Constantine Cavafy's Home Opens to the Public
Constantine Cavafy "held court" in his old Greek quarter apartment above a brothel in Alexandria, Greece. He treated writers such as E. M. Forster to long candle-lit nights of talk over liquors and what the English novelist later recalled as “small bits of bread and cheese." It was in this humble space that many of Cavafy's masterpieces were created. Though revered among artists, worldwide recognition came for the poet when Jackie Kennedy Onassis requested that her favorite poem, Cavafy’s "Ithaca," emphasizing the importance of the journey over the destination, be recited at her funeral.
via THE GUARDIAN |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Hua Xi on Language as Form
"Each stanza introduces a new scene and in doing so, a new plane of thought. Sipping tea, the necessity of money. caves, arteries….appear in turn. Each of these subjects raise new questions, but in continuation with each other, like the formation of some secret pattern. There is something in the poem which 'touches itself everywhere at once,' as Kapil writes, a preponderance of edges but not jagged or sharp ones." |
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