Bleak House is just the most astounding piece of work. There's huge, visionary poetry in it.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I think most writers' houses are disappointing. What's much more atmospheric and interesting are the places they wrote about.
Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion, but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary, the only home.
I love bleak things.
I am greatly impressed with the BBC's TV adaption of Charles Dickens' 'Bleak House.' The costumes, the sets, the acting and the screenplay are all superb. Every episode is riveting.
The poetry I grew up on is really an intense form of poetry; it's so pure and powerful.
With its vastly complicated plot and its immense cast of characters swirling around the case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce that has been grinding away in the Court of Chancery for decades, 'Bleak House' is, for many readers, Dickens's greatest novel.
I was really surprised at the success of 'House of Sand and Fog,' because it is so awfully dark. Believe it or not, when writing it, I never had the word 'tragedy' in my head - I wasn't trying to write a dark book at all.
My poems tend to be more celebratory and lyrical, and the novels so far pretty dark. Poetry doesn't seem to me to be an appropriate tool for exploring that.
There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling.
I was brought up on Dickens. I remember reading 'Bleak House' but, coming back to it, I didn't remember much about it apart from a few characters.