Author Archives: Houyhnhnm

John Stammers: Stolen Love Behaviour

Posted on July 24, 2014 by Houyhnhnm

A volume from 2005 which I think I received when I was in the Poetry Book Society. Hadn’t touched it. Definitely a voice new to me, and largely very successful. The usual few poems that I don’t understand [and about … Continue reading →

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Dickens: “Dombey and Son”

Posted on July 22, 2014 by Houyhnhnm

So long ago now I can’t remember it all, and it took me so long to read. How did they get away with it then? Ah yes – serialisation over months, and that’s how long it took me to read. Totally immersing, … Continue reading →

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Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo

Posted on July 21, 2014 by Houyhnhnm

[what follows is, even more than usual for this blog, an amateur reaction from dipping ignorant toes into vast oceans] Visionary, poetic, extreme: Nietzsche and Blake provide book-ends to Romanticism. Both seek to up-end conventional morality, Blake because it represents … Continue reading →

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The Poetry of Birds, ed. Simon Armitage and Tim Dee

Posted on July 17, 2014 by Houyhnhnm

If you like poetry and birds, this book removes the hendiadys. Two engaging essays by the editors, and a wealth of poems from all sorts of poets on all sorts of birds. The highlight for me was discovering the poetry … Continue reading →

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“The Human Chain” by Seamus Heaney

Posted on May 5, 2014 by Houyhnhnm

This, Heaney’s final collection, shows the poet at his most self-effacing, almost writing himself out of history, restricting his subject matter and themes to the narrowest, becoming a palimpsest for older, greater, thoughts to travel via his poems.

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“Wagner and Aeschylus: the Ring and the Oresteia” by Michael Ewans

Posted on May 5, 2014 by Houyhnhnm

[just the first two chapters: I need to listen to the Ring itself before reading the others] Chapter 1: Wagner and Aeschylus This is a general introduction to them both, especially, as the book’s intended audience is more musicological than … Continue reading →

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“Re-thinking History” by Keith Jenkins

Posted on April 29, 2014 by Houyhnhnm

This is a short book bought on impulse at the wonderful bookshop in Wemyss Bay station, the ferry port for Bute, on the south side of the Clyde estuary down Glasgow. I think at the time I’d just read Richard Evans’ In … Continue reading →

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Poetry Review 104:1 Spring 2014

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Houyhnhnm

Highlights: Jan Wagner’s “evensong, lago di como” (translated by Eva Bourke): an excellent Martian-postcard poem: …the empty car ferry carries a last cargo of light across the water. Review of Philip Gross’ Later, which manages to describe his style in ways … Continue reading →

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“‘My Dear Jim’, a biography of Walter Spradbery”, by John Spradbery

Posted on April 19, 2014 by Houyhnhnm

Walter Spradbery, artist and pacifist, founder of the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, was married to my great aunt Edna’s sister, the opera singer Dorothy Horsey, known musically as Dorothy d’Orsay. They had a house in Buckhurst Hill called the … Continue reading →

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Swapping: divan and tribunal

Posted on April 19, 2014 by Houyhnhnm

Divan comes from the Persian “devan,” which originally meant “assembly of rulers,” but now means the padded platform upon which the leaders sit. Tribunal was a raised platform provided for magistrates’ seats, and now refers to the people sitting on … Continue reading →

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