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The Culture Club: Theme for November-December 2008
Here are the works we’ll be looking at for the next couple of months. We’ll be focusing on two American poets of the 20th century: Wallace Stevens The Poems of Our Climate Of Mere Being The Course of a Particular Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Domination of Black Nomad Exquisite Not Ideas About…
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Allen Ginsberg on William Carlos Williams
I found this link, with audio of a lecture by Allen Ginsberg on William Carlos Williams. The notes say: First half of a class by Allen Ginsberg on William Carlos Williams and prosody. Included are discussions on Williams’s poems: “Thursday,” “To Elsie,” “Horned Purple,” and “The Term.” This class also covers the importance of Williams…
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Free Downloads of Classical Symphonies by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, one of the finest in the world, is offering free downloads of 10 great symphonies to celebrate its 120th anniversary. Registration is required, and the symphonies will remain online until the 24th November. The recordings feature world-class conductors such as Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Chailly and Mariss Janson, so this is quality…
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Video: Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic Perform Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 ‘Eroica’
Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic perform the entire Eroica Symphony by Beethoven. This was part of the Berlin Philharmonic’s 100th year celebrations. [googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-274009511898015967&hl=en]
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Marlon Brando Reads The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot
Colonel Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando, reads excerpts from T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men in the film Apocalypse Now. Here is his reading of the entire poem, much of which was cut from the movie, but was released later in the Apocalypse Now Complete Dossier on DVD. httpv://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=gKuA3iee4-c
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Heart of Darkness in 8 Minutes and 27 Seconds
John Crace’s column in the Guardian, The Digested Read, presents a satirical look at great literary works by summarising them in less than 10 minutes. Here he tackles Heart of Darkness. Sample quote: ‘Pray tell me his last words,’ the intended murmured. My heart trembled. She was only a woman, and therefore too dim to…
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Poetry’s Popularity Soars Online: Telegraph
In light of traffic figuresto the Poetry Archive website, which is delivering 1 million page views a month and reaching 125,000 unique users, Andrew Motion suggests that the internet is providing a better medium for poetry than books: “Either books have not been doing the job or they are being outmanoeuvred by the internet.” Full…
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Conrad’s Use of Language in Heart of Darkness
In his critical text The Great Tradition F.R. Leavis is interested in Conrad’s use of the English language, in light of it being his third, possibly fourth language, after Polish, French and Russian. He recounts a conversation on the subject: ‘I remember remarking to Andre Chevrillon how surprising a choice it was on Conrad’s part…
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Joseph Conrad and T.S. Eliot: Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness had a special significance for T.S. Eliot. He made references to it in The Waste Land, as described in this note to the essay Notes on the Publishing History and Text of The Waste Land (1964, reproduced in The Waste Land Casebook Series): In the first of the published…
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The Culture Club: Theme for August-September
Here are the works we’ll be looking at for the next couple of months. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad (Fiction) The Hollow Men – T.S. Eliot (Poetry) Apocalypse Now Redux – Directed by Francis Ford Coppola (Movies) Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) – Ludwig van Beethoven (Music)