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Dear Zazie,

Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle. Rhett

Dear Muse,

this came from the letter
Carrington wrote
to Lytton Strachey
“Lovely and heart breaking
at the same time”
if those words do not move you
“Then you might need
to have your pulse checked”
right, and i thought, this is it
there can be no higher purpose
than to find words to stir someone
and i amazed that that became you

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

to understand fully
to endure and overcome
this journal, this verse…
the picture of struggle
painted in depth

now grateful, hereafter
the height of ambition
to read, to think, to write
and study for you beloved,
the recurrin’ ideal
to write with clarity

words that stir

© copyright 2022 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

there is naught else
to do on a Southern
cool early spring evenin’

nor higher purpose
for you, this verse,
this vision crafted
from feelin’s
rediscovered
with us

this is who i am
this is what i do
nothin’ else mattered
till you and i welcome
this new vision

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

you have to imagine
a waitin’ that spans a life

comfort in the echoes
because they are timeless

sometimes
windows happen
sometimes
they must be made

so the soi disant poet,
with his martini in the slow haze
of an old bar writin’, while the world
goes blithely by, flippant with prose

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

there is not else to do
on a high plains chilly
early spring mornin’

convenient that want
and need are aligned
with what is possible

it occurs that had
this been discovered,
say thirty years ago,
we would all be
better off

the trick now
is not to screw it up
with any other
wants or needs

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

to understand fully
to endure and overcome
journals, verse…
the picture of struggle
painted in depth

perhaps glad hereafter…
now the height of ambition
to read, to think, to write and study
leave for the bereaved, each moanin’
whatever disappointment there may be
thus it is; no point in tryin’

stark and spare, as unforgivin’
as a barren landscape
the recurrin’ ideal…
that of simplicity
to write with clarity

words that stir

© copyright Mac tag 2016 all rights reserved

 

Today is the birthday of Adolfo Müller-Ury (Airolo, Switzerland; March 29, 1862 – July 6, 1947 Manhattan); portrait painter and impressionistic painter of roses and still life.

In 1937 he painted a portrait of Ellen Dunlap Hopkins, founder of the New York School of Applied Design for Women which he presented to the School in 1938 (Private collection, Brooklyn).

In 1940, he painted the then famous radio soprano Jessica Dragonette (Georgian Court College, New Jersey) and several times thereafter, his last portrait in 1946 depicting her bust-length in a gold fez. In 1941 he produced a portrait of her sister Rosalinda (always called Nadea) Loftus looking over her shoulder.

Gallery

• 

  Edith Wilson
• 

  Will he come
• 

  A Lady Wearing A Plumed Hat
• 

  A Lady Wearing Pearls And A Fur Wrap
• 

  A Woman In Lavender
• 

  A Young Woman – Modesty
• 

  Dark-Haired Beauty In A White Veil
• 

  Donald Alexander Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona And Mount Royal
• 

  Edith Bolling Galt Wilson (wife of President Woodrow Wilson)
• 

  Emma Calvé, French Opera Star
• 

  Gustav Muheim
• 

  James J. Hill
• 

  Jesse Maxwell Overton
• 

  Kaiser Wilhelm II Of Germany
• 

  Mrs. Claire Quinn
• 

  Portrait Of A Gentleman
• 

  Saidee Williams Overton (Sarah Gladys Cheeney Williams)
• 

  Seated Nude Lady
• 

  Self-Portrait of Muller-Ury
• 

  Still Life With Chinese Vase And Pink Roses
• 

  Still Life With Roses
• 

  Still Life With Vase Of Roses
• 

  Thomas Watt Gregory
• 

  Title unknown 2
• 

  Title unknown
• 

  William McKinley
• 

  Woman In Profile

Today is the birthday of Dora Carrington (Dora de Houghton Carrington; Hereford, England, 29 March 1893 – 11 March 1932 Newbury, Berkshire,  England), known generally as Carrington; painter and decorative artist, remembered in part for her association with members of the Bloomsbury Group, especially the writer Lytton Strachey. From her time as an art student, she was known simply by her surname as she considered Dora to be “vulgar and sentimental”.  She was not well known as a painter during her lifetime, as she rarely exhibited and did not sign her work. She worked for a while at the Omega Workshops, and for the Hogarth Press, designing woodcuts.

For many years, Carrington’s art was neglected by the public, and her main notoriety was her relationship with Strachey. On the day that she agreed to marry Ralph Partridge she wrote to Strachey, who was in Italy, what has been described as “one of the most moving love letters in the English language”.  She wrote, “I cried last night Lytton, whilst he slept by my side sleeping happily—I cried to think of a savage cynical fate which had made it impossible for my love ever to be used by you…”. Strachey wrote back that “you do know very well that I love you as something more than a friend, you angelic creature, whose goodness to me has made me happy for years, and whose presence in my life has been and always will be, one of the most important things in my life …”.  On his deathbed Strachey said, “I always wanted to marry Carrington and I never did”. His biographer calls that sentiment “not true; but he could not have said anything more deeply consoling”.  Upon his death, Strachey left Carrington £10,000 (the equivalent of £240,000 in 1994).

Gallery

And today is the birthday of R. S. Thomas (Ronald Stuart Thomas; Cardiff 29 March 1913 – 25 September 2000 Pentrefelin); poet and Anglican priest who was noted for his Welsh nationalism, intense spirituality, and deep dislike of the anglicisation of Wales.

Here are some of my favorite verses from Thomas:

You have to imagine
a waiting that is not impatient
because it is timeless.

• “The Echoes Return Slow” in The Echoes Return Slow (1988)

“Sunlight‘s a thing that needs a window
Before it enters a dark room.
Windows don’t happen.”
So two old poets,
Hunched at their beer in the low haze
Of an inn parlour, while the talk ran
Noisily by them, glib with prose.

• “Poetry For Supper”

He arose, pacing the floor
Strewn with books, his mind big with the poem
Soon to be born, his nerves tense to endure
The long torture of delayed birth.

• “A Person From Porlock”

I have been all men known to history,
Wondering at the world and at time passing;
I have seen evil, and the light blessing
Innocent love under a spring sky.

• “Taliesin 1952”

I have known exile and a wild passion
Of longing changing to a cold ache.
King, beggar and fool, I have been all by turns,
Knowing the body’s sweetness, the mind’s treason;
Taliesin still, I show you a new world, risen,
Stubborn with beauty, out of the heart’s need.

• “Taliesin 1952”

It is too late to start
For destinations not of the heart.
I must stay here with my hurt.

• “Here”

The darkness
is the deepening shadow
of your presence; the silence a
process in the metabolism
of the being of love.

• “Alive”, p. 51

What was the shell doing,
on the shore? An ear endlessly
drinking?
What? Sound? Silence?
Which came first?
Listen.

• “Questions”

Mac Tag

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Adolfo Müller-Ury, r s thomas, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle