Word: poets
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History denies this, of course. Among prominent summer deaths, one recalls those of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean, whose lives seemed equally brief and complete. Writers cannot bear the fact that poet John Keats died at 26, and only half playfully judge their own lives as failures when they pass that year. The idea that the life cut short is unfulfilled is illogical because lives are measured by the impressions they leave on the world and by their intensity and virtue. What one learns of the man suggests that John F. Kennedy Jr. led a very good life indeed...
Celebrity is hardly a prerequisite. Kennedy's life would have been just as valuable had he been, to use another poet's phrase, a "mute, inglorious Milton." A beloved colleague at TIME died recently who was unknown to most of the world, save the friends she cherished, yet gestures of friendship were her public service. The measure of a life is often taken in the smallest units. On television, a parking attendant in the garage that Kennedy used mentioned that Kennedy came over personally to wish the man a merry Christmas every year. A middle-age African-American woman with...
...life, and to attempt to know why it affects us so. This is what John Milton did with the death of a Cambridge schoolmate, Edward King, in his famous elegy, Lycidas. King (who also died at sea) was no Kennedy, but he was a handsome young cleric and a poet on the verge of a great career. Milton's lament was for King in particular and for youth in general, cut off at a moment of high momentum...
...domestic projects in poor recording quality, sloppy production and slackerly filler material. Instead, lyrics and music form an almost hyper-aesthetic experience--carefully produced, with fine-tuned instrumentation and clever lyrics. The singer Stuart Murdoch softly whispers phrases about the uncertain nineties with an approach reminiscent of the '70s poet-singer Nick Drake. The instrumentation includes a trumpet, cello, flute and beautiful keyboard that unite in complex harmoniousness...
DIED. MARK O'BRIEN, 49, author and poet; from complications of bronchitis; at his home in Berkeley, Calif. O'Brien, the subject of the Academy Award-winning documentary Breathing Lessons, wrote by typing with a stick in his mouth. He lived in a 650-lb. iron lung most of his life...