“Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or by the handle.”
– James Russell Lowell
About James Russell Lowell
James Russell Lowell, the sometimes romantic, often ironic American poet, was also a diplomat, serving as ambassador to Spain and, later, Britain. He was born in 1819 in Massachusetts and became known as a New England poet. His satire The Bigelow Papers was his best-known work. While a professor at Harvard, he wrote critical studies of Dante, Shakespeare, and Chaucer, among others, and also served as the founding editor of the influential magazine The Atlantic Monthly. He died in 1891.
This piece is from my runaway paint brush collection sold to private collector, Fucked Up Baby