On Cutting the Hair

Daily Dose

From How to Keep Your Cool: Am Ancient Guide to Anger Management, by Seneca, translated by James Romm

IT'S CLEAR

"It's clear in the case of the rich, the nobility, and office holders that whenever something light and empty arises in the mind, it gathers momentum like a ship in a favorable breeze."

From page 41

The Peonies

Daily Dose

From A Little History of Poetry, by John Carey

OF ALL

"Of all world-famous poets none is less likely to appeal to the modern reader than Dante Alighieri (c. 1265 - 1321)."

From Chapter 5, Continental Masters of the Middle Ages: Dante, Daniel, Petrarch, Villon

A Caricature

Daily Dose

From Washington's End: The Final Years and Forgotten Struggle, by Jonathan Horn

GEORGE'S SISTER BETTY

"According to family lore, Lawrence's recently deceased mother had appeared 'so strikingly like her brother (Grandpa)' that soldiers would have obeyed her orders had she donned 'a military hat on her head.'"

From Chapter 29, Guardianship

Clerihew for a Big Schoolboy

EDOARDO ALBINATI

Edoardo Albinati,
Clever, skinny, and spotty,
Found they could be cruel
In The Catholic School.

Daily Dose

From That One Should Disdain Hardships: The Teachings of a Roman Stoic, by Musonius Rufus, translated by Cora E. Lutz

YOU WILL

"You will earn the respect of all men if you begin by earning the respect of yourself."

From Fragments, 30 Musonius

Another Clerihew for a Troubled Couple

ARTHUR RIMBAUD

Arthur Rimbaud
Lit the flambeau.
Verlaine's response?
"More absinthe."

Daily Dose

From Journey by Moonlight, by Antal Szerb, translated by Julie Orringer

ALL

"All she knew was that she had saved money. She hadn't gone here, and she hadn't gone there, and she hadn't done this, and she hadn't done that, so that she wouldn't have to spend money. But what she had actually done apart from that was mysterious, dreamlike..."

From Chapter XII

Clerihew of Domestic Bliss

PAUL VERLAINE

"How's your boyfriend treating you?
Is he still beating you?"
"Can't complain,"
Says Verlaine.

Daily Dose

From The Queen's Necklace, by Antal Szerb, translated by Len Rix

THE TIMES

"The times we live in teach literary people like myself to look beyond our usual subjects and seek fresh inspiration in history."

First line of the author's Preface.

A poem by Robert Creeley

Daily Dose

From Kabbalah and Criticism, by Harold Bloom

INFLUENCE

"'Influence' is an ambivalent word to use in any discourse about literature, for 'influence' is as complex a trope as language affords."

From The Necessity of Misreading

My Avatar Is Hairier Than Yours

Daily Dose

From The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1, by Edward Gibbon

IT MAY

"It may be remarked that man in the only animal which can live and multiply in every country from the equator to the poles. The hog seems to approach the nearest to our species in that privilege."

From Footnote 13, Chapter IX