MEMBER BLOG TAG: rome
| Tuesday, April 12, 2011 12:49PM | | | | A NUCLEAR DISASTER & The WRITER | Tags: writers' conscience, nuclear disasters, climate change, take action, save the earth, speak out, enviroment & books
| | | | There is no avoiding conscience in an age of environmental destruction. With the Japanese Nuclear Disaster creating a huge dead zone in Japan like that in Chernobyl, it is time for all writers to come out against fail deadly nuclear energy. Imagine the books and libraries, writers and readers who were destroyed by radiation in Japan and Chernobyl. Those in the New York Metropolitan Area where PEN American Center is located, and a large number of libraries, writers and much of the publishing industry reside, should be aware that Indian Point, the nuclear plant in the wake of 20 million people, just up the Hudson River and less than 50 miles from The City is the MOST DANGEROUS PLANT in the USA. We have... | | | | | | | Friday, October 12, 2007 2:26PM | | | | The Protestant Cemetery of Rome | Tags: The Protestant Cemetery of Rome, John Keats
| | | What's in the air today of young Johnny Keats?
Sitting on the Spanish Steps and on a bench, beside a cat, in the cemetery where lies John Keats, and a thousand others, Shelley's ashes and Antonio Gramsci's, and the remains, somewhat beneath Shelley, of Gregory Corso. It's a long way from Greenwich Village or even San Francisco to the Protestant Cemetery of Rome. But it is to Keats' grave that the school kids and tourists gravitate. There is no name on his grave. Sit on the Spanish Steps next to Keats' residence, through the wall where he'd suffered, far from England and Fanny, and watch the anonymous, fleeting strangers, and feel him. On a bench where a stray cat has come, collection boxes around for the cats, the entrance... | | | | | | | Tuesday, April 10, 2007 4:09PM | | | | The Fall of Rome | Tags: Auden, Rome
| | | (for Cyril Connolly)
The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.
Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.
Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.
Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.
Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.
Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.
Altogether elsewhere, vast | | | | | |
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