"TOWER FOR THE WATER-POWERED SPHERE AND GLOBE".

Song's greatest project was the 40-foot-tall Su Song's water-powered astronomical clocktower constructed in Kaifeng, the wooden pilot model completed in 1088, the bronze components cast by 1090, while the wholly finished work was completed by 1094 during the reign of Emperor Zhezong of Song.[40][41] The emperor had previously commissioned Han Gonglian, Acting Secretary of the Ministry of Personnel, to head the project, but the leadership position was instead handed down to Su Song. The emperor ordered in 1086 for Su to reconstruct the hun yi, or "armillary clock", for a new clock-tower in the capital city. Su worked with the aid of Han Gong-lian, who applied his extensive knowledge of mathematics to the construction of the clock-tower.[42] A small-scale wooden model was first crafted by Su Song, testing its intricate parts before applying it to an actual full-scale clock tower.[43] In the end, the clock-tower had many impressive features, such as the water-powered, rotating armillary sphere crowning the top-level and weighing some 10 to 20 tons,[43] a bronze celestial globe located in the middle that was 4.5 feet in diameter,[43] mechanically-timed and rotating manikins dressed in miniature Chinese clothes that would exit miniature opening doors to announce the time of day by presenting designated reading plaques, ringing bells and gongs, or beating drums,[44] a sophisticated use of oblique gears and an escapement mechanism,[45] as well as an exterior facade of a fanciful Chinese pagoda. Upon its completion, the tower was called the Shui Yun Yi Xiang Tai, or "Tower for the Water-Powered Sphere and Globe".

                                                               

THE OTHERS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UOwklALcuI


We believe that good storytelling strengthens social movements, so every year we want to select stories from Resist to turn into films. During 2008 we asked people to upload their stories of resistance and spoke with many writers and political thinkers.
Using what we've learnt, we've chosen to make our first film with the actor Gael Garcia Bernal about the wall that is being built between Mexico and America.The Wall that is being built along the entire USA border with Mexico. It is one of the greatest symbols of the divisions between rich and poor, and inspires a major investigation into the systemic causes of poverty and migration

ONLY HIMSELFT, AGAIN AND AGAIN, TRAPPED

Orpheus Alone

by Mark Strand

It was an adventure much could be made of: a walk
On the shores of the darkest known river,

Among the hooded, shoving crowds, by steaming rocks

And rows of ruined huts half buried in the muck;

Then to the great court with its marble yard

Whose emptiness gave him the creeps, and to sit there

In the sunken silence of the place and speak

Of what he had lost, what he still possessed of his loss,

And, then, pulling out all the stops, describing her eyes,

Her forehead where the golden light of evening spread,

The curve of her neck, the slope of her shoulders, everything

Down to her thighs and calves, letting the words come,

As if lifted from sleep, to drift upstream,

Against the water's will, where all the condemned

And pointless labor, stunned by his voice's cadence,

Would come to a halt, and even the crazed, disheveled

Furies, for the first time, would weep, and the soot-filled
Air would clear just enough for her, the lost bride,
To step through the image of herself and be seen in the light.
As everyone knows, this was the first great poem,
Which was followed by days of sitting around
In the houses of friends, with his head back, his eyes
Closed, trying to will her return, but finding
Only himself, again and again, trapped
In the chill of his loss, and, finally,
Without a word, taking off to wander the hills
Outside of town, where he stayed until he had shaken
The image of love and put in its place the world
As he wished it would be, urging its shape and measure
Into speech of such newness that the world was swayed,
And trees suddenly appeared in the bare place
Where he spoke and lifted their limbs and swept
The tender grass with the gowns of their shade,
And stones, weightless for once, came and set themselves there,
And small animals lay in the miraculous fields of grain
And aisles of corn, and slept. The voice of light
Had come forth from the body of fire, and each thing
Rose from its depths and shone as it never had.
And that was the second great poem,
Which no one recalls anymore. The third and greatest
Came into the world as the world, out of the unsayable,
Invisible source of all longing to be; it came
As things come that will perish, to be seen or heard
Awhile, like the coating of frost or the movement
Of wind, and then no more; it came in the middle of sleep
Like a door to the infinite, and, circled by flame,
Came again at the moment of waking, and, sometimes,
Remote and small, it came as a vision with trees
By a weaving stream, brushing the bank
With their violet shade, with somebody’s limbs
Scattered among the matted, mildewed leaves nearby,
With his severed head rolling under the waves,
Breaking the shifting columns of light into a swirl
Of slivers and flecks; it came in a language
Untouched by pity, in lines, lavish and dark,
Where death is reborn and sent into the world as a gift,
So the future, with no voice of its own, nor hope
Of ever becoming more than it will be, might mourn.

“Orpheus Alone,” from The Continuous Life: Poems by Mark Strand, © 1990 by Mark Strand. Used by permission oAlfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

The Women of the Avant-Garde / Avant-Garde All the Time : The Poetry Foundation

http://feeds.poetryfoundation.org/~r/AvantGardeAllTheTime/~5/TuSBCBLaen0/AGAT-WomenOfAvant-part1-10-19-09.mp3

NEW YEAR !

Comments and Graphics - New Year Layouts - Photobucket

WAITING

Serene, I fold my hands and wait,

Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea

I rave no more 'gainst time or fate,

For lo! my own shall come to me.

..............................................................

I stay my haste, I make delays,

For what avails this eager pace?

I stand amid the eternal ways,

And what is mine shall know my face.

............................................................

Asleep, awake, by night or day,

The friends I seek are seeking me;

No wind can drive my bark astray,

Nor change the tide of destiny.

.........................................................

What matter if I stand alone?

I wait with joy the coming years;

My heart shall reap where it hath sown,

And garner up its fruit of tears.

.....................................................

The waters know their own and draw

The brook that springs in yonder height;

So flows the good with equal law

Unto the soul of pure delight.

............................................................

The stars come nightly to the sky;

The tidal wave unto the sea;

Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,

Can keep my own away from me.

..............................................................

John Burroughs

BRAZILIAN PRINTS- XX CENTURY

Artist from Recife PE. BRAZIl, Gilvan Samico art is located close to the CORDEL As a function in the story, uses the formal arrangement of figures shaped into emblem to show: confrontation, aaxialidade, juxtaposition, repetition, the operating static.Tthe story works in another field full of shortcuts and deviations ranging from antiquity to the present.

Cordel( is a type of folk poetry was originally oral, and then printed on brochures or other rustic quality of paper, displayed for sale hanging from ropes or twine, which gave rise to the name that comes there from Portugal, which had a tradition hang flyers in strings. In northeastern Brazil, we are named (though people call this manifestation of brochure), but the tradition of the string is not perpetuated. That is, the brochure or Singapore could not be exposed to strings. They are written in a rhyming poems and some are illustrated with woodcuts, the same style of engraving used on the covers. The stanzas are the most common of ten, eight or six verses. The authors, or twine, recite these lines in a melodious and rhythmic, accompanied by guitar, as do readings or recitations very excited and animated to win over potential buyers. )

FOR CHRISTMAS

The best Christmas wish!

ELEGY I

Elegy I: By Dryden

For mighty wars I thought to tune my lute,

And make my measures to my subject suit.

Six feet for ev'ry verse the muse design'd,

But Cupid laughing, when he saw my mind,

From ev'ry second verse a foot purloin'd.

"Who gave thee, boy, this arbitrary sway,

On subjects, not thy own, commands to lay,

Who Phoebus only, and his laws obey ?

'Tis more absurd, than if the queen of love

Should in Minerva's arms to battle move;

Or manly Pallas from that queen should take

Her torch, and o'er the dying lover shake.

In fields as well may Cynthia sow the corn,

Or Ceres wind in woods the bugle-horn;

As well may Phoebus quit the trembling string,

For sword and shield; and Mars may learn to sing.

Already thy dominions are too large;

Be not ambitious of a foreign charge.

If thou wilt reign o'er all, and ev'ry where,

The god of music for his harp may fear.

Thus when with soaring wings I seek renown,

Thou pluck'st my pinions, and I flutter down.

Could I on such mean thoughts my muse employ,

I want a mistress, or a blooming boy.

"Thus I complain'd; his bow the stripling bent,

And chose an arrow fit for his intent.

The shaft his purpose fatally pursues;

" Now, poet, there's a subject for thy muse,

"He said: (too well, alas, he knows his trade,)

For in my breast a mortal wound he made.

Far hence ye proud Hexameters remove,

My verse is pac'd, and tramell'd into love.

With myrtle wreaths my thoughtful brows enclose,

While in unequal verse I sing my woes.

ICICLES ROUND A TREE IN DUMFRIESSHIRE

by Ruth Padel

We're talking different kinds of vulnerability here.
These icicles aren't going to last for ever
Suspended in the ultra violet rays of a Dumfries sun.
But here they hang, a frozen whirligig of lightning,
And the famous American sculptor
Who scrambles the world with his tripod
For strangeness au naturel, got sunset to fill them.
It's not comfortable, a double helix of opalescent fire
*
Wrapping round you, swishing your bark
Down cotton you can't see,
On which a sculptor planned his icicles,
Working all day for that Mesopotamian magic
Of last light before the dark
In a suspended helter-skelter, lit
By almost horizontal rays
Making a mist-carousel from the House of Diamond,
*
A spiral of Pepsodent darkening to the shadowfrost
Of cedars at the Great Gate of Kiev.
Why it makes me think of opening the door to you
I can't imagine.No one could be less
Of an icicle.But there it is -
Having put me down in felt-tip
In the mystical appointment book,
You shoot that quick
*
Inquiry-glance, head tilted, when I open up,
Like coming in's another country,
A country you want but have to get used to, hot
From your bal masquй, making sure
That what you found before's
Still here: a spiral of touch and go,
Lightning licking a treeImagining itself
Aretha Franklin
*
Singing "You make me feel like a natural woman"
In basso profondo,
Firing the bark with its otherworld ice
The way you fire, lifting me
Off my own floor, legs furled
Round your trunk as that tree goes up
At an angle inside the lightning, roots in
The orange and silver of Dumfries.
*
Now I'm the lightning now you, you are,
As you pour yourself round me
Entirely.
No who's doing what and to who,
Just a tangle of spiral and tree.
You might wonder about sculptors who come all this way
To make a mad thing that won't last.
You know how it is: you spend a day, a whole life.
Then the light's gone, you walk away
*
To the Galloway Paradise Hotel. Pine-logs,
Cutlery, champagne -
OK, But the important thing was making it.
Hours, and you don't know how it'll be.
Then something like light
Arrives last moment, at speed reckoned
Only by horizons: completing, surprising
With its three hundred thousand
*
Kilometres per second. Still, even lightning has its moments of panic.
You don't get icicles catching the midwinter sun
In a perfect double helix in Dumfriesshire every day.
And can they be good for each other,
Lightning and tree? It'd make anyone,
Wouldn't it, afraid? That rowan would adore
To sleep and wake up in your arms
*
But's scared of getting burnt. And the lightning might ask, touching wood,
"What do you want of me, now we're in the same
Atomic chain?" What can the tree say?"
Being the centre of all that you are to yourself
-That'd be OK. Being my own body's fine
But it needs yours to stay that way.
"No one could live for ever in
*
A suspended gleam-on-the-edge,
As if sky might tear any minute.Or not for ever for long.Those icicles
Won't be surprise any more. The little snapped threads
Blew away. Glamour left that hill in Dumfries.
The sculptor went off with his black equipment.
Adzes, twine, leather gloves.
*
What's left is a photo of
A completely solitary sight
In a book anyone might open.
But whether our touch at the door gets forgotten
Or turned into other sights, light, form,
I hope you'll be truthful
To me. At least as truthful as lightning
,Skinning a tree.


THIS POEM WON THE 1996 National Poetry Prize

FANTASTIC MEETINGS AND NASTY ATTITUDE !

They were not really gentlemen

THREE COOL GUYS IN VENICE

WH Auden, Cecil Day Lewis and Stephen Spender at the PEN conference in Venice, 1949.

Photograph: Hulton Getty

2010-CALENDAR

We are pleased to let you know that your artwork/photography has been accepted into the 2010 ArtWanted.com calendar! The date you will be featured on is: 11/18/2010

WHY I AM NOT A PAINTER

Michael Goldberg ."SARDINES"

Why I Am Not a Painter

Frank O’Hara

I am not a painter, I am a poet.

Why? I think I would rather be

a painter, but I am not. Well.

.................

for instance,Mike Goldberg

is starting a painting. I drop in.

"Sit down and have a drink" he

says. I drink; we drink. I look

up. "You have SARDINES in it.

""Yes, it needed something there."

"Oh." I go and the days go by

and I drop in again. The painting

is going on, and I go, and the days

go by. I drop in. The painting is

finished. "Where's SARDINES?

All that's left is just

letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of

a color: orange. I write a line

about orange. Pretty soon it is a

whole page of words, not lines.

Then another page. There should be

so much more, not of orange, of

words, of how terrible orange is

and life. Days go by. It is even in

prose, I am a real poet. My poem

is finished and I haven't mentioned

orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call

it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery

I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

(1971)

I CRAVE YOUR MOUTH .....

I crave your mouth...

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.

Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.

Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day

I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,

your hands the color of a savage harvest,

hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,

I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,

the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,

I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,

hunting for you, for your hot heart,

like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

Pablo Neruda

EMPEROR TANG-SKEPTIC

...................................................................................................

...................................................................................................

...................................................................................................

...................................................................................................

Emperor Tang -- Skeptic
..............................................

CLOSER than my body's shadow
Follows the blind nameless One,
Carrying in his tightened, yellow fist
Time, the thin sputtering candle,
And in his swollen cheeks
Death, the grey wind.
So fill and refill my deep, golden horn
With the strongest wine,
O wise men of China,
Before declaiming in magnificent verse
My immortality,
That I may nod,
My eyes glittering with dreams,
And believe --

Paul Eldridge