RNF Skinner

Musings: random extracts from my journal

Random Jottings

Orange Blossom

In the garden the orange blossom is prolific – burgeoning all over the place, + the perfume intermittently announces itself (there’s an intermittent breeze swirling it around). Glorious scent. You can’t describe it – you can’t say “it’s like such-and-such” because it’s the sort of thing to which you compare other things – the scent of orange blossom is a primary datum, a reference point, it is itself, sui-generis, + all you can say about the perfume of orange blossom is that orange blossom has the scent of orange blossom! …

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Poetry, Random Jottings

On ‘Success’

One of the major criteria people have in judging themselves or others is that of success. I haven’t escaped the claws of the monster called ‘Wanting Success’: it may seem that I have, in that I don’t have a career: I’m not seeking success in what it is commonly thought to be. But the reality is that the notion of succeeding is still a strong part of me, only it gets focused on wanting magazines to publish my stuff…

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Poetry, Random Jottings

Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Use of Words

Quoting ‘Gerard Manley Hopkins’ by Francis Noel Lees: “Throughout his life he shows an interest in the etymology + the sensory powers of words. He notes them down + makes conjectures frequently of a very perceptive kind about the kinship of words, + their sound symbolism. ‘What a philologist he might have made!’ is a recent expert judgment on this work of his…

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