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I have some new followers, so thought I might mention that this book is now out, has had positive reviews in TLS, The Spectator, and The Wall Street Journal, and I think would be a good summer read, if I do say so myself:
Alicia E. Stallings
90.5K posts
Alicia E. Stallings
@ae_stallings
Docta puella. Metic in Athens. "A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence." Oxford Professor of Poetry.
Joined March 2015
- This island is next to Ithaka. Are we sure these are pigs, and not, say, enchanted sailors?
00:00 - Plate teen daughter made in her ceramics class (in which she is the only non-adult):
- Dear Tourists to Greece: It is very hot. It is hotter than you think it is. Do not take hikes in the middle of the day. Do not hike by yourself. Wear a hat. Bring water. (4 people have died and one is missing so far and it is only June.)
- If you think poetry is a luxury, ask people in a war zone:We recite poetry, which is our heritage and history, amid the sounds of war machines and this rubble that we spread with flowers so we can live anew.
00:00 - Rereading The Secret Garden (slowly), and am appreciating how perfectly pitched it is to a child. The garden has been left a wilderness for 10 years. Not 50 years or 100 years. Seems like very little to me, but it is Mary Lennox's whole lifetime, from the beginning of the world.
- The Pamela Anderson Netflix documentary is eye-opening--she is smart and self-aware, and it turns out she is a "writer"--that is, she has kept diaries and notes her whole life. And the parts she reads are good prose--direct, observant, moving.
- Women think about the Iliad about once a day.
- This is how to build a wall:More than 20 African countries have joined together to plant a giant wall of trees that will run across the continent to stop the spread of the Sahara Desert. The Great Green Wall of Africa will stretch for 7,000 kilometres, from coast to coast right across the continent.
- This was the translation that jumpstarted Penguin Classics. A generation who had experienced war firsthand read this clear prose version with new eyes. And Rieu began it to distract his family in London during the Blitz, reading them new episodes as the bombs fell.TIL that for some weeks in 1946, the bestselling book in Britain was an edition of The Odyssey. Was that the last time a Classical work was *the* top bestseller?
- Alarmingly plausible.
- Replying to @nkulw"hi girlfriend's building"... good lord, it is an entire building full of civilians.
- Happy Blake Despair day, between two & seven, for those who celebrate:#OTD 1807 William Blake writes "Tuesday Jany 20, 1807, between Two & seven in the Evening, Despair"
- (I will basically never not repost this excellent poem):
