The Lovers’ Chronicle 28 March – certainty – death of Virginia Woolf – art by Raphael & Abraham Walkowitz – birth of Nelson Algren

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.  What is your certainty?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

this has a dark origin,
shockin’ i know,
from the note Virginia Woolf left
before she drowned herself
“Such a tragic, desperate act
I can see there was drama
you couldn’t resist”
as we have discussed,
because you had your share
of darkness, writin’ verse
was the only way i had
to poke it and prod it
“Processing it is important ”
and i have to the point
that can be said,
with certainty,
here with you
is the only probin’
that needs doin’

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

i understand
absolutely
i do not condone it
but i understand

i never got close
i could see
but i did not get close

now
that can be said
sittin’ here
lookin’ back
at the trail of verse

had that not
been there…

all bets are off
and i might have
found some rocks

© copyright 2022 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

the effect is all consumin’
time spent searchin’ words
to send to you
nights at best with you
over and over again
just bein’, not havin’ to be
without such pleasure
bein’ wanted…
can you see here, now,
all we will ever need
journeys end
in lovers meetin’
to be with you

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

just a man who
tried to believe
again
a blessin’
and a curse…
no
not that kinda madly
the good kind;
devotedly,
unconditionally
however it will be had
on my favorite kinda night
and verse, lit by the light
of a fire pit and memories
that will sustain

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

i go there because
you are there
because it is
the only place
i know with certainty

sometimes the specter comes
She is silent but She knows
i have done this to myself

She feels, She sees
it is not me anymore,
but the hurt itself
that moves her

i stop and think
how to forget
how can this be

for if i choose
what will that take of me
cannot touch, make conscious
it would cost too much

but to look
and not turn away,
to see and all
hesitation gone,
i god, i think,
it has to be here
it has to include you

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

of somethin’
for certain

a quest
part way there
at least
though it was
a helluva late start

time at last
to focus
on what matters

origins, vision,
inspiration, desire
the reasons for bein’

and of course,
you

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

the effect is all consumin’
time spent searchin’ words
to send to you

and survivin’
nights at best, in dreams, with you
weavin’ in and out of time and places
laughin’, livin’, and lovin’,

over and over again
just bein’, not havin’ to be apart
such pleasure bein’ wanted…
until the totem wobbles

can you see
here, now, all you will ever need
journeys end in lovers meetin’

to be without you,
what to come is certainty
in delay there lies no comfort
mine is a time that endures not

dancin’ with madness

on the trails i roam,
go through this again
recover and go again
i hear verse; concentrate
so i am doin’ what seems best to do
you see

what i want to say…

i owe to you
whatever hope I have
and only you could have been
but it is as is and comes down

to degrees of acceptance
and the certainty

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

 

Virginia_Woolf_1927Today marks the anniversary of the death of Virginia Woolf (25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941).  She put on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones, walked into the River Ouse near her home in Lewes, East Sussex, England, and drowned, at the age of 59.

So what happens when the Dark Muse demands and you combine a love note from Woolf, another Inception reference, Shakespeare and Woolf’s suicide note?  Read on……

Certainty Of Nothin’

The effect of you was all consumin’
All day I would search my most charmin’ words
To send to you in the longest letters
All night in dreams, explorin’ each other
Weavin’ in and out of time and places
Tossin’ ourselves together, undressin’,

Playin’, teasin’, flirtin’, laughin’, livin’,
And lovin’, over and over again
Just bein’, not havin’ to be apart
Such enormous pleasure bein’ wanted…
Then the totem would wobble and topple

On what path and when did you roam
Can you see your true love is here
Here, now, all you will ever need
No need to look any further
Journeys end in lovers meetin’,
This I know and commit to you

Hereafter, to be without you,
Without mirth and without laughter
What is to come is certainty
In delay there lies no comfort,
Then come kiss me, if only once
Mine is a time that endures not

At last, I feel certain I have gone mad
I feel I cannot go through this again
And this time, there is no recoverin’
I hear voices; I cannot concentrate
So I am doin’ what seems best to do
I cannot fight any longer, you see
I cannot write properly, cannot read
What I want to say is I owe to you
Whatever happiness I had in life
And if anybody could have saved me
It would have been you, but all is gone
From me but the certainty of nothin’

 

Raffaello_SanzioToday is the birthday of painter and architect of the High Renaissance, Raphael (Urbino 6 April or 28 March 1483 – 6 April 1520 Rome). Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. Raphael was quite productive, running an unusually large workshop and, despite his death at 37, leaving a large body of work. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, and the largest, work of his career. Perhaps, the best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome, much of his work was executed by his workshop from his drawings.

His career falls naturally into three phases and three styles, first described by Giorgio Vasari: his early years in Umbria, then a period of about four years (1504–1508) absorbing the artistic traditions of Florence, followed by his last hectic and triumphant twelve years in Rome, working for two Popes and their close associates.

Gallery

Portrait of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino from 1482 to 1508, c.1507. (Uffizi Gallery)

 

Madonna of the Pinks, c. 1506–7, National Gallery, London

 The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, 1515, one of the seven remaining Raphael Cartoons for tapestries for the Sistine Chapel (Victoria and Albert Museum)

 Lucretia, engraved by Raimondi after a drawing by Raphael.

 La Fornarina, Raphael’s mistress

Self-portraits

Sistine Madonna (1512)

Abraham_Walkowitz_d772b46822_bToday is the birthday of Abraham Walkowitz (Siberia March 28, 1878 – January 27, 1965 New York City); painter, usually grouped in with early American Modernists working in the Modernist style.  Walkowitz’ close relationship with the 291 Gallery and Alfred Stieglitz placed him at the center of the modernist movement.  His early abstract cityscapes and collection of over 5,000 drawings of his muse, Isadora Duncan also remain significant art historical records.

Walkowitz’s dedication to Duncan as a subject extended well past her untimely death in 1927. The works reveal shared convictions toward modernism and breaking links with the past. In 1958, Walkowitz told Lerner, “She (Duncan) had no laws. She did not dance according to the rules. She created. Her body was music. It was a body electric.”

Gallery

Les Baigneuses

Les Baigneuses

Isadora duncan

Isadora duncan

abrahamwalkowitzBrooklyn_Museum_-_Isadora_Duncan_29_-_Abraham_Walkowitz

Isadora duncan

abrahamwalkowitzisadoraduncan

Isadora duncan

Nelson Algren
Nelson Algren NYWTS.jpg

Nelson Algren, 1956

Today is the birthday of Nelson Algren (born Nelson Ahlgren Abraham, Detroit, Michigan, March 28, 1909 – May 9, 1981 Long Island, New York); writer. Perhaps best known for The Man with the Golden Arm, a 1949 novel that won the National Book Award and was adapted as the 1955 film of the same name. The lover of French writer Simone de Beauvoir, he is featured in her novel The Mandarins, set in Paris and Chicago.

He is considered a sort of bard of those down on their luck, based on this book and his novel A Walk on the Wild Side (1956). The latter was adapted as the 1962 film of the same name (directed by Edward Dmytryk, screenplay by John Fante).

Nelson Algren married Amanda Kontowicz in 1937. He had met her at a party celebrating the publication of his book, Somebody in Boots. They eventually would divorce and remarry before divorcing a second and final time.

Algren and Beauvoir summered together in Algren’s cottage in the lake front community of Miller Beach, Indiana, and also traveled to Latin America together in 1949. In her novel The Mandarins (1954), Beauvoir wrote of Algren (who is ‘Lewis Brogan’ in the book):

At first I found it amusing meeting in the flesh that classic American species: self-made leftist writer. Now, I began taking an interest in Brogan. Through his stories, you got the feeling that he claimed no rights to life and that nevertheless he had always had a passionate desire to live. I liked that mixture of modesty and eagerness.

Algren expected the world’s most famous feminist to love him in a traditional way, with the man being dominant, but Beauvoir’s relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre dominated her life. Algren and Beauvoir eventually became disenchanted with each other.

In 1965, he met Betty Ann Jones while teaching at the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop. They married that year and divorced in 1967. According to Kurt Vonnegut, who taught with him at Iowa in 1965, Algren’s “enthusiasm for writing, reading and gambling left little time for the duties of a married man.”

In 1980, he moved to a house in Sag Harbor, Long Island where he died of a heart attack at home.

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The Lovers’ Chronicle 27 March – attest – verse by Statius – art by Jan van Beers & Albert Marquet – photography by Edward Steichen

Dear Zazie,

Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag. Perhaps, the most meaningful, important TLC post.

The Lovers’ Chronicle 

Dear Muse,

i know the way
to attest to existence
a matter of faith
a form of seduction
a prescribed future
never settle for ordinary
nor fade in obscurity
a chance to be a part
of all that matters,
time transients escapin’
the problems posed
by daily existence
speak the language
lovers

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

sometimes
i let sadness
overwhelm me
i have plumbed
the depths
of sorrow
and i should
always
swallow it
with ease
i have no want
aside from the want
of what is best for you
and i will do as you wish
the only thing i will not do
is stop creatin’ this vision
for you

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

somethin’ there is
that allows just enough
space for two abreast

can you hear
now, the music
from the beginnin’

the circle
of the past
has been broken

at last

chances traveled on,
voices in accord,
lead us here

the proof of what
and to what end
within our grasp

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

time runnin’ out
nothin’ new there
seems to help
though you might best
judge that

i know
keep comin’ back
to the same thing
but you tell me,
how can i not

when the only possible
thing that can ever matter
is becomin’ half of a whole

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

lost
do not know or cannot find
a way to attest to existence
a matter of faith
or the lack thereof

a form of seduction
a chosen solitude
rather than a prescribed future
eventually become ordinary
in time and fade in obscurity

if only…

lovers
a chance to be a part
of the only thing that matters,
time transients escapin’
the problems posed
by daily existence
speak the language
heroes

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

 

Statius
Publio Papinio Stazio.png

Today is the traditional day to celebrate the birth of Publius Papinius Statius (Naples; c. 45 – c. 96 AD Naples); Roman poet of the 1st century AD (Silver Age of Latin literature). His surviving Latin poetry includes an epic in twelve books, the Thebaid; a collection of occasional poetry, the Silvae; and an unfinished epic, the Achilleid. He is also known for his appearance as a guide in the Purgatory section of Dante’s epic poem The Divine Comedy.

Verse 

Exedere animum dolor iraque demens
et, qua non gravior mortalibus addita curis,
spes, ubi longa venit.

Statius

  • Grief and mad wrath devoured his soul, and hope, heaviest of mortal cares when long deferred.

Nec frons triste rigens nimiusque in moribus horror
sed simplex hilarisque fides et mixta pudori
gratia.

Statius

  • Yet no stiff and frowning face was hers, no undue austerity in her manners, but gay and simple loyalty, charm blended with modesty.

Today is the birthday of Jan van Beers (Jean Marie Constantin Joseph van Beers; Lier 27 March 1852 – 17 November 1927 Fay-aux-Loges); painter and illustrator, the son of the poet Jan van Beers. They are sometimes referred to as Jan van Beers the elder and Jan van Beers the younger. In 1884, Jan Van Beers produced the pen-and-ink sketches for the edition de luxe of his father’s poetry.

In 1880 he moved to Paris and immediately abandoned historical pictures, producing instead genre and portrait works of the middle classes and developing a successful line in attractive draped young ladies reading a letter or a book or day-dreaming about a lover. Van Beers said that he wanted to paint what he saw and that the best and most interesting things that one saw in Paris were her women.

Gallery

20230327_210219

20230327_210035

Jan van Beers in his studio, Paris c. 1885–90.jpg

in his studio, Paris, late 1880s

An 1891 Vanity Fair caricature of Van Beers titled “The Modern Wiertz”

posing as Sir Anthony van Dyck

albertmarquetSelf-Portrait_Albert_Marquet_(1904)Today is the birthday of Albert Marquet (Bordeaux 27 March 1875 – 14 June 1947 La Frette-sur-Seine, Val-d’Oise); painter, associated with the Fauvist movement. He initially became one of the Fauve painters and a lifelong friend of Henri Matisse. Marquet subsequently painted in a more naturalistic style, primarily landscapes, but also several portraits and, between 1910 and 1914, several female nude paintings.

 

 

 

Gallery

Les deux amies

Les deux amies

1906, Fécamp (The Beach at Sainte-Adresse), oil on canvas, 64.5 x 80 cm

1916, Port of Marseilles, oil on canvas, 65 x 81 cm, Ohara Museum of Art

1919, La femme blonde (Femme blonde sur un fond de châle espagnol), oil on canvas, 98.5 x 98.5 cm, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
Edward Steichen
Edward Steichen.jpg

Edward Steichen, photographed by
Fred Holland Day (1901)

And today is the birthday of Edward Jean Steichen (Bivange/Béiweng; March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973 West Redding, Connecticut); photographer, painter, and art gallery and museum curator. Steichen was the most frequently featured photographer in Alfred Stieglitz’ groundbreaking magazine Camera Work during its run from 1903 to 1917. Together Stieglitz and Steichen opened the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, which eventually became known as 291 after its address.

His photos of gowns for the magazine Art et Décoration in 1911 are regarded as the first modern fashion photograph. From 1923 to 1938, Steichen was a photographer for the Condé Nast magazines Vogue and Vanity Fair while also working for many advertising agencies including J. Walter Thompson. During these years, Steichen was regarded as the best known and highest paid photographer in the world. In 1944, he directed the war documentary The Fighting Lady, which won the 1945 Academy Award for Best Documentary.

After World War II, Steichen was Director of the Department of Photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art until 1962. While at MoMA, he curated and assembled the exhibit The Family of Man, which was seen by nine million people.

Steichen married Clara Smith in 1903. In 1914, Clara accused her husband of having an affair with artist Marion H. Beckett, who was staying with them in France. The Steichens left France just ahead of invading German troops. In 1915, Clara Steichen returned to France with her daughter, staying in their house in the Marne in spite of the war. Steichen returned to France with the Photography Division of the American Army Signal Corps in 1917, whereupon Clara returned to the United States. In 1919, Clara Steichen sued Marion Beckett for having an affair with her husband, but was unable to prove her claims. Clara and Steichen eventually divorced in 1922. Steichen married Dana Desboro Glover in 1923. She died of leukemia in 1957. In 1960, aged 80, Steichen married Joanna Taub and remained married to her until his death, which occurred two days before his 94th birthday. Joanna Steichen died on July 24, 2010, in Montauk, New York, aged 77.

Gallery

Fay Wray posing as Ophelia for Vanity Fair 1930

Fay Wray posing as Ophelia for Vanity Fair 1930

Henri Matisse and La Serpentine, fall 1909, Issy-les-Moulineaux, photograph by Edward Steichen

Young American Artists of the Modern School, L. to R. Jo Davidson, Edward Steichen, Arthur B. Carles, John Marin; back: Marsden Hartley, Laurence Fellows, c. 1911, Bates College Museum of Art

The Pond—Moonlight, multiple gum bichromate print, 1904.
For more details on this topic, see The Pond—Moonlight.

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The Lovers’ Chronicle 26 March – neither here nor there – art by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeldverse by Robert Frost – birth of Tennessee Williams – verse by Gregory Corso – publication of This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Dear Zazie,

Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag. Rhett

Dear Muse,

not sure the genesis of this one
“A lot going on this day with
Frost, Tennessee, Corso,
and This Side of Paradise”
right, coulda come from
somethin’ i was readin’
but i think it is about
my long lost feelin’s
“You were a long time
in a wilderness”
if it is a question,
now i know the answer
“And it is”
right here
where we belong

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

though not often noticed
yet, somehow planned
you spend time there
for somethin’ you did
you sit here, breathin’
while time measures
your penance
but you believe
while you are here
because
you are on your way
to somewhere
and if asked just say,
neither one cares

© copyright 2022 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

should i
astound you
take you to movies
and cemeteries
tell you about this vision
then desire you and kiss you
and all the preliminaries
sayin’, it is beautiful to be
and you understandin’ why
take you in my arms
to woo the entire night
how else to feel other than i am

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

her pleasure will not let me go

she talks and i am fain to list
if there is anything earned
or deserved, this is mine
the beauty she sees,
she has an eye for
and needs
not reason why
it is not vain to tell her so,
that for her, i am made better

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

an orison
for those not kept

more and more
time spent
in the pleasant
disguise of illusion
where the scene
through the rear view
comes with music
and the past
can be controlled
so it cannot turn

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

neither
an idea
nor a clue
in the rear view
searchin’ without knowin’
what the search was for
lookin’ in all the wrong faces
‘spect you can trace the way back
by the trail of broken hearts

here
a solitary man
amidst voices
from the past
a fascination
borne of time spent
walkin’ marble halls
of forever

this was fought hard for
sacrifices were made
and the pull is strong
there is certainty
and comfort
on this trail

there
you
us
does ever after exist
is there such a thing
is the effort worth the all

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

well,
i might be mistaken
but i only obey
one urge,
the urge of the verse

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Neither Here Nor There

nowhere
though not often noticed
yet, someone planned it
you spend time there
for somethin’ you did
you sit there, breathin’
while time measures
your penance
but you believe in it
while you are there
because
you are on your way
to somewhere

© Copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Today is the birthday of Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (26 March 1794 – 24 May 1872); painter, chiefly of Biblical subjects. As a young man he associated with the painters of the Nazarene movement who revived the florid Renaissance style in religious art. He is remembered for his extensive Picture Bible, and his designs for stained glass windows in cathedrals.

Gallery

Female nude

Female nude

Female nude back

Female nude back

Portrait of Klara Bianka von Quandt (1820)

Portrait of Klara Bianka von Quandt (1820)

 

Robert Frost
Robert Frost NYWTS.jpg

Robert Frost (1941)

Today is the birthday of Robert Frost (Robert Lee Frost; San Francisco; March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963 Boston); poet. Perhaps best known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. In my opinion, he is one of the most popular and critically respected American poets of the twentieth century.  Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetic works.

Verse

 I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

  • “The Road Not Taken”, st. 4 (1916).

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.

  • “Fire and Ice” (1923).
  • I stopped my song and almost heart,
    For any eye is an evil eye
    That looks in onto a mood apart.

    • “A Mood Apart” (1947).
  • All those who try to go it sole alone,
    Too proud to be beholden for relief,
    Are absolutely sure to come to grief.

    • “Haec Fabula Docet” (1947).
  • Courage is of the heart by derivation,
    And great it is. But fear is of the soul.

    • A Masque of Mercy (1947).

Unless I’m wrong
I but obey
The urge of a song:
I’m—bound—away!

And I may return
If dissatisfied
With what I learn
From having died.

  • “Away!, st. 5,6 (1962).

My November Guest (1915)

The third poem from the 1915 republished A Boy’s Will
  • My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
    Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
    Are beautiful as days can be;
    She loves the bare, the withered tree;
    She walks the sodden pasture lane.
  • Her pleasure will not let me stay.
    She talks and I am fain to list:
    She’s glad the birds are gone away,
    She’s glad her simple worsted gray
    Is silver now with clinging mist.
  • The desolate, deserted trees,
    The faded earth, the heavy sky,
    The beauties she so truly sees,
    She thinks I have no eye for these,
    And vexes me for reason why.
  • Not yesterday I learned to know
    The love of bare November days
    Before the coming of the snow,
    But it were vain to tell her so,
    And they are better for her praise.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (1923)

  • Whose woods these are I think I know.
    His house is in the village, though;
    He will not see me stopping here
    To watch his woods fill up with snow.

    • St. 1.
  • My little horse must think it queer
    To stop without a farmhouse near
    Between the woods and frozen lake
    The darkest evening of the year.

    • St. 2.
  • He gives his harness bells a shake
    To ask if there is some mistake.
    The only other sound’s the sweep
    Of easy wind and downy flake.

    • St. 3.
  • The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
    But I have promises to keep,
    And miles to go before I sleep,
    And miles to go before I sleep.

    • St. 4.

Tennessee_Williams_NYWTSToday is the birthday of Tennessee Williams (Thomas Lanier Williams; Columbus, Mississippi (26 March 1911 – 25 February 1983 Manhattan); author of more than 24 full-length plays, including Pulitzer Prize-winners A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955).

At age 33, after years of obscurity, Williams suddenly became famous with the success of The Glass Menagerie (1944) in New York City. He introduced “plastic theatre” in this play and it closely reflected his own unhappy family background. It was the first of a string of successes, including A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), and The Night of the Iguana (1961). With his later work, Williams attempted a new style that did not appeal as widely to audiences.

Much of Williams’s most acclaimed work has been adapted for the cinema. He also wrote short stories, poetry, essays, and a volume of memoirs. In 1979, four years before his death, Williams was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Quotes from his plays:

Stairs to the Roof (1941)

  • A Prayer for the Wild at Heart That Are Kept in Cages
    • This is the subtitle of the play

The Glass Menagerie (1944)

  • In memory everything seems to happen to music.
    • Tom (As Narrator Scene One)
  • Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.
    • Tom, as Narrator, in Scene One
  • Animals have sections in their stomachs which enable them to digest food without mastication, but human beings are supposed to chew their food before they swallow it down… So chew your food and give your salivary glands a chance to function!
    • Amanda, Scene One
  • Mother, when you’re disappointed, you get that awful suffering look on your face, like the picture of Jesus’ mother in the museum!
    • Laura, Scene Two
  • I know so well what becomes of unmarried women who aren’t prepared to occupy a position. I’ve seen such pitiful cases in the South — barely tolerated spinsters living upon the grudging patronage of sister’s husband or brother’s wife! — stuck away in some little mouse-trap of a room — encouraged by one in-law to visit another — little birdlike women without any nest — eating the crust of humility all their life! Is that the future that we’ve mapped out for ourselves?
    • Amanda, Scene Two
  • Why you’re not crippled, you just have a little defect — hardly noticeable, even! When people have some slight disadvantage like that, they cultivate other things to make up for it — develop charm — and vivacity — and — charm!
    • Amanda, Scene Two
  • I took that horrible novel back to the library — yes! That hideous book by that insane Mr. Lawrence. I cannot control the output of diseased minds or people who cater to them — BUT I WON’T ALLOW SUCH FILTH BROUGHT INTO MY HOUSE! No, no, no, no, no!
    • Amanda, Scene Three
  • Every time you come in yelling that God damn “Rise and Shine!” “Rise and Shine!” I say to myself, “How lucky dead people are!”
    • Tom, Scene Three
  • Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter, and none of those instincts are given much play at the warehouse!
    • Tom, Scene Four
  • You are the only young man that I know of who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don’t plan for it!
    • Amanda, Scene Five
  • All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap, and men expect them to be.
    • Amanda, Scene Six
  • Yes, movies! Look at them — All of those glamorous people — having adventures — hogging it all, gobbling the whole thing up! You know what happens? People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them! Yes, until there’s a war. That’s when adventure becomes available to the masses! Everyone’s dish, not only Gable’s! Then the people in the dark room come out of the dark room to have some adventures themselves — Goody, goody! — It’s our turn now, to go to the south Sea Island — to make a safari — to be exotic, far-off! — But I’m not patient. I don’t want to wait till then. I’m tired of the movies and I am about to move!
    • Tom, Scene Six
  • All of my gentlemen callers were sons of planters and of course I assumed that I would be married to one and raise my family on a large piece of land with plenty of servants. But man proposes — and woman accepts the proposal! — To vary that old, old saying a little bit — I married no planter! I married a man who worked for the telephone company!
    • Amanda, Scene Six
  • Shakespeare probably wrote a poem on that light bill, Mrs. Wingfield.
    • Jim, Scene Seven
  • I believe in the future of television! I wish to be ready to go up right along with it. Therefore I’m planning to get in on the ground floor. In fact I’ve already made the right connections and all that remains is for the industry itself to get under way! Full steam — Knowledge — Zzzzzp! Money — Zzzzzp! — Power!
    • Jim, Scene Seven
  • I’ll just imagine he had an operation. The horn was removed to make him feel less — freakish! Now he will feel more at home with the other horses, the ones that don’t have horns…
    • Laura, Scene Seven
  • I wish you were my sister. I’d teach you to have some confidence in yourself. The different people are not like other people, but being different is nothing to be ashamed of. Because other people are not such wonderful people. They’re one hundred times one thousand. You’re one times one! They walk all over the earth. You just stay here. They’re common as — weeds, but — you — well, you’re — Blue Roses!
    • Jim, Scene Seven
  • Things have a way of turning out so badly.
    • Amanda, Scene Seven
  • You don’t know things anywhere! You live in a dream; you manufacture illusions!
    • Amanda, Scene Seven
  • Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger — anything that can blow your candles out! — for nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles Laura — and so goodbye…
    • Tom, Scene Seven

Summer and Smoke (1948)

  • Eternity!—Didn’t it give you the cold shivers?
    • Alma, Prologue
  • The tables have turned, yes, the tables have turned with a vengeance! You’ve come around to my old way of thinking and I to yours like two people exchanging a call on each other at the same time, and each one finding the other one gone out, the door locked against him and no one to answer the bell!
    • Alma, Scene Eleven
  • You’ll be surprised how infinitely merciful they are. The prescription number is 96814. I think of it as the telephone number of God!
    • Alma, Scene Twelve

The Rose Tattoo (1951)

  • The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!
    • Rosa, Act Three, Scene Three

Camino Real (1953)

  • When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.
    • Don Quixote in Prologue
  • I know this place. … Here it is on the chart. Look, it says here: “Continue until you come to the square of a walled town which is the end of the Camino Real and the beginning of the Camino Real. Halt there,” it says, “and turn back, Traveler, for the spring of humanity has gone dry in this place…
    • Sancho
  • You said, “They’re harmless dreamers and they’re loved by the people.” — “What,” I asked you, “is harmless about a dreamer, and what,” I asked you, “is harmless about the love of the people? — Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dreams.

Orpheus Descending (1957)

  • We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.
    • Val (Act 2, Scene 1)

Suddenly Last Summer (1958)

  • We saw the Encantadas, but on the Encantadas we saw something Melville hadn’t written about.
    • Mrs. Venable, Scene One
  • And the sand all alive, all alive, as the hatched sea-turtles made their dash for the sea, while the birds hovered and swooped to attack and hovered and—swooped to attack! They were diving down on the hatched sea-turtles, turning them over to expose their soft undersides, tearing the undersides open and rending and eating their flesh.
    • Mrs. Venable, Scene One
  • Well, now I’ve said it, my son was looking for God. I mean for a clear image of Him. He spent that whole blazing equatorial day in the crow’s nest of the schooner watching that thing on the beach of the Encantadas till it was too dark to see it, and when he came back down the rigging, he said, Well, now I’ve seen Him!—and he meant God . . .
    • Mrs. Venable, Scene One

The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore (1963)

  • We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.
    • Christopher
  • All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.

“Are you acquainted with the opera La Bohème, ma’am?” he replied. “That’s my world.”

In the stage directions to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Williams wrote, “Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one’s own character to himself.”

He said, “I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.”

And, “A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.”

And, “Make voyages. Attempt them. There’s nothing else.”

And “If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.”

 

This_Side_of_Paradise_dust_jacketIt was on this day in 1920 that This Side of Paradise was published, launching 23-year-old F. Scott Fitzgerald to fame and fortune. It is the story of a young man named Amory Blaine who falls in love with a beautiful blond debutante named Rosalind Connage and then loses her because she does not want to marry someone with so little money.  He goes on a drinking spree and has a series of bohemian adventures.

Fitzgerald was at the end of a series of failures.  He had dropped out of Princeton in 1917 because of poor grades, spent time in the Army during WWI and never saw combat or went overseas, had a New York advertising job that he hated, and his novel had been rejected.  When southern belle Zelda Sayre broke off their engagement because she was afraid he could not support her, he spent a week drowning his sorrows.  He said, “I was in love with a whirlwind, so when the girl threw me over, I went home and finished my novel.”

From This Side of Paradise:


  • Faint winds, and far away a fading laughter…
    And the rain and over the fields a voice calling…
  • The shadow of a dove
    Falls on the cote, the trees are filled with wings;
    And down the valley through the crying trees
    The body of the darker storm flies; brings
    With its new air the breath of sunken seas
    And slender tenuous thunder . . .
    But I wait . . .
    Wait for the mists and for the blacker rain —
    Heavier winds that stir the veil of fate,
    Happier winds that pile her hair;
    Again
    They tear me, teach me, strew the heavy air
    Upon me, winds that I know, and storm.

 

Gregory Corso
Gregory Corso.jpg

And today is the birthday of Gregory Nunzio Corso (New York City; March 26, 1930 – January 17, 2001 Minnesota); poet, youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers (with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs).

Verse 

Marriage

Should I get married? Should I be good?
Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustus hood?
Don’t take her to movies but to cemeteries
tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets
then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries
and she going just so far and I understanding why
not getting angry saying You must feel! It’s beautiful to feel!
Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone
and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky—
When she introduces me to her parents
back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,
should I sit knees together on their 3rd degree sofa
and not ask Where’s the bathroom?
How else to feel other than I am,
often thinking Flash Gordon soap—
O how terrible it must be for a young man
seated before a family and the family thinking
We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou!
After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living?
Should I tell them? Would they like me then?
Say All right get married, we’re losing a daughter
but we’re gaining a son—
And should I then ask Where’s the bathroom?
O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends
and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded
just wait to get at the drinks and food—

Spirit
is Life
It flows thru
the death of me
endlessly
like a river
unafraid
of becoming
the sea

Mac Tag

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The Lovers’ Chronicle 25 March – tell me – art by Juan Carreño de Miranda & Patrick Henry Bruce – birth of Simone Signoret & Flannery O’Connor

Dear Zazie,

Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag

Dear Muse,

this one started out
when i first began
contemplatin’ hope
“And you were seeking affirmation”
right, someone to help me believe
then it morphed into stories,
of what i wanted to hear
“But hidden in there
was what you really wanted”
oh absolutely, that
was never gonna happen
“And now”
and now, tell me again

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

the verse

climbs
to a high wire
of its own makin’

pavin’ the way
with taut rhythm,
maybe an entrechats
or two, but generally
avoidin’ theatrics

without mistakin’
for what it will be

before takin’ each step
towards purpose
where stands and waits
what we seek

we
who know
spread out
in possibilities

© copyright 2022 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

whenever
the verse touches
of its own makin’
pavin’ the way
with taut rhythm
maybe an entrechats
or two but generally
avoidin’ theatrics
no mistakin’
what will be
before takin’ each step
towards purpose
where stands and waits
what we seek
tell me
the possibilities

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

unloved that draw nigh
for the tale
makes the dreamin’
whereby yet we live
with hopes of redressin’,
with the kisses they give,
wherein death and hope strive
unseen are thine eyes
mid the night’s sleepin’,
and on these lips there lies
the dear rain of weepin’
come ye shall tell

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

constantly

whenever above
the verse
climbs
to a high wire
of its own makin’

pavin’ the way
with taut rhythm
maybe an entrechats
or two but generally
avoidin’ theatrics

all without mistakin’
for what it may not be

perforce perceive
before takin’ each step
towards purpose
where stands and waits
what we seek

we
who know
spread out
in possibilities

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

tell me
your hopes
your dreams
your fears
tell me
your wants
and needs
tell me
what fascinates you
what inspires you

that is all i want
that is all i ask

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

i was ok, i knew
where i was goin’,
what i was doin’,
what i wanted
i was convinced
then you came along
with your talk of hope

a word, a concept
i had given up on
i mean, i told it
to go to hell
i just figured it had

then one day
there you were

so now what,
do i believe
i god, not sure
i can do that
it has been
so long

tell me again
tell me i can

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

And this verse, an homage to Flannery O’Connor (see below):

wise blood; indeed
even though
the violent
bear it away

and while it is true,
a good man
is hard to find,
comes down to this…

everything that rises
must converge

Today is the birthday of Juan Carreño de Miranda (Avilés, Spain 25 March 1614 — 3 October 1685 Madrid); painter of the Baroque period.
Gallery
Maria theresa of spain

Maria theresa of spain

Marie Louise d'Orléans, wife of Charles II of Spain

Marie Louise d’Orléans, wife of Charles II of Spain

"Doña Inés de Zúñiga, Condesa de Monterrey

“Doña Inés de Zúñiga, Condesa de Monterrey

Today is the birthday of Patrick Henry Bruce (Campbell County, Virginia; March 25, 1881 – November 12, 1936 New York City); cubist painter.

Intensely self-critical, Bruce destroyed a great many of his paintings, and only about one hundred works remain. He overdosed with the drug Veronal.

Gallery

Still-life, 1924

Simone_Signoret

Today is the birthday of Simone Signoret (Simone Henriette Charlotte Kaminker, Wiesbaden, Germany; 25 March 1921 – 30 September 1985 Autheuil-Authouillet, France); cinema actress often hailed as one of France’s greatest film stars. She became the first French person to win an Academy Award, for her role in Room at the Top (1959).

Signoret’s memoirs, Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used To Be, were published in 1978. She also wrote a novel, Adieu Volodya, published in 1985, the year of her death.

Signoret first married filmmaker Yves Allégret (1944–49). Her second marriage was to the Italian-born French actor Yves Montand in 1951, a union which lasted until her death.

Signoret died of pancreatic cancer, aged 64. She was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris and Yves Montand was later buried next to her.

 

 Drawing after she won an Oscar in 1959, by artist Nicholas Volpe

with Laurence Harvey in Room at the Top; the film established her as an international actress.

 

Flannery O’Connor
Flannery-O'Connor 1947.jpg

And today is the birthday of Flannery O’Connor (Mary Flannery O’Connor, Savannah, Georgie, March 25, 1925 – August 3, 1964 Milledgeville, Georgia); writer and essayist. She wrote two novels and thirty-two short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. She was a Southern writer who often wrote in a Southern Gothic style and relied heavily on regional settings and odd characters. Her writing also reflected her Roman Catholic faith and frequently examined questions of morality and ethics.

She died, at the age of 39 in Baldwin County Hospital. Her death was caused by complications from a new attack of lupus following surgery for a fibroma. She was buried in Milledgeville, Georgia, at Memory Hill Cemetery.

O’Connor said;

“anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.”

“I am mighty tired of reading reviews that call A Good Man brutal and sarcastic. The stories are hard but they are hard because there is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism. …When I see these stories described as horror stories I am always amused because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror.”

“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.”

“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.”

“The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can’t make something out of a little experience, you probably won’t be able to make it out of a lot.”

“To the hard of hearing shout, and for the almost blind, draw large and startling figures.”

“Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I’m always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it’s very shocking to the system.”

 

venicePanorama_of_Canal_Grande_and_Ponte_di_Rialto,_Venice_-_September_2017It was on this day in 421 – Venice is founded at twelve o’clock noon, according to legend.  (Fondazione (secondo la leggenda) della chiesetta di san Giacomo in una delle isole realtine, il gruppo di isole su cui sorgerà Rialto, poi Venezia.)  Mac Tag can trace his genealogy back to the Tagliaferro’s from Venice. Need more Venice?  Read Mac Tag’s poem, Venetian Lovers.

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The Lovers’ Chronicle 24 March – rememberin’ – verse by William Morris – art by Frank Weston Benson – photography by Edward Weston – Broadway premiere of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Dear Zazie,

Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag:

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

this one started out
with our intrepid hero
reminiscin’ about
the one that never was
“Then it changed”
yes into said hero
recallin’ that man
does not live on
solitude and sadness alone
“Glad to have inspired that”
you did, it was as if a fresh wind
came along and blew out
the clouds and blew in
long forgotten feelings
and i remembered
i could feel

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

dreamed a dream of somethin’ not known, read plenty about it, saw it up close with the only couple i knew had it, saw the movies, over and over, and listened to the songs so i knew it could happen but no one was more surprised than i, when i awakened to find you standin’ there

© copyright 2022 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

when beginnin’ over
gittin’ reacquainted
with the things
given up for lost
along the way
what was forgotten,
rushin’ towards
what was buried
can be overcome
the new moon
and the wind
blowin’ your hair
an awakenin’ man
standin’ at the foot
of ever after

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

remember what was said
when last to which we came

all we sought,
yet could not have
right there, right then
but could not be

and now years hence,
dreams, born of due time

let it suffice, this verse,
tellin’ a tale not too abstract
and hopefully, not too late

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

rememberin’ the moments,
oh, there were more than one,
when everything could have changed

i really do not like carryin’ on
with too many words
so suffice to say, those moments
were every day i saw you

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

que saudade

i go, rememberin’
what was said and what
could not be said
when every day
seemed what we sought

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

when beginnin’ over
gittin’ reacquainted
with the things
given up for lost
along the way

what was forgotten
cannot rush towards
or sing about
what was buried
cannot overcome
or write about

the new moon
and the wind
blowin’ your hair

horses runnin’
across the plains
an awakenin’ man
standin’ at the foot
of a half remembered dream

© Copyright 2016 Mac Tag/cowboy coleridge  all rights reserved

 

William_Morris_age_53Today is the birthday of William Morris (Walthamstow, Essex, England 24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896 Hammersmith, Middlesex, England); textile designer, poet, novelist, translator, and socialist activist, born at Elm House in Walthamstow, Essex.

Morris married Jane Burden at St Michael at the Northgate in Oxford on 26 April 1859. After the marriage, the Morrises lived at Red House in Bexleyheath, Kent. While living there, they had two daughters, Jane Alice “Jenny,” born in January 1861, and Mary “May” (March 1862–1938), who later edited her father’s works. They moved to 26 Queen Square in London, which they shared with the design firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., and later bought Kelmscott House in Hammersmith as their main residence.

Jane Morris painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Proserpine (1874)

Jane Morris painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Proserpine (1874)

Burden was an embroiderer and artists’ model who embodied the Pre-Raphaelite ideal of beauty. She was a model and muse to Morris and to Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

I too
Will go, remembering what I said to you,
When any land, the first to which we came
Seemed that we sought, and set your hearts aflame,
And all seemed won to you: but still I think,
Perchance years hence, the fount of life to drink,
Unless by some ill chance I first am slain.
But boundless risk must pay for boundless gain.

Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,
Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?
Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme
Beats with light wing against the ivory gate,
Telling a tale not too importunate
To those who in the sleepy region stay,
Lulled by the singer of an empty day.

Ah! wilt thou leave me then without one kiss,
To slay the very seeds of fear and doubt,
That glad to-morrow may bring certain bliss?

Hast thou forgotten how love lives by this,
The memory of some hopeful close embrace,
Low whispered words within some lonely place?”

Love is enough: have no thought for to-morrow
If ye lie down this even in rest from your pain,
Ye who have paid for your bliss with great sorrow…

Lo, the lovers unloved that draw nigh for your blessing!
For your tale makes the dreaming whereby yet they live
The dreams of the day with their hopes of redressing,
The dreams of the night with the kisses they give,
The dreams of the dawn wherein death and hope strive.

Eve shall kiss night,
And the leaves stir like rain
As the wind stealeth light
O’er the grass of the plain.
Unseen are thine eyes
Mid the dreamy night’s sleeping,
And on my mouth there lies
The dear rain of thy weeping.

“Come — pain ye shall have, and be blind to the ending!
Come — fear ye shall have, mid the sky’s overcasting!
Come — change ye shall have, for far are ye wending!
Come — no crown ye shall have for your thirst and your fasting,
But the kissed lips of Love and fair life everlasting!
Cry out, for one heedeth, who leadeth you home!

Frank_W_Benson_artist_headshot-cropToday is the birthday of Frank Weston Benson, (Salem, Mass. March 24, 1862 – November 15, 1951 Salem, Mass.); artist perhaps best known for his Realistic portraits, American Impressionist paintings, watercolors and etchings. He began his career painting portraits of distinguished families and murals for the Library of Congress. Some of his best known paintings (Eleanor, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Summer, Rhode Island School of Design Museum) depict his daughters outdoors at Benson’s summer home, Wooster Farm, on the island of North Haven, Maine. He also produced numerous oil, wash and watercolor paintings and etchings of wildfowl and landscapes.

In the summer of 1884 Benson painted at Concarneau. While there, Benson became engaged to Ellen Perry Peirson, the daughter of friends from Salem, Massachusetts. They married in 1888 when Benson had established himself in his career.

Gallery

 Moonlight on the Waters oil 1899

 

Camp, 1921

 Figure in a Room, 1912, oil on canvas – New Britain Museum of American Art

 Emily Vanderbilt Binney oil 1894

Edward_Weston_ca_1915Tody is the birthday of Edward Weston (Edward Henry Weston, Highland Park, Illinois, March 24, 1886 – January 1, 1958 Carmel Highlands, California); photographer. In my opinion, one of the the most innovative and influential American photographers. Over the course of his 40-year career Weston photographed an expansive set of subjects, including landscapes, still lives, nudes, portraits, genre scenes and even whimsical parodies. His focus was on the people and places of the American West. In 1937 Weston was the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, and over the next two years he produced nearly 1,400 negatives using his 8 × 10 view camera. Some of his most famous photographs were taken of the trees and rocks at Point Lobos, California, near where he lived for many years.

He knew he wanted to be a photographer from an early age, and initially his work was typical of the soft focus pictorialism that was popular at the time. Within a few years, however, he abandoned that style and went on to be one of the foremost champions of highly detailed photographic images.

In 1947 he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and he stopped photographing soon thereafter. He spent the remaining ten years of his life overseeing the printing of more than 1,000 of his most famous images.

Soon after moving to Tropico, California, Weston was introduced to his sister’s best friend, Flora May Chandler. She was a graduate of the Normal School, later to become UCLA. She assumed the position of a grade-school teacher in Tropico. She was seven years older than Weston and a distant relative of Harry Chandler, who at that time was the head of an influential family in Southern California. On January 30, 1909, Weston and Chandler married in a simple ceremony.

Sometime in the fall of 1913, Los Angeles photographer, Margrethe Mather visited Weston’s studio because of his growing reputation, and within a few months they developed an intense relationship. Weston was a quiet Midwestern transplant to California, and Mather was a part of the growing bohemian cultural scene in Los Angeles. She was very outgoing and artistic in a flamboyant way, and her permissive sexual morals were far different from the conservative Weston at the time – Mather had been a prostitute and was bisexual with a preference for women. Mather presented a stark contrast to Weston’s home life, and he found Mather’s uninhibited lifestyle irresistible and her photographic vision intriguing.

Over the summer of 1920 Weston met two people who were part of the growing Los Angeles cultural scene: Roubaix de l’Abrie Richey, known as “Robo” and a woman he called his wife, Tina Modotti. Modotti, who was then known only as a stage and film actress, was never married to Robo, but they pretended to be for the sake of his family. Weston and Modotti were immediately attracted to each other, and they soon became lovers.

Gallery

20230324_200115

Epilogue (1919) featuring Margrethe Mather

edwardwestonTina_Modotti_-_Edward_Weston

 

And it was on this day in 1955 that Tennessee Williams‘ play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof premiered in New York City at the Morosco Theatre. It was directed by Elia Kazan and starred Barbara Bel Geddes, Ben Gazzara, and Burl Ives.  Tennessee Williams won a second Pulitzer Prize for the play, and a Tony Award, and the show ran for 694 performances. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was reportedly, Williams’ favorite play.
Barbara Bel Geddes as Maggie in the original Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)

Barbara Bel Geddes as Maggie in the original Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)

Maggie: I’ll win, all right.

Brick: Win what? What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof?

Maggie: Just staying on it, I guess. As long as she can.

Mac Tag

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The Lovers’ Chronicle 23 March – never forget – art by Josef Čapek & Juan Gris

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.  Who is the someone you will never forget you?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

this is one of my favorite stories
“Do tell”
the idea came from watchin’
the Dallas episode when JR died
“Never saw it”
you and most everyone else
but i enjoyed that silly series
“Bet you never thought
you’d get a poem out of it”
oh heck no
“So watching it paid off”
indeed, but let’s delay
the never forget scenario
as long as we can

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

written as if foreseen
that we are each other
what was thought too late,
now is the time to get it right
hold on to these feelin’s
now that you and i are here
and why we will know
and let go
what was kept hidden
our moments together
we will keep and surrender
not forgotten

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

the music begins
the dance goes like this;
closed position,
higher in the elbows,
tone in the arms
and constant connection
through the body
for now,
we are one, and
just for this night
we are in Argentina
the rhythm is steady as
a pulse, sensuous
somethin’ we carry with us

never forget

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

risin’ the next mornin’, tired, hungover,
with a strong cup of coffee, drivin’ south,
on the caliche road, over the cattle guard,
turnin’ left where tire tracks cut their way
across the pasture, stoppin’ at the gate

with determined purpose, as if
any hesitation could stop this…
out of the truck, through the gate,
past the metal angel statue, heart
poundin’, kneelin’ in the dirt coverin’
the words written and the cold wind
carried the cries across the canyon

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

the day we met
the lunches
the parties
the laughs
the hugs
the opera
i gave you
what we created
our shared yearnin’
our wishes and dreams

never forget

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

never fergit…
if you think
you have it all
figured out,
that sumbitch
can come un-figured

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Never Forget

She hesitated, then opened the door
The room was simple, orderly, tasteful;
a bed, desk, bookcase, table, leather chairs
She stood for a moment, takin’ it in

The strong presence and the familiar scents;
sandalwood, cedar, leather, crisp linen
She opened the closet, turned on the light
Inside; pairs of well polished cowboy boots,
custom cowboy hats, suits, starched jeans and shirts
She reached for a starched shirt and held it close
And really fought to hold her composure
Then, at the bookcase, a picture amidst
poetry books and leather bound journals
A picture of them; younger and happy
She took it and sat down at the table
Her emotions comin’ apart, she placed
the picture next to a sealed envelope
with her name written in his hand writin’
Then, she looked at the crystal decanter,
engraved with his initials, almost full
of what looked like, no doubt, bourbon
probably his preferred single barrel
Suddenly, she really needed a drink
though she had not had a whisky in years
Hands shakin’, she poured from the decanter
slowly into a matchin’ crystal glass
Before she could stop, she had a small sip
The sweet, creamy burn jolted her senses
Then she had another and another
With her newfound amber colored courage
she rapidly opened the envelope,
took out the enclosed letter and read it
Then finally, the emotions poured out
All the pain and the said and unsaid words
All of the tears, all of the memories
All of the years, the good times, the bad times
She let it all go and it all came out

She tried to sleep that first night in his bed
Risin’ the next mornin’, tired, hungover,
with a strong cup of coffee, she drove south,
down the dirt road, over the cattle guard,
turned left where tire tracks cut their way across
the pasture and stopped at the metal gate
Then with a determined purpose, as if
any hesitation would prevent her
from doin’ what she knew she had to do:
out of the truck, opened the gate, walked through,
past the silver, metal angel statue,
stopped, and stared at the freshly covered ground
Heart poundin’, out of a pocket she took
an envelope and kneeled beside the mound
Her tears fell on the dirt as she covered
the words she had written for him and the
wind carried her cries across the canyon

© 2013 mac tag/Cowboy Coleridge. All rights reserved.

The Song of the Day is “Never Forget” by Lena Katina.  We do not own the rights to this song.  All rights reserved by the rightful owner.  No copyright infringement intended.

 

Josef Čapek

Today is the birthday of Josef Čapek (Hronov, Bohemia (Austria-Hungary, later Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic); 23 March 1887 – April 1945 Bergen-Belsen concentration camp); artist who was best known as a painter, but who was also noted as a writer and a poet. He invented the word robot, which was introduced into literature by his brother, Karel Čapek.

Gallery

Abans de dormir

Abans de dormir

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Creation

Creation

Toilet

Toilet

Half-Figure of a Girl

Half-Figure of a Girl

  • Letadlo (Aeroplane)

  • Zpívající děvčata (Singing girls)

  • Harmonikář (Harmonist)

  • Krajina v dešti (Landscape in the rain)

  • Kluci s kozou (Guys with a goat)

  • Piják (Blotter)

  • Matka s dětmi (Mother with children)

  • Hra (Game)

  • Autoportrét (Self-portrait)

     

Juan Gris
Juan Gris, 1922, photograph by Man Ray, Paris. Gelatin silver print.jpg

Juan Gris, 1922, photograph by Man Ray (Paris)

Today is the birthday of José Victoriano (Carmelo Carlos) González-Pérez (Madrid; March 23, 1887 – May 11, 1927 Boulogne-sur-Seine), better known as Juan Gris; painter and sculptor born in Madrid who lived and worked in France most of his life. Closely connected to the innovative artistic genre Cubism, his works are among the movement’s most distinctive.

After October 1925, Gris was frequently ill with bouts of uremia and cardiac problems. He died of renal failure at the age of 40, leaving a wife, Josette, and a son, Georges.

Gallery 

Mujer sentada, 1917. Colección Carmen, Museo Thyssen Bornemisza

Mujer sentada, 1917. Colección Carmen, Museo Thyssen Bornemisza

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Portrait of Picasso, 1912, oil on canvas, the Art Institute of Chicago
September 1916, Woman with Mandolin, after Corot (La femme à la mandoline, d’après Corot), oil on canvas, 92 x 60 cm, Kunstmuseum Basel
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The Lovers’ Chronicle 22 March 2013 – is it enough – art by Dorothy Tennant, Ernest Lawson & Greta Kempton

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.  Is it enough for you?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

oh pretty sure there was
at least as far as drama goes
and sadness and emptiness

write what you know, right
and that was all that was known
for more than a decade

and when i began in earnest
in 2017 to try to make some
sense of it all, it did prove
to be enough to get me
to you

© copyright 2022 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

and now
no corner
without you
you roam wild
openin’ doors,
turnin’ over stones,
castin’ away shadows
where desire hid
and
i embrace it
you have become
first and last,
and randomly
in between
just when we thought
we would never
so now what…
we belong

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

you ask, what of sadness
an undercurrent within
that ebbs and flows
sharin’ means so much
at last, enough strength
to go there
always good at fallin’
now ready for stayin’
plainly evident
where i belong
known sadness
may make better verse
but is it enough

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

you ask, what of sadness

an undercurrent within
that ebbs and flows

shared some of it
and it means so much

cannot share it all
therein lies the flaw, perhaps fatal,
not enough strength to go there

some are good at fallin’
and some are good at stayin’

plainly evident
where i belong

what has been known
has been fleetin’
and unforgiven

but known sadness
makes better verse
so thereon i hang my hat
and hope, that it is enough

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

but where…

there you are
and now,
there is no escape

no corner
without you
you roam wild
openin’ doors,
turnin’ over stones,
castin’ away shadows
where desire hid
and worst,
or best, of all
i embrace it

you have wrought
disorder
to my routine
i try to protect
through reason
but you have become
first and last,
and randomly
in between

just when i think
i can walk away,
there you are
and i am back
to the edge
of feelin’s
i cannot

so now what…
we belong

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Inspired by a Vita Sackville-West quote and a note I once sent to you.  Here is……

Is It Enough

You ask, What am I sad about?
Why am I sad? Let me count the ways
There is an undercurrent within
Like a tide that ebbs and flows
Most days I am good at hidin’ it
I have shared some of it with you
And it means so much to me

That you were there and that you listened
I wish I could share it all with you
But that is my flaw, perhaps fatal,
I do not have the strength to go there

Vita Sackville-West wrote
That some men make good lovers
And some men make good husbands
To that I would add…
If a man is a good lover,
He should never, ever get married
It is plainly evident
That I am not the marryin’ kind
And that makes me sad
I am sad that the love I have known
Was fleetin’ and not lastin’
I am sad that I told you goodbye

I am sad that my mother was crazy
And that I cannot forgive her
I am sad about lies that were told
And the lives that were troubled
By my actions and my inactions
I am sad that you have known sadness
Sad that I could not save you from that
But it makes better verse
So that is what I hang my hat on
And I hope, that is enough

© Copyright 2013 Cowboy Coleridge All rights reserved

The Song of the Day is “Enough” by Tarja Turunen.  We do not own the rights to this song.  All rights reserved by the rightful owner.  No copyright infringement intended.

 

Portrait of Lady Dorothy Stanley, by George Frederick Watts

Today is the birthday of Dorothy Tennant (Russell Square, London 22 March 1855 – 5 October 1926); Victorian neoclassicist painter.

In 1890, she married the explorer of Africa, Henry Morton Stanley, and became known as Lady Stanley. She edited her husband’s autobiography, reportedly removing any references to other women in Stanley’s life.

After Stanley’s death, she married in 1907 Henry Jones Curtis (died 19 February 1944), a pathologist, surgeon and writer.

Gallery

Suspiria

Suspiria

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Today is the birthday of Ernest Lawson (Halifax, Nova Scotia; March 22, 1873 – December 18, 1939); painter and a member of The Eight, a group of artists who formed a loose association in 1908 to protest the narrowness of taste and restrictive exhibition policies of the conservative, powerful National Academy of Design. Though Lawson was primarily a landscape painter, he also painted a small number of realistic urban scenes. His painting style is heavily influenced by the art of John Henry Twachtman, J. Alden Weir, and Alfred Sisley. Though considered an American Impressionist, Lawson falls stylistically between Impressionism and realism.

Lawson visited France in 1893 and studied at the Académie Julian with Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens. He practiced plein air painting in southern France and at Moret-sur-Loing, where he met the English Impressionist Alfred Sisley. In 1894, Lawson exhibited two paintings in the Salon. Lawson shared a Paris studio that year with W. Somerset Maugham, who is believed to have used Lawson as the inspiration for the character “Frederick Lawson” in his 1915 novel Of Human Bondage.

He married his former art teacher, Ella Holman after his return to the U. S. in 1896.

Lawson moved to Florida in 1936. Depressed and in declining health, he drowned under mysterious circumstances in 1939, while swimming on Miami Beach.

Gallery

Flâner dans le parc

Flâner dans le parc

20230322_185836

Approaching Storm

Approaching Storm

Brooklyn bridge

Brooklyn bridge

New England Birches

Spring Night, Harlem River –

Landscape

Excavation – Penn Station, oil on canvas, 1906. Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum

Today is the birthday of Greta Kempton (Martha Greta Kempton; March 22, 1901 – December 9, 1991); White House artist during the Truman administration.

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Kempton was born in Vienna and came to the United States in the 1920s.  She studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts before emigrating to the United States and in the 1930s was a student at the National Academy of Design and Art Students League, both in New York City.

By the 1930s Kempton was living in California and a well-established portrait painter.  Her style was reminiscent of Rembrandt, Rubens, and other European masters. By the 1940s, she had compiled a list of subjects, including Dagmar Nordstrom, one of the Nordstrom Sisters, the families of some Hollywood residents of New Orleans, where she lived with her then-husband, the businessman Ambrose M. McNamara. Kempton became well known in Washington following the unveiling in 1947 of her portrait of Drucie Snyder, the daughter of Treasury Secretary John W. Snyder. Through Snyder, Kempton gained introductions to other high officials of the Truman administration. Later in 1947, she painted a portrait of Bess Truman, and that same year was commissioned to paint a portrait of the President himself – the first of five Kempton paintings for which Mr. Truman posed. The 1947 painting became the official White House portrait of President Truman.

She remained active as a painter well into her eighties and restored many paintings at Church of the Transfiguration, “The Little Church Around the Corner” in New York City. Her works are in the collections of the White House, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Supreme Court, the Harry S. Truman Library, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, the National Portrait Gallery, and a number of museums. Her papers, which include a number of portraits, now form a collection at the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri.

She died in New York City from heart failure in December 1991, and her cremated remains were placed in the columbarium in the Church of the Transfiguration, Manhattan.

York City from heart failure in December 1991, and her cremated remains were placed in the columbarium in the Church of the Transfiguration, Manhattan.

Gallery

20231209_093731

20221210_113107

20221210_113124

20221210_113131

 

Mac Tag

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The Lovers’ Chronicle 21 March – intimate – art by Clarice Beckett

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.  Have you had one of these intimate conversations?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

if there is a category
for great words,
this one belongs
“Oh I agree”
it can be used to describe
a place or a conversation
“In a bar or a cafe”
it brought to mind the meal
we had at Terra Terroir
“After we bought the Fiat”
just the two of us up front
no one else came in
“It was lovely”
my favorite use of the word
is in descrbin’ how we end
each day, skin on skin
layin’ here kissin’
and readin’ poetry
“Nothing more intimate”

or wonderful

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

nothin’ more meanin’ful
through the echoin’
it strikes to hear the song
the descendin’, all in a rush
with such intensity

this is believin’
to have
an intimacy,

made, thy choice
and worth everything

© copyright 2022 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

when to this session of verse to be written,
i summon remembrance of time with you,
a sigh and the moments, intense, savored
and deep afresh long since worries away,
for while i think on thee, you are here
no matter how far and i can feel
your breath rise and fall

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

twilight darkens the clouds;
along the rock strewn hill
our time hastens towards us,
risin’ and fallin’ with each breath
darkness settles on the skylight,
and the need within calls,
touches, with calloused hands,
follow the curves up and down,
and the breaths, rise and fall

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

nothin’ more meanin’ful
through the echoin’
it strikes to hear the song
the descendin’, all in a rush
with such intensity

can this be
believin’ again
to have
but soon
before it closes,
and sours without

an intimacy,
made, thy choice
and worth anything

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

stopped talkin’
waves of relief
wash over
how easily
came the words
as if in the throes
of good verse

scared, vulnerable, but good
feelin’s, surprisin’ly still there
opened up as never before

those eyes,
a look
did you hear
words,
understandin’
those hands
through your hair

more words
in awe
insight,
wisdom
so damn good lookin’

sharin’ a story
but are you here
is this happenin’
is this Inception
spin the totem

whatever this is,
so intimate,
may it not end

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Another vignette turned into a poem.  Hope you like……

Intimate Conversation

He finally stopped talkin’
A wave of relief washed over him
Surprised how easily came the words
As easily as how the words came
When he had ahold of a good poem

He felt scared, vulnerable, but good
A feelin’ he’d never felt before
He had never opened up,
Opened himself, not to anyone
She watched him with those beautiful eyes,
Those eyes that he could look at all day
Her look told him she had heard
Every word, and understood
She ran her pretty fingers
Through her hair,
He loved it when she did that,
She began to talk
And he was in awe
Not just because what she said
Made so much sense, which it did
She was so insightful,
So wise and…
So damn good lookin’
No, he was amazed
And so moved that she had shared
Part of her story with him
He just could not get over the fact
That she was there, that they were havin’
This conversation
Made him wonder, was this real
Or an Inception moment
He wished he had a totem
To spin to see if he was dreamin’
Whatever this was,
He did not want it to end
It felt so intimate
And instantly became
One of his favorite memories
Perhaps his most favorite
Memory of all

© Copyright 2013 Cowboy Coleridge Mac Tag All rights reserved.

The Song of the Day is “Private Conversation” by Lyle Lovett.  We do not own the rights to this song.  All rights reserved by the rightful owner.  No copyright infringement intended.

 

Clarice-Marjoribanks-BeckettToday is the birthday of Clarice Beckett (Clarice Majoribanks Beckett; Casterton, Victoria 21 March 1887 – 7 July 1935 Sandringham, Victoria); Tonalist painter whose works are featured in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Beckett never left Victoria and rarely travelled outside Melbourne, much of her adult life being spent caring for her ailing parents at their home in bayside Beaumaris. She did however paint prolifically, often en plein air in and around Beaumaris, and mostly at daybreak or towards evening, when she was exempted from domestic duties. In her method and choice of “everyday” subject matter, Beckett remained indebted to Meldrum, but her work also differed from that of other tonalists, in part due to its emotional and spiritual qualities, reflecting her interest in Buddhism, Theosophy and Freud.  By 1926, she was creating landscapes unprecedented in Australian art for their “radical simplicity”, and from 1930, she experimented further with a broader colour palette and more challenging compositions. In 1935, while painting the sea off Beaumaris during a winter storm, Beckett contracted pneumonia and died four days later, aged 48.

In what has been called “one of the great disasters of Australian art history”, well over one thousand of Beckett’s works were destroyed in the decades after her death, including many by her father that he deemed “unfinished”—works from her final years that were said by friends to be more abstract and spiritual. More works were lost in a bush fire, and in 1970, in an open-sided shed in country Victoria, as many as two thousand works were found abandoned, two thirds of which had been destroyed by the elements. Those that did survive were exhibited the following year in Melbourne, precipitating a resurgence of interest in Beckett. Catalogues, biographies and major exhibitions followed, and today she is represented in Australia’s national and state galleries.

Gallery

‘The red sunshade’ (1932),

‘The red sunshade’ (1932),

Mac Tag

Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge

 

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The Lovers’ Chronicle 20 March – woman – verse by Ovid – art by Edward Poynter & John Lavery

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.   Do you have a man or woman in the city?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

how convenient
we were just talkin’
about this at Frühlingsfest
“On a beautiful, if chilly day”
we saw some fine art
“But mostly of animals or things”
so it seems to me
the purpose of art
is to capture beauty
and there is but one
true example,
with all due respect
to what Mallarmé wrote
*as my hand moves over
your hair and down your back*
“Ooh that gave me chills”

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

thou offspring of blue on white,
who after birth by my side remains,
not to be snatched from thence
by anyone, less wise than right,
with this, expos’d for you to find,
my ramblin’s should call to thee,
i cast about, as one fit for light,
thy visage in my sight, finest kind

© copyright 2022 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

found in you
all that could be wanted

in the brisk

slow surrender
of late winter,

your smile,
your eyes,
the curve
of your hip…

whatever else
my life is
with its movies
and verse
its music
and art

it matters most
with you in it

© 2021 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

thus with you
whether stealin’ in dreams
or enterin’ memories
whichever,
i will have as may
as it shall be
for the soi-disant poète
and the femme triste
missin’
what is
whatever else
my life is
with its books
and verse
its music
and art,
it only matters
with you in it

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

in the brisk
slow surrender
of late winter,
think of you

your smile,
your eyes,
the curve
of your hip…

missin’
what was

whatever else
my life is
with its books
and verse
its music
and art
and wide
open spaces,
it only matters
with you in it

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

thus either
without you
or with you

whether stealin’ in dreams
or enterin’ memories
whichever,

i will have as may

as it shall be
for the soi-disant poet
and the Carolina woman

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Another from the archives.  Hope you enjoy……

Woman in Carolina

Somewhere
a woman
has risen from sleep
startin’ her day
in the Carolinas

In the brisk
and slow surrender
of late winter,
I think of her

Her pretty smile,
her eyes, her grace,
her pert glances,
the curve of her hip…
it is to swoon
there is no question

How I miss this woman
I think of her
shinin’
to chase away
doubt and darkness

Whatever else
my life is
with its books
and its words
and its wide open spaces,
it is also this dazzlin’ donna
livin’ in Carolina,
capturin’ the light

© 2012 Cowboy Coleridge. All rights reserved

The Song of the Day is “Jet City Woman” by Queensrÿche.  We do not own the rights to this song.  All rights reserved by the rightful owner.  No copyright infringement intended.

 

Ovid
Statuia lui Ovidiu.jpg

Statue (1887) by Ettore Ferrari
commemorating Ovid’s exile in Tomis
(present-day Constanța, Romania)

Today is the birthday of Publius Ovidius Naso (Sulmo; 20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18 Tomis, Scythia Minor, Roman Empire), known as Ovid in the English-speaking world; Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. He enjoyed enormous popularity, but, in one of the mysteries of literary history, was sent by Augustus into exile in a remote province on the Black Sea, where he remained until his death. Ovid himself attributes his exile to carmen et error, “a poem and a mistake”, but his discretion in discussing the causes has resulted in much speculation among scholars.

The first major Roman poet to begin his career during the reign of Augustus, Ovid is perhaps best known for the Metamorphoses, a 15-book continuous mythological narrative written in the meter of epic, and for works in elegiac couplets such as Ars Amatoria (“The Art of Love”) and Fasti. His poetry was much imitated during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and greatly influenced Western art and literature. The Metamorphoses remains one of the most important sources of classical mythology.

Verse 

Remedia Amoris (The Cure for Love)

  • Siquis amat quod amare iuvat, feliciter ardens
    Gaudeat, et vento naviget ille suo.
    At siquis male fert indignae regna puellae,
    Ne pereat, nostrae sentiat artis opem.

    • Let him who loves, where love success may find,
      Spread all his sails before the prosp’rous wind;
      But let poor youths who female scorn endure,
      And hopeless burn, repair to me for cure.

      • Lines 13-16
  • Principiis obsta; sero medicina paratur
    Cum mala per longas convaluere moras.

    • Resist beginnings; the remedy comes too late when the disease has gained strength by long delays.
      • Lines 91–92
  • Qui finem quaeris amoris,
    Cedit amor rebus; res age, tutus eris.

    • Love yields to business. If you seek a way out of love, be busy; you’ll be safe then.
      • Lines 143–144

Amores (Love Affairs)

  • Militat omnis amans
    • Every lover is a soldier.
      • Book I; ix, line 1
  • Qui nolet fieri desidiosus, amet!
    • Let who does not wish to be idle fall in love!
      • Book I; ix, 46
  • Procul omen abesto!
    • Far away be that fate!
      • Book I; xiv, 41
  • Aequo animo poenam, qui meruere, ferunt.
    • They bear punishment with equanimity who have earned it.
      • Book II, vii, 12
  • Quod licet ingratum est. Quod non licet acrius urit.
    • We take no pleasure in permitted joys.
      But what’s forbidden is more keenly sought.

      • Book II; xix, 3
  • Cui peccare licet, peccat minus.
    • Who is allowed to sin, sins less.
      • Book III, iv
  • Nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negata.
    • We are ever striving after what is forbidden, and coveting what is denied us.
    • Variant translation:
      We hunt for things unlawful with swift feet,
      As if forbidden joys were only sweet.

      • Book III; iv, 17
  • Sic ego nec sine te nec tecum vivere possum.
    • So I can’t live either without you or with you.
    • Variant translation: Thus, I can neither live without you nor with you.
      • Book III; xib, 39

Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love)

  • Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsae.
    • They come to see; they come that they themselves may be seen.
      • Book I, 99
  • Nocte latent mendae, vitioque ignoscitur omni,
    Horaque formosam quamlibet illa facit.

    • Blemishes are hid by night and every fault forgiven; darkness makes any woman fair.
      • Book I, 249–250
  • Iuppiter ex alto periuria ridet amantum.
    • Jupiter from above laughs at lovers’ perjuries.
      • Book I, 633
  • Expedit esse deos, et, ut expedit, esse putemus.
    • It is convenient that there be gods, and, as it is convenient, let us believe that there are.
      • Book I, 637
  • Intret amicitiae nomine tectus amor.
    • Let love steal in disguised as friendship.
    • Variant: Love will enter cloaked in friendship’s name.
      • Book I, line 720; translated by J. Lewis May in The Love Books of Ovid, 1930
  • Ut ameris, amabilis esto.
    • If you want to be loved, be lovable.
    • Variant: To be loved, be lovable.
      • Book II, 107
  • Pauperibus vates ego sum, quia pauper amavi;
    Cum dare non possem munera, verba dabam.

    • I am the poor man’s poet; because I am poor myself and I have known what it is to be in love. Not being able to pay them in presents, I pay my mistresses in poetry.
      • Book II, lines 165-166; translation by J. Lewis May
  • Cede repugnanti; cedendo victor abibis.
    • Yield to the opposer, by yielding you will obtain the victory.
      • Book II, 197
  • Militiae species amor est.
    • Love is a kind of warfare.
      • Book II, line 233
  • Da requiem: requietus ager bene credita reddit
    • Grant a respite: a rested field gives a better return.
      • Book II, line 351 [1]
  • Nil adsuetudine maius.
    • Nothing is stronger than habit.
    • Variant translations: Nothing is more powerful than custom.
      • Book II, 345
  • Continua messe senescit ager.
    • A field becomes exhausted by constant tillage.
      • Book III, 82
  • Candida pax homines, trux decet ira feras.
    • Let white-robed peace be man’s divinity; rage and ferocity are of the beast.
      • Book III, 502
  • Casus ubique valet; semper tibi pendeat hamus
    Quo minime credas gurgite, piscis erit.

    • Chance is always powerful. Let your hook always be cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be fish.
      • Book III, 425

Edward Poynter (Alphonse Legros)

Today is the birthday of Edward John Poynter (Paris 20 March 1836 in Paris – 26 July 1919 in London); painter, designer, and draughtsman who served as President of the Royal Academy.

Gallery 

20230320_203222

Andromeda, 1869
John Lavery
John Lavery.png

Today is the birthday of John Lavery (Belfast 20 March 1856 – 10 January 1941 Kilmoganny, County Kilkenny); painter best known for his portraits and wartime depictions.

Lavery’s first wife, Kathleen MacDermott, whom he married in 1889, died of tuberculosis in 1891.  After eight years as a widower, he remarried. In 1909, Lavery married Hazel Martyn (1886–1935), an Irish-American known for her beauty and poise; with her he had one step-daughter, Alice Trudeau (Mrs. Jack McEnery). Hazel Lavery was to figure in more than 400 of her husband’s paintings. Hazel Lavery modelled for the allegorical figure of Ireland he painted on commission from the Irish government, reproduced on Irish banknotes from 1928 until 1975 and then as a watermark until the introduction of the Euro in 2002. The Laverys’ marriage was tempestuous, and Lady Lavery reportedly was unfaithful.

Sir John Lavery died in Rossenarra House from natural causes, and was interred in Putney Vale Cemetery.

Gallery

Evelyn Farquhar wife of Captain Francis Douglas Farquhar

Woman with golden turban, Hazel Lavery née Hazel Martyn

Hazel in rose and grey
  • War Room – depicts surrender of High Seas Fleet 1918

  • Munitions, Newcastle, 1917

  • A Coast Defence – an 18-pounder anti-aircraft gun, Tyneside, 1917

  • A Convoy, North Sea, 1918

  • The Wounded at Dover, 1918

  • Army Post Office 3, Boulogne, 1919

  • A Rally, 1885

  • Lady Lavery

  • Mrs Lavery sketching, 1910

  • Gaines Ruger Donoho

  • A Summer Afternoon

  • On the Riviera

  • Mrs Ralph Peto as a Bacchante

  • The Opening of the Modern Foreign and Sargent Galleries at the Tate Gallery, 26 June 1926

mac tag

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The Lovers’ Chronicle 19 March – cracks – verse by William Allingham – art by Albert Pinkham Ryder & Charles M. Russell – photography by Thérese Le Prat

Dear Zazie, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse. Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge. Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

from Leonard’s song “Anthem”
“Oh of course”
of the creatives,
he was one of the luckiest
to be a poet and hear the melody
“So songwriting is the pinnacle ”
i think so, songs span time
existin’ before anyone
could write or draw
“Speaking of luckiest”
you and i and our cracks
that kept the light comin’ in
till we found each other

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

and She, pretty sure
it was a She, said,
let there be light

it is good
especially first light
and last

the way it looks
reflectin’ off
your red hair

and the way it came in
through the cracks

showin’ i was still here

© copyright 2022 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

absolutely, not even close,
cannot feel any other way
without you
to be able again
so many words to say
the end of late winter day
now open, writ as should be
with clarity, probin’, touchin’
and oh, but to believe
we dance, we sing a song
that takes us away

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

when i consider those lingerin’ moments,
that time finally presents, as meant to be
whereon the verse in open flows easily;
when i perceive that now, more as one
i would not change the course taken,
from days of anguish to sullied nights;
all in all it brought us where we belong

© 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

no gloom, nor tears…

dressed in black
and withdrawn,
yours still

winds and a hush
bring what is left
of heart’s content

scarcely a song
hardly a word
the end
of a winter’s day

book lies open,
writ in dreams
lettin’ in the light

she danced, she sung
and took away

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

withdrawn
into solitude,
yours still,
rememberin’
the best
of our past
and so
to where i wait,
come gently on

the cracks
are necessary,
do you believe,
to let the light in

bring again
is it possible
need, want
dare say more

oh, not sure

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

at last, a crack
lettin’ the light in
i want to look
but i cannot
so conditioned
to darkness
can you tell me,
will it be alright

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Think you know where this one comes from.

Ridin’ Away 

Ridin’ away
Lettin’ go of what
Could not be let go
The rope you tied off
Does you no good now
Ridin’, fadin’ away
Becomin’ invisible
Though she tried
So hard to tell you that day
Standin’ in the Carolina sun

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

William Allingham
William Allingham Photo.jpg
 

Today is the birthday of William Allingham (Ballyshannon, County Donegal 19 March 1824 – 18 November 1889 Hampstead, London); poet, diarist and editor. He wrote several volumes of lyric verse, and his poem ‘The Faeries’ was much anthologized.  Perhaps best known for his posthumously published Diary, in which he records his lively encounters with Tennyson, Carlyle and other writers and artists. His wife, Helen Allingham, was a well-known water-colorist and illustrator.

Verse

No funeral gloom, my dears, when I am gone,
corpse-gazing, tears, black raiment, graveyard grimness.
Think of me as withdrawn into the dimness,
yours still, you mine.
Remember all the best of our past moments,
and forget the rest;
and so to where I wait, come gently on.

  • Poem: No funeral gloom – part of funeral of actress Ellen Terry 1928.

Winds and waters keep
A hush more dead than any sleep.

  • Ruined Chapel
  • Oh, bring again my heart’s content,
    Thou Spirit of the Summer-time!

    • Song
  • Scarcely a tear to shed;
    Hardly a word to say;
    The end of a Summer’s day;
    Sweet Love is dead.

    • An Evening
  • Tantarrara! the joyous Book of Spring
    Lies open, writ in blossoms.

    • Daffodil;).
  • Mary kept the belt of love, and oh, but she was gay!
    She danced a jig, she sung a song that took my heart away.

    • Lovely Mary Donnelly

 

Albert Pinkham Ryder
Albert Pinkham Ryder.jpg

Ryder in 1905, photo by Alice Boughton

Today is the birthday of Albert Pinkham Ryder (New Bedford, Massachusetts; March 19, 1847 – March 28, 1917 New York City); painter perhaps best known for his poetic and moody allegorical works and seascapes, as well as his eccentric personality. While his art shared an emphasis on subtle variations of color with tonalist works of the time, it was unique for accentuating form in a way that some art historians regard as modernist.

Gallery

The shepardess

The shepardess

The Lone Scout, ca. 1885

Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens (1888–1891), National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

The Race Track (Death on a Pale Horse) (1895–1910), Cleveland Museum of Art
Charles M. Russell
Charles Marion Russell.jpg

Russell in 1907

Today is the birthday of Charles Marion Russell (St. Louis, Missouri; March 19, 1864 – October 24, 1926 Great Falls, Montana), also known as C. M. Russell, Charlie Russell, and “KidRussell; artist of the Old American West. Russell created more than 2,000 paintings of cowboys, Indians, and landscapes set in the Western United States and in Alberta, Canada, in addition to bronze sculptures. Known as ‘the cowboy artist’, Russell was also a storyteller and author. The C. M. Russell Museum Complex located in Great Falls, Montana, houses more than 2,000 Russell artworks, personal objects, and artifacts. Other major collections are held at the Montana Historical Society in Helena, Montana, the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, and the Sid Richardson Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

Russell’s mural titled Lewis and Clark Meeting the Flathead Indians hangs in the state capitol building in Helena, Montana.

Russell came to Montana in 1880 at the age of 16. After an unsuccessful stint working on a sheep ranch, he found work with a hunter and trapper turned rancher named Jake Hoover, who owned a ranch in the Judith Basin, and from whom Russell learned much about the ways of the west. The two men remained lifelong friends. After a brief visit to his family in 1882, he returned to Montana, where he remained for the rest of his life. He worked as a cowboy for a number of outfits, and documented the harsh winter of 1886–1887 in a number of watercolors. Russell was working on the O-H Ranch in the Judith Basin of Central Montana at the time, when the ranch foreman received a letter from the owner, asking how the cattle herd had weathered the winter. Instead of a letter, the ranch foreman sent a postcard-sized watercolor Russell had painted of gaunt steer being watched by wolves under a gray winter sky. The ranch owner showed the postcard to friends and business acquaintances and eventually displayed it in a shop window in Helena, Montana. After this, work began to come steadily to the artist. Russell’s caption on the sketch, Waiting for a Chinook, became the title of the drawing, and Russell later created a more detailed version which is one of his best-known works.

In 1896, Russell married his wife Nancy. He was 32 and she was 18. In 1897, they moved from the small community of Cascade, Montana to the bustling county seat of Great Falls, where Russell spent the majority of his life.

On the day of Russell’s funeral in 1926, all the children in Great Falls were released from school to watch the funeral procession. Russell’s coffin was displayed in a glass sided coach, pulled by four black horses.

Russell produced about 4000 works of art, including oil and watercolor paintings, drawings and sculptures in wax, clay, plaster and other materials, some of which were also cast in bronze.

Gallery

Smoke of a .45, oil on canvas, 1908

When The Land Belonged to God, replica image displayed for many years in the Montana Senate

The Tenderfoot (1900)

The Buffalo Hunt 1899, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth

Buccaroos, 1902

Mac Tag

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