Search results for “wallace stevens”

Wallace Stevens on Reality, Creativity, and Our Greatest Self-Protection from the Pressure of the News

“[The artist’s] function is to make his imagination … become the light in the minds of others. His role, in short, is to help people to live their lives.”

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A Love Letter to Winter: Adam Gopnik’s Ardent Case for the Cold Season’s Splendor and Significance

“If we didn’t remember winter in spring, it wouldn’t be as lovely… half of the keyboard of life would be missing. We would be playing life with no flats or sharps, on a piano with no black keys.”

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Joan Didion’s Favorite Books of All Time, in a Handwritten Reading List

A living anatomy of influences, from Brontë to Baldwin.

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2013’s Best Books on Writing and Creativity

Timeless wisdom and practical advice on the pleasures and perils of the written word and the creative life.

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The Odd Habits and Curious Customs of Famous Writers

Color-coded muses, rotten apples, self-imposed house arrest, and other creative techniques at the intersection of the superstitious and the pragmatic.

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Beloved Poet Thom Gunn’s Reading List of 10 Essential Books to Enchant Teenagers with Poetry

“Poetry is of many sorts and is all around us… a rhymed political slogan is poetry of a kind, for example, and the lyrics of a song by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, or Bob Dylan may be poetry of a very high order.”

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Grandmother’s Glass Eye: Elizabeth Bishop on How Poetry Pretends Life into Reality

On the glorious “difficulty of combining the real with the decidedly un-real.”

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How We Grieve: Meghan O’Rourke on the Messiness of Mourning and Learning to Live with Loss

“The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created.”

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The 13 Best Biographies, Memoirs, and History Books of 2013

From Alan Turing to Susan Sontag, by way of a lost cat, a fierce Victorian lady-journalist, and some very odd creative habits.

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How We Spend Our Days Is How We Spend Our Lives: Annie Dillard on Choosing Presence Over Productivity

“The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less.”

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Search results for “wallace stevens”

“[The artist’s] function is to make his imagination … become the light in the minds of others. His role, in short, is to help people to live their lives.”

“If we didn’t remember winter in spring, it wouldn’t be as lovely… half of the keyboard of life would be missing. We would be playing life with no flats or sharps, on a piano with no black keys.”

A living anatomy of influences, from Brontë to Baldwin.

Timeless wisdom and practical advice on the pleasures and perils of the written word and the creative life.

Color-coded muses, rotten apples, self-imposed house arrest, and other creative techniques at the intersection of the superstitious and the pragmatic.

“Poetry is of many sorts and is all around us… a rhymed political slogan is poetry of a kind, for example, and the lyrics of a song by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, or Bob Dylan may be poetry of a very high order.”

On the glorious “difficulty of combining the real with the decidedly un-real.”

“The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created.”

From Alan Turing to Susan Sontag, by way of a lost cat, a fierce Victorian lady-journalist, and some very odd creative habits.

“The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less.”

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