“Faced with such misery, a little spiritual compromise doesn’t look like such a bad thing. That [Charles] Baudelaire was incapable of such compromise was his undoing and our good fortune. Like a blasphemous Jesus, he took on our worst sins — pride, sloth, envy, lechery — and turned them into art.”
The Poet Who Died for Our Sins: On Charles Baudelaire by Stephen Akey
The figure of Baudelaire – dandy, rebel, enfant terrible, hysterical hypochondriac — compels such fascination that it’s almost possible to forget he wrote a few poems too.
“You could draw a pretty comprehensive map of America from the poetry of place names in Chuck Berry’s songs. Norfolk Virginia, downtown Birmingham, Houston town, Albuquerque, Los Angeles: they’re all there in “The Promised Land,” inventoried with great good humor even when the traveler encounters, as we all do from time to time, “motor trouble that turned into a struggle.” Wouldn’t “The Promised Land” make a better national anthem than that unsingable and bellicose dirge we’re stuck with?”
Stephen Akey on Chuck Berry as neoclassicist.
Source: themillions.com
“Readers have a perfect right to regard Philip Larkin, as I do not, as a complete shit. But if they consider his personal failings indistinguishable from his poetry, I think the loss is theirs.”
-Stephen Akey disentangles Larkin’s wonderful poetry from the (at times) unsavory poet lurking behind it in “The Poetry of Mental Unhealth: Philip Larkin”
[Image source Telegraph.uk]
If poetry is going to be tortured, agonized, and morbidly introspective, it might as well be funny too.
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![“Faced with such misery, a little spiritual compromise doesn’t look like such a bad thing. That [Charles] Baudelaire was incapable of such compromise was his undoing and our good fortune. Like a blasphemous Jesus, he took on our worst sins — pride, sloth, envy, lechery — and turned them into art.”
The Poet Who Died for Our Sins: On Charles Baudelaire by Stephen Akey](http://25.media.tumblr.com/b25cb408a6b72957ae2b649f0073d6b1/tumblr_ml2bejMmbJ1r6xvfko1_500.jpg)
![“Readers have a perfect right to regard Philip Larkin, as I do not, as a complete shit. But if they consider his personal failings indistinguishable from his poetry, I think the loss is theirs.”
-Stephen Akey disentangles Larkin’s wonderful poetry from the (at times) unsavory poet lurking behind it in “The Poetry of Mental Unhealth: Philip Larkin”
[Image source Telegraph.uk]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3gag3rC9j1r6xvfko1_500.jpg)
