Tag: Reading

• Fragmentary, No. 23

  poets are useless, . . . are not only ‘non-utilitarian’,we are ‘pathetic’: this is the new heresy;but if you do not even understand what words say, how can you expect to pass judgementon what words conceal? ✧ H.D., The Walls Do Not Fall

  • R L • powell

  November 12, 2018

  Fragments, Reading

  H. D., Hilda Doolittle, ignorance, literacy, long poem, poem fragments, poetry, Reading, writing

• Fragmentary, No. 22

  When anyone was witty about a contemporary event, she would look perplexed and a little dismayed, as if someone had done something that really should not have been done; therefore her attention had been narrowed down to listening for faux pas. She frequently talked about something being the ‘death of her,’ and certainly anything could have…

  • R L • powell

  November 5, 2018

  Books, Fragments, Reading

  books, character, Djuna Barnes, Jenny Petherbridge, Nightwood, profiles, Reading

• Fragmentary, No. 4

  [I]t must be remembered, that while our language is yet living, and variable by the caprice of every tongue that speaks it, these words are hourly shifting their relations, and can no more be ascertained in a dictionary, than a grove, in the agitation of a storm, can be accurately delineated from its picture in…

  • R L • powell

  March 3, 2014

  Fragments, Words

  A Dictionary of the English Language, descriptive etymology, etymology, mutation, Reading, Samuel Johnson, words

• Fragmentary, No. 2

  “One of the mysteries in the history of chemistry is how seldom chemists blew themselves up while investigating novel substances and reactions. Hydrogen and oxygen . . . can burn smoothly together, but they can also react explosively. Priestley used to carry small bottles of these two airs, and he entertained visitors by exploding the…

  • R L • powell

  January 29, 2014

  Fragments

  chemistry, history, quotes, Reading