2005

After a break from blogging I have loads to catch up on. Spent the break watching movies: Dr Strangelove Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb.

Reading books: Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke. As an example read the letter of April 23, 1903.

Finally, as to my own books, I wish I could send you any of them that might give you pleasure. But I am very poor, and my books, as soon as they are published, no longer belong to me. I can't even afford them myself – and, as I would so often like to, give them to those who would be kind to them.

So I am writing for you, on another slip of paper, the titles (and publishers) of my most recent books (the newest ones – all together I have published perhaps 12 or 13), and must leave it to you, dear Sir, to order one or two of them when you can.

I am glad that my books will be in your good hands.

With best wishes,

Yours,
Rainer Marie Rilke

The Tale of the Starving Poet is not dead. Not all writers make a living writing. There are those who get much publicised advances and then there are those who write.

For light(er) reading I am reading The Crash of Hennington by Patrick Ness. Think Messianic soap-opera. Fate. Destiny. Eminently fun. Not-to-be-taken-too-seriously.