There is a particular grunt, sputter, and song in a Heaney poem: "Perch on their water perch hung in the clear Bann River/Near the clay bank in alder dapple and waver." This is another poet in love with his language -- specifically, the cadences of the Irish tongue. The sounds of clattering, bumping,
In 1968, when an interviewer asked Jorge Luis Borges what he thought of the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, the great explorer of the literary labyrinth responded, "Who is he?" Portugal, alas, is one of the most overlooked outposts of Europe. The North's snobbery towards the South is one of the caus
Gilberto is the voice of moments. The melancholic moments that remind us of a friend, a lover, a parent, a special place. Gilberto guides us to that land of nostalgia where we, as one moved fan put it, "discover the truth that lies behind our own history": the truth we avoid or forget, then remember
In 1797 a young brother and sister executed one of the more intriguing moves in the history of English literature: William and Dorothy Wordsworth took up residence in Alfoxden, Somersetshire, a stone's throw from Samuel Coleridge's home in Nether Stowey. The three would form the most productive liter