Helen Bevington

North Carolina · connected1906–2001

American poet (1906–2001)

Worked at Duke University

diarist, poet, essayist, writer, professor

Quotations with a citation

Whenas in perfume Julia went, Then, then, how sweet was the intent Of that inexorable scent.

One gender to walk the wide world in Is the feminine, A plight that — softly to a friend — I can recommend.

Victor Hugo was a passionate observer, partial to death scenes. He had an appetite for extinction, a man sure to be on hand at the sound of a death rattle or the passing of a funeral procession.

It seems an odd idea to my students that poetry, like all art, leads us away from itself, back to the world in which we live. It furnishes the vision. It shows with a sudden intense clarity what is already there.

No matter what kind of verse a woman writes, nobody alive or dead deserves to be called a poetess.

The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wake him up (as it did in the miraculous months of April and May, 1819). Burns chose autumn. Longfellow liked the month of September. Shelley flourished in the hot months. Some poets, like Wordsworth, have gone outdoors to work. Others, like Auden, keep to the curtained room. Schiller needed the smell of rotten apples about him to make a poem. Tennyson and Walter de la Mare had to smoke. Auden drinks lots of tea, Spender coffee; Hart Crane drank alcohol. Pope, Byron, and William Morris were creative late at night. And so it goes.

I had a perfect confidence, still unshaken, in books. If you read enough you would reach the point of no return. You would cross over and arrive on the safe side. There you would drink the strong waters and become addicted, perhaps demented — but a Reader.

In the libraries

Open Library Along came the witch · 1976 View library record ↗ Open Library Journey Is Everything · 1988 View library record ↗ Open Library The house was quiet and the world was calm · 1971 View library record ↗ Open Library The journey is everything · 1983 View library record ↗ Open Library The third and only way · 1996 View library record ↗ Open Library When Fnd Mke Verse · 1901 View library record ↗

Read Helen Bevington

When Fnd Mke Verse 1901 Find a copy Journey Is Everything 1988 Find a copy The house was quiet and the world was calm 1971 Find a copy Along came the witch 1976 Find a copy The journey is everything 1983 Find a copy The third and only way 1996 Find a copy