Carl Phillips - Letters to a Young Poet ---- Leviathan in the Sun: Les Murray Ishion Hutchinson

Courting Danger Carl Phillips Letters to a Young Poet

At one point in his Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke addresses the poet's anxiety about solitude - specifically, the way in which solitude has allowed the poet to spend more time thinking about self-doubts, life's insecurities, and a general fear and helplessness in the face of what seems unknowable. Rilke suggests that it is precisely in these moments of fear that we, in a sense, get closest to life itself, to a reality of life that is indeed frightening, namely, that it is everywhere unpredictable, and that unpredictability, if we look at it squarely, belies the emptiness - the falseness, at least - of our desire to construct a life that consists of pattern, routine, reliability. Read on...

Leviathan in the Sun: Les Murray Ishion Hutchinson On Writers

I first read Hamlet in Jamaica. The bleak daylight surrounding my high school Happy Grove was like the faded glow of an old photograph. Rain was expected; it never came. There might've been thunder, or that could just have been the pages turning in unison. Read on...