Status Updates From Major Poems and Selected Prose

It's odd that words should change so just by being put into rhyme. They get teeth and bite; they take fire and burn.

It's odd that words should change so just by being put into rhyme. They get teeth and bite; they take fire and burn.

It's odd that words should change so just by being put into rhyme. They get teeth and bite; they take fire and burn.

I love Swinburne's insight into Charlotte Bronte's "genius" of passion. Partly because I loved Wuthering Heights. Interesting that he views genius as something more intuitive, versus intellect which is precisely cultivated.

Serendipity: last month my wife and I visited the Chicago Institute of Art, which hosts Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "Beata Beatrix". And herein is an essay, heretofore unknown to me, by Swinburne about, among other things, that very painting. It's got me thinking about how the internet has made such art widely available, but how tawdry jpegs are in comparison to seeing the artwork in person.

Swinburne's review of Les Fleurs du Mal is pretty good.

Mine's better.

Swinburne's review of Les Fleurs du Mal is pretty good.

Mine's better.

Wow. Swinburne's first critical essay here is absolutely scathing and brutal. He tries to pass it off as an unemotional exercise meant to help the poet in question, but the shots he takes are lethal, if on the mark.

Wow. Swinburne's first critical essay here is absolutely scathing and brutal. He tries to pass it off as an unemotional exercise meant to help the poet in question, but the shots he takes are lethal, if on the mark.