CT’s Books and Culture magazine rarely reviews books I actually plan to read. So why do I devour it from cover to cover each time the new issue arrives in our library? It’s because of the insightful and superior writing of its contributors. I chortled today over this little tidbit from an article by Alan Jacob on W.H. Auden (Jan/Feb 2009, p.39):
“Poets have rarely found their calling lucrative. The occasional fortunate one finds a patron to keep him... But the great majority have had to seek profitable work. Matthew Arnold was in inspector of schools, Wallace Stevens an insurance executive, William Carlos Williams a physician. Robert Graves used to say that his novels – I Claudius and so on – were dogs he raised and sold in order to buy food for his beloved cat, Poetry.”
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1 comments:
I got a trial subscription to B & C, but realized that it was sooo much. I loved the large newspaper format. I compromised by getting the free online edition in my inbox each Tuesday.
I do like the writing, and I also like exposure to books I would not normally see.
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