True.

Jay McInerney, the novelist who fell in love with his own reflection In his early career the American author wrote brilliant comic satires. But his latest, See You On the Other Side, reads like a soap opera about rich people

Another outstanding piece by @john-self.bsky.social - this time on Jay McInerney. As Updike said, "Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face" - www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

Self-consciously dark and macabre - made lots of TV films - he was a bit like the DDR's David Harsent

Laugh-a-Minute, Bartsch.

If you want to read a short section of my new book, Devils in the Details, visit rorywaterman.substack.com. You can preorder the book there too!

'Something so wild and new in this feeling' – resting among some daffodils.

Poem text: Among the mossy stones When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow Park we saw a few daffodils close to the water-side. We fancied that the sea had floated the seeds ashore, and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more and yet more; and at last, under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones about and above them; some rested their heads upon these stones, as on a pillow, for weariness; and the rest tossed and reeled and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind, that blew upon them over the lake; they looked so gay, ever glancing, ever changing. This wind blew directly over the lake to them. Sarah Doyle, Something so wild and new in this feeling, V. Press 2021 Poems collaged from Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journal

On April 15th 1802, Dorothy Wordsworth recorded the daffodil encounter that inspired her brother's famous poem. I reworked that journal entry to draw out its extraordinary harmonics, in my @vpresslit.bsky.social pamphlet of DW collage poems. The second image highlights DW's gift for music and rhyme.

Nature never did betray the heart that loved her - I love how good at attention Dorothy was

The anonymous person who thinks Tristram Fane Saunders is boring sounds a lot like Tristram Fane Saunders...

Ha!

I love Randall Jarrell, but I'm also heartened to see that Allen Tate (who taught him) called him a "self-adulating little twerp"

Ha!

I can't be the only benighted person who first heard this in "The Commitments"

You're younger than that now! Thanks for replying, Ira - I do hope you're well.

Forgive me, Ira, I don't know how old you are - but did you ever see "Bookworm", the TV show from which this poll came? Hugo has a number of provocative poems: I just can't believe that this one became "loved" nationally...

Haha yes, but I also think opprobrium to Craig is a bit like piss to Hugo Williams

I'd quite like a BBC Poll of "100 Poems The Nation Would Like To Kick In The Nuts"

I can only imagine that some of the 12,000 votes cast by the audience of BBC TV's "Bookworm" programme were cast mischievously.

Someone has just referred in conversation to the 1995 BBC poll to find the Nation's 100 Favourite Poems - so I'm reupping this, which was apparently more popular than poems like "God's Grandeur" (95) and Wordsworth's Prelude (99)...

Not necessarily! But I think - in the wake of the controversies of the past 5+ years - Baillie Gifford is sending an interesting little message: things have changed.

With Elif Shafak, one of the judges who gave the 2020 Orwell Prize to Kate Clanchy... what a curious place the book-world is.

The Sunday Poem: Rowan by Kathleen Jamie | The Observer Kathleen Jamie is a former makar (poet laureate) of Scotland. Her most recent collection is The Keelie Hawk: Poems in ScotsIllustration by Chris Riddell

Kathleen Jamie = very good observer.co.uk/culture/book...

I like fixed ideas. I like Dylan's recordings. Wouldn't dream of going to a concert to hear him mangle the songs. Something would be happening but I wouldn't know what it is. Very much with Mr Jones on this point.

The need for them may be one reason why Rowan W is a tremendous snob about this popular translation and thinks it poor.

Be Thou My Vision YouTube video by Hymn Channel

youtu.be/YxvXGgSlRcs?...

You chose the version with a missing syllable at the beginning of lines 2 and 3 - causing chaos when sung to "Slade".

I have painted nails and my baby is very censorious. Keeps examining them and sighing like a Calvinist aunt.

ha! I like David Lodge's satire on English depts being used in pop. "I allowed myself to be constructed by the discourse of romantic love for a while, yes."

OK - I would like to read that! Tennant clearly would have been, in a different age, John Henry Newman - waspish, sharp, never losing self-awareness, but capable of emotional depth.

I'll admit, I'm finding the PSB stuff incongruous. It's a bit like when I found out John Carey was obsessed with Slade.

It should.