Dear Zazie, Hope you are havin’ a good day. Mac Tag says hey and thanks for the shout out in the note you left. Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his muse. Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge. Do you watch over someone? Does someone watch over you? Have your ever been cozy with cosi? Rhett
The Lovers’ Chronicle
Dear Muse,
© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved
two eyes serve a moment
the doorway is starless still
the clock ticks
the page turns
wind comin’ through the window
keeps company all night long
till the bloomin’ orange sky
takes over at first light
not to be changed,
nor likely understood,
this life subdued
© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved
no accountin’
for where the mind wanders
for the random songs
or memories that appear
ever wonder where
they come from
today for example
why did i start thinkin’
about Jake and Lady Brett
not Hemingway’s birthday
nor death day, so why
s’pose i just needed
to take my inner Jake
out for a little walk
see if i can find
my Lady Brett
perhaps i needed
to make sure
the sun was still risin’
© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved
Today marks the anniversary of the death of Venetian opera librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte in 1838. He composed the libretto for Mozart’s opera Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti (Thus Do They All, or The School For Lovers). Of course, I am overwhelmed with the memory of the night I gave you an opera. A memory once so complete, now turned bittersweet. The night I arranged for you and I to attend the dress rehearsal of Cosi. We were in our own little world, enveloped in the sights and the sounds of the production and the feel of each other as we sat so close and I pleaded with time to wait and let us stay in that moment. I will never forget the smell of you and the feel of you as we pressed together to whisper comments about the performance. One of my favorite memories.
Of course…
Overwhelmed with the memory;
the night I gave you an opera
A memory so complete,
now turned bittersweet
We were cozy with Cosi,
in our own little world;
enveloped in the sights
and sounds, the feel
of each other as we
sat so close and pleaded
with time to wait and let
us stay in that moment
I will never forget
the smell of you and the
feel of you as we pressed
together to whisper
comments about the performance
One of my favorite memories of all
© copyright 2016 mac Tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved
In tribute to that memory and you, here is the first song of the day:
Song of the day – Cecilia Bartoli – “Una donna a quindici anni“
On this day in 1959; Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, the much acclaimed and highly influential best selling jazz recording of all time, is released. If you do not have a copy of Kind of Blue, there is not much i can do for you.
Also, Ira Gershwin died on this day in 1983. My favorite Gershwin song is “Someone to Watch over Me”. So, here is the second song of the day:
Song of the day – Amy Winehouse – “Someone to Watch over Me”
I wanted to watch over you.
Today is the birthday of Larry Rivers (born Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg; Bronx, New York; 17 August 1923 – 14 August 2002 Southampton, New York); artist, musician, filmmaker, and occasional actor. Considered by many scholars to be the “Godfather” and “Grandfather” of Pop art, he was one of the first artists to merge non-objective, non-narrative art with narrative and objective abstraction.
He was a pop artist of the New York School, reproducing everyday objects of American popular culture as art. He was one of eleven New York artists featured in the opening exhibition at the Terrain Gallery in 1955.
During the early 1960s Rivers lived in the Hotel Chelsea, notable for its artistic residents such as Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Arthur C. Clarke, Dylan Thomas, Sid Vicious and multiple people associated with Andy Warhol’s Factory and where he brought several of his French nouveau réalistes friends like Yves Klein who wrote there in April 1961 his Manifeste de l’hôtel Chelsea, Arman, Martial Raysse, Jean Tinguely, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Christo, Daniel Spoerri or Alain Jacquet, several of whom, like Rivers, left some pieces of art in the lobby of the hotel for payment of their rooms. In 1965, Rivers had his first comprehensive retrospective in five important American museums.
His final work for the exhibition was The History of the Russian Revolution, which was later on extended permanent display at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC. He spent 1967 in London collaborating with the American painter Howard Kanovitz.
In 1968, Rivers traveled to Africa for a second time with Pierre Dominique Gaisseau to finish their documentary Africa and I, which was a part of the groundbreaking NBC series Experiments in Television. During this trip they narrowly escaped execution as suspected mercenaries.
During the 1970s, Rivers worked closely with Diana Molinari and Michel Auder on many video tape projects, including the infamous Tits, and also worked in neon.
Rivers’s legs appeared in John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1971 film Up Your Legs Forever.
Gallery
| Ted Hughes | |
|---|---|
Hughes in later life
|
|
Today is the birthday of Edward James “Ted” Hughes, OM (Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire; 17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998 London); poet and children’s writer. Perhaps one of the best poets of his generation, and one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers. He served as Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.
Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath from 1956 until her suicide in 1963 at the age of 30. His part in the relationship became controversial to some feminists and some American admirers of Plath. His last poetic work, Birthday Letters (1998), explored their complex relationship. These poems make reference to Plath’s suicide, but none addresses directly the circumstances of her death. A poem discovered in October 2010, Last letter, describes what happened during the three days before her death.
In the summer of 1962 Hughes began an affair with Assia Wevill. Under a cloud of his affair, Hughes and Plath separated in the autumn of 1962. On 25 March 1969, six years after Plath’s suicide by asphyxiation from a gas stove, Assia Wevill committed suicide in the same way. Wevill also killed her child, Alexandra Tatiana Elise (nicknamed Shura), the four-year-old daughter of Hughes. In August 1970 Hughes married Carol Orchard, a nurse, and they remained together until his death
“The inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded case, the voice of pain — and the physical body, so to speak, of poetry, is the treatment by which the poet tries to reconcile that pain with the world.” Amen.
Verse
The Hawk in the Rain (1957)
- Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now
Sets neat prints into the snow.- “The Thought-Fox”, line 10
- With a sudden sharp hot stink of fox,
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.- “The Thought-Fox”, line 21
- This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet - Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.- “Wind”
- The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.
Over the cage floor the horizons come.- “The Jaguar”
Lupercal (1960)
- Pike, three inches long, perfect
Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.- “Pike”, line 1
- The jaws’ hooked clamp and fangs
Not to be changed at this date;
A life subdued to its instrument.- “Pike”, line 13
- Stilled legendary depth:
It was as deep as England. It held
Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old
That past nightfall I dared not cast.- “Pike”, line 33
- I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.- “Hawk Roosting”, line 1
- It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot.
Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly –
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads –
The allotment of death.- “Hawk Roosting”, line 10
- Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.- “Hawk Roosting”, line 22
- The gash in its throat was shocking, but not pathetic.
- “View of a Pig”
- The deeps are cold:
In that darkness camaraderie does not hold:
Nothing touches but, clutching, devours.- “Relic”
Wodwo (1967)
- The brassy wood-pigeons
Bubble their colourful voices, and the sun
Rises upon a world well-tried and old.- “Stealing Trout on a May Morning”
- No, the serpent did not
Seduce Eve to the apple.
All that’s simply
Corruption of the facts.Adam ate the apple.
Eve ate Adam.
The serpent ate Eve.
This is the dark intestine.The serpent, meanwhile,
Sleeps his meal off in Paradise—
Smiling to hear
God’s querulous calling.- “Theology”
Mac Tag
With my hands, I can play music, make tattoos, draw drawings, write, design – all with intentional Love. – Kat Von D
Every wound has a rhythm you can hum. – James Bertolino
Well, making a poem is like having a love affair with yourself. – John Hall Wheelock
Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world. – Voltaire
No Comments on "The Lovers’ Chronicle 17 August – still risin’ – Cozy with Cosi – Death of Da Ponte – art by Larry Rivers"