karma Chameleon: A Defence of Nigel Smith’s Biography of Andrew Marvell
The problem with Marvell is that he tests the limit of our modern standards of biography. Writing this particular life – much like Marvell’s own work, ironically – ends up just as wary of the literary mechanics of the exercise as the exercise itself. Continue reading »
Resource
By the time Andrew Marvell turned 28 (as I recently did) in March 1649, Charles I had been executed. The regicide inspired one of the best political poems ever written, and ended up shaping a history that would define Marvell’s fascinating future career. Continue reading »
Confidential
How much can you put yourself into the mind of another individual? My work on Marvell and Private Lives has been a wonderful introspective process because the way I’ve symbiotically linked our biographies together has given me license to think as deeply and darkly as I please. Continue reading »
Agency: Too Much Left Unsaid
What is said, matters. How it is said, matters. To whom it is said, matters. When it is said, matters. The little nuances of our communication are more intricate and powerful than we often care to believe. Continue reading »
