Buckley’s Mix

Setting Emily Dickinson to Music

Poems never belong to one unless they are memorized, and spoken aloud.  And they are best memorized when they are sung. That’s why Emily Dicksinson is best appreciated when sung to a catchy tune, such as the Yellow Rose of Texas. Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage [...]

How To Write a Novel

Nothing easier. There are, after all, only two stories. A Stranger Comes to Town: The Iliad. A Man Goes on a Voyage: The Odyssey. Some say that there is a third story: A boy meets a girl. But that is usually subsumed under the above two stories. Or else it is quite another genre, that [...]

Denmark

I have begun watching Danish films, the hook being the scores by Johan Soderqvist. For their earnest, humorless moralizing, their determined effort to exclude any possibility of joy from life, they surpass even Canadian films. Here’s a review of Festen (1998) from IMDB: I have seen this film more than I’ve bothered to keep track [...]

The two cultures

I noted a post back that Michael Ignatieff had lectured for me on Simone Weil, and that led me to wonder about other politicians who displayed any talent or knowledge in fields beyond politics, economics or public policy. Burke wrote on aethetics and Gladstone debated theology with Cardinal Manning, but who is their like today? [...]

The Sensibility of the Baroque

From Morris West: “Love in all its forms and degrees is a surrender of bodies in the small death of the bed, the surrender of the spirit in the great death, which is the moment of union between God and man.” The Devil’s Disciple. File under Crashaw, Richard, and Bernini, Gian Lorenzo.

On Culture

When I hear the word “pistol,” I reach for my culture. When I hear the word “aquaculture,” I reach for my water pistol.