The hardest portion of English, I must say it: Idioms.
The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.
I studied Shakespeare in college, but not theatrically, more in terms of literature, and then I kind of took a break from it. Now there's resurgence in my appreciation for him. It's amazing: there are so many book titles and song titles that come just from lines that he wrote.
Thus we have on stage two men, each of whom knows nothing of what he believes the other knows, and to deceive each other reciprocally both speak in allusions, each of the two hoping (in vain) that the other holds the key to his puzzle.
It is our business not to supply reality but to invent allusions to the conceivable which cannot be presented.
As a guiding principle I believe that every poem must be its own sole freshly created universe, and therefore have no belief n 'tradition' or a common myth-kitty or casual allusions in poems to other poems or poets, which last I find unpleasantly like the talk of literary understrappers letting you see they know the right people.
Click, clack, click, clack, went their conversation, like so many knitting-needles, purl, plain, purl, plain, achieving a complex pattern of references, cross-references, Christian names, nicknames, and fleeting allusions.
When you do television, you have this opportunity to drop these subtle hints everywhere. The way you say things, for example, sometimes those seeds turn into trees.
I'm not as clever as J.J. Abrams and those guys who fill it with all of these things for people to find.
We used to have more references to things that we pulled out because they almost felt like they were trying too hard to allude to something.
The Book of Revelation, difficult as it may be for "literalists," becomes much simpler when we read it typologically, as a mosiac of allusions to Old Testament prophecy.
I like to borrow forms and quotes and use a lot of allusions, in both poetry and music.
