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.

DANTE´S

"Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate" (3.9)

Leave behind all hope, you who enter

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

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Emperor Tang -- Skeptic
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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

EVENING AFTER RAIN

Evening After Rain.

(It was written by the Tu Fu lived between 712 and 770. )

Sudden rain this afternoon
Saved my thirsty garden.
Now sunset steams the grass
And the river softly glistens.
Who’ll organize my scattered books?
Tonight I’ll fill and fill my glass.
I know they love to talk about me.
But no one faults me for my reclusive life.

Du Fu (also known as Tu Fu) wrote in the High Tang period. His work is very diverse, but his most characteristic poems are autobiographical and historical, recording the effects of war on his own life.

Thank you for your cooperation friends!

The Impersonation on Blogger


If you are aware of someone you know being impersonated on us blog, CAT...MEOW or a TRASPIRARE IL POMERIGGI DI SOLE please LET US KNOW


WE FIND :"Atra Spirare il Pomriggiodis" and "Elaine Erig - Cats Meow" in blogs from friends,thank´s

DECONSTRUCTING MATA HARI

Born in Germany and raised by turkish-egyptian parents, dancer and choreographer Nejla Y. Yatkin chose to bring the tragic life of Mata Hari on stage. In her solo dance show named 'Deconstructing Mata Hari', Nejla explores images often associated with Mata Hari such as exoticism, espionage, criminal proceedings, confusion and uncertainty. At the end of her show, the question whether Mata Hari deserved to be executed remains timelessly unanswered.

Astrid Riecken, The Washington Times the Best of Photojournalism -BOP2006.

BLACK AND WHITE

This poem was nominated as Poem of 2005 for the Best poem in the world, penned by an African kid...amazing thought!!!

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

Black and White

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

When I born, I Black,
When I grow up, I Black,
When I go in Sun, I Black,
When I scared, I Black,
When I sick, I Black,
And when I die, I still black.
And you White fella,
When you born, you Pink,
When you grow up, you White,
When you go in Sun, you Red,
When you cold, you Blue,
When you scared, you Yellow,
When you sick, you Green,
And when you die, you Gray.
And you calling me Colored ??

ERYKAH BADU