The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “poetry”

Auden on Writing, Originality, Self-Criticism, and How to Be a Good Reader
Auden on Writing, Originality, Self-Criticism, and How to Be a Good Reader

“It would only be necessary for a writer to secure universal popularity if imagination and intelligence were equally distributed among all men.”

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How to Neutralize Haters: E.E. Cummings, Creative Courage, and the Importance of Protecting the Artist’s Right to Challenge the Status Quo
How to Neutralize Haters: E.E. Cummings, Creative Courage, and the Importance of Protecting the Artist’s Right to Challenge the Status Quo

“War and chaos have plagued the world for quite a long time, but each epoch creates its own special pulse-beat for the artists to interpret.”

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Artist Anne Truitt on Love, Loss, Regret, What Makes Marriage Work, and the Syncopation of Grief and Gladness
Artist Anne Truitt on Love, Loss, Regret, What Makes Marriage Work, and the Syncopation of Grief and Gladness

In praise of “the lovely entire confidence that comes only from innumerable mutual confidences entrusted and examined… woven by four hands, now trembling, now intent, over and under into a pattern.”

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Walt Whitman’s Advice on Living a Vibrant and Rewarding Life
Walt Whitman’s Advice on Living a Vibrant and Rewarding Life

“Love the earth and sun and the animals… re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul…”

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Progress: Kate Tempest’s Electrifying Spoken-Word Meditation on Kindness, Fear, and Our Fraught Fillers of Existential Emptiness
Progress: Kate Tempest’s Electrifying Spoken-Word Meditation on Kindness, Fear, and Our Fraught Fillers of Existential Emptiness

“You’re handed the mould and told — fit into this.”

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The Effortless Effort of Creativity: Jane Hirshfield on Storytelling, the Art of Concentration, and Difficulty as a Consecrating Force of Creative Attention
The Effortless Effort of Creativity: Jane Hirshfield on Storytelling, the Art of Concentration, and Difficulty as a Consecrating Force of Creative Attention

“In the wholeheartedness of concentration, world and self begin to cohere. With that state comes an enlarging: of what may be known, what may be felt, what may be done.”

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The Power of Solidarity in the Conquest of Justice: How Sixteen White Poets Banded Against Police Brutality and Stood Up for Amiri Baraka in 1968
The Power of Solidarity in the Conquest of Justice: How Sixteen White Poets Banded Against Police Brutality and Stood Up for Amiri Baraka in 1968

A beacon of searing solidarity by Denise Levertov, Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Duncan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and other politically awake titans of poetic might.

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Amanda Palmer Reads “Humanity I Love You” by E.E. Cummings
Amanda Palmer Reads “Humanity I Love You” by E.E. Cummings

A timeless ode to the human spirit and the courage of “making poems in the lap of death.”

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Elizabeth Alexander on Writing, the Ethic of Love, Language as a Vehicle for the Self, and the Inherent Poetry of Personhood
Elizabeth Alexander on Writing, the Ethic of Love, Language as a Vehicle for the Self, and the Inherent Poetry of Personhood

“You have to tell your own story simultaneously as you hear and respond to the stories of others.”

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Wait: Galway Kinnell’s Beautiful and Life-Giving Poem for a Young Friend Contemplating Suicide
Wait: Galway Kinnell’s Beautiful and Life-Giving Poem for a Young Friend Contemplating Suicide

“Be there to hear … the flute of your whole existence…”

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