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Monthly Archives: December 2006

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That which is creative

A letter Keats wrote to his publisher about friends’ protesting bad reviews of his poems:
8 October 1818
My dear Hessey,
You are very good in sending me the letter from the Chronicle, and I am very bad in not acknowledging such a kindness sooner. Pray forgive me; it has so chanced that I have had that paper [...]

There’s never enough stuff


More on presents

The gifted (as in splendidly talented) Claire Zulkey sends readers via her MBToolBox blog here for tips on writers’ gifts. What about gifts writers can give? Poet Heather A. McMacken urges
Invoke your creative powers this year and give a gift that’s meaningful — not some overpriced trinket you picked up at Somerset. Give a poem [...]

Warhol on December 19 in 1978

It was also a Tuesday on December 19, 1978, when Andy Warhol relayed the following to his diarist, Pat Hackett:
…and have I said that Bob said that when he introduced Jerry Hall to Tennessee Williams down in Washington a few weeks ago Tennessee told her that she was the prettiest girl he’s met since Candy [...]

Urban archaeology and storytelling

The Fearless Personal Inventory, a review of David Nadelberg’s MORTIFIED: Real Words. Real People. Real Pathetic. and discussion of the grassroots stage phenomenon that inspired the book.
Mortified is part of what Dave calls “urban archaeology,” where meaning is pieced together from genuine personal artifacts. He feels a special kinship with the Web site Overheard [...]

Losing illusions

… maybe to acquire new ones.
Bonnard put himself in his work, a thumb, a knee. Which self (as Whitman says, we are multitudes)? Michael Kimmelman writes in The Accidental Masterpiece
to make explicit that he’s present, sometimes he paints his knee or thumb in a corner of the picture–like a fumbling photographer who gets in the [...]

Gift for a writer

Someone writes asking for a gift suggestion for a writer. Really, I think what’s ideal involves the physical. For Brenda Uleland (If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit — a perfect book, and for giving, first published in 1938 and then again in 1987), it’s walking:
For me, a long five [...]

Are we meant

And there is nothing to guide us. And if everything is so nebulous about a matter so elementary as the morals of sex, what is there to guide us in the more subtle morality of all other personal contacts, associations, and activities? Or are we meant to act on impulse alone? It is all a [...]

Virginia Woolf wrote on this day

…in her 1917 diary:
Our apprentice weighs rather heavily upon us. For one thing her presence is rather in the way of our complete comfort. It may be her youth; something highly polished so as to reflect without depth about her. -On the other hand, she’s nice, considerate; one can be open with her. The real [...]