The suitcase of Hermes

Why do the English love Keats so?

Isabella and the Pot of Basil by William Holman Hunt, 1868 (Public Domain)

MULTIPLE AUTHORS The year 2021 is not just the anniversary of Dante’s death 700 years ago but also that of Keats 200 years ago. Fitting therefore to reflect on his life and poetry. The key question is why Keats holds…

Looking Backward for Moving Forward

empty-mountain-poem

PAUL SCOTT DERRICK This offers two bodies of work that have grown from roots planted deep in the ancient Chinese book of wisdom, the I Ching (or Book of Changes). It isn’t my purpose to interpret or to apply any…

Juvenile Magnolia

juvenile-magnolia

STEPHEN WILSON All year long I’ve been waiting on the promise of a light green cocoon whose size increased in almost imperceptible increments its tepals unable to free themselves yet always on the point of budburst as if something inside…

My Mother’s Garden

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CLAUDIO SOTTOCORNOLA Regarding beauty, care, responsibility…   In March 2003, when my mother unexpectedly left us, in part due to some human errors and omissions, I immediately became aware of the contrast between her way of being — generous, giving,…

Dante: An English Perspective

divinacommediadore

NICK PARKER Dante has been one of those undercurrents, a kind of basso continuo, in my life since I first encountered him forty years ago.  When I lived in Alessandria in the late 70s, I was fortunate in having a…

The Wisdom of Unspoken Words

From Wikipedia

GERMAIN DROOGENBROODT How Celan’s Poems inspired me Although born in the Flemish part of Belgium where Dutch is the official language, as a youngster it was not the Flemish nor the Dutch poetry that fascinated me, but the French, Baudelaire,…

Emily’s room

dickinson-meridiani

ANNA STELLA SCERBO Emily Dickinson lived on poetry, poetry was her Pole star, her only reason to live. In mid 19th century Massachusetts, education had hard puritan rules. Emily suffered from that situation but claimed and got freedom without striking…