Dear Zazie,
Here is the Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.
Rhett
The Lovers’ Chronicle
Dear Muse,
no idea
where this theme came from
though, again,
they all could be about this
“Yes I see a common thread”
kinda surprised i did not go
with one of my favorite
RPW poems
i call myself a poet but
i have said storyteller
may be more accurate
“I like your tales, especially
the ones with us”
since you are here in my arms
let me tell you another story
with me and you and how
we came to feel again
© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved
recallin’ what i started to tell you,
how night-long i have written
heard from visions in their sleep
stories remember and go about
in slow, steady strokes tellin’ us
there is somethin’ here to hold
so lean into our belief, headlong
that we can touch and it comes
© copyright 2021.2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved
© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved
“Tell me a story,
of moments and mania.
Make it of need,
long delayed.
We will know the name
of the story, without ever
having to say it.
Tell me a story
of mutual ardor.”
then let us turn,
our fable will be
of two who know
and on each other,
gaze in belief
© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved
clingin’
to memories
commutin’
between dream
and reality,
not yet arrived
fortune give way
always more to say
but little damn time
we all come to learn
somethin’, i that i
ignored the warnin’s
and it cost dearly,
put one across on me
lost and alone
Soy yo. Me sientes?
© copyright 2018 bret mosley & mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved
not really a drinkin’ thing
more like a thinkin’ thing
cain’t stop thinkin’ about you
© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved
Today is the birthday of Denys George Finch Hatton (24 April 1887 – 14 May 1931 Voi, Kenya); aristocratic big-game hunter and the lover of Baroness Karen Blixen (also known by her pen name, Isak Dinesen), a Danish noblewoman who wrote about him in her autobiographical book Out of Africa, first published in 1937. One of my favorite books. In the book, his name is hyphenated: “Finch-Hatton”. The book was made into a movie of the same name in 1985, directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Meryl Streep as Blixen and Robert Redford as Finch Hatton. One of my all time favorite movies.
| Willem de Kooning | |
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De Kooning in his studio in 1961
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Today is the birthday of Willem de Kooning (Roatterdam April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997 East Hampton, New York); abstract expressionist artist. He moved to the United States in 1926, and became an American citizen in 1962. On December 9, 1943, he married painter Elaine Fried.
In the years after World War II, de Kooning painted in a style that came to be referred to as Abstract expressionism or “action painting”, and was part of a group of artists that came to be known as the New York School. Other painters in this group included Jackson Pollock, Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, Adolph Gottlieb, Anne Ryan, Robert Motherwell, Philip Guston, Clyfford Still, and Richard Pousette-Dart.
De Kooning met his wife, Elaine Fried, at the American Artists School in New York. She was 14 years his junior. Thus was to begin a lifelong partnership affected by alcoholism, lack of money, love affairs, quarrels and separations. They were married on December 9, 1943.
It was revealed toward the end of his life that de Kooning had begun to lose his memory in the late 1980s and had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for some time. This revelation has initiated considerable debate among scholars and critics about how responsible de Kooning was for the creation of his late work.
Succumbing to the progress of his disease, de Kooning painted his final works in 1991. He died in 1997 at the age of 92 and was cremated.
Elaine had admired Willem’s artwork before meeting him. In 1938 her teacher introduced her to de Kooning at a Manhattan cafeteria when she was 20 and him 34. After meeting, he began to instruct her in drawing and painting. They painted in Willem’s loft at 143 West 21st Street. When they married in 1943, she moved into his loft and they continued sharing studio spaces.
Elaine and de Kooning had what was later called an open marriage; they both were casual about sex and about each other’s affairs. Elaine and Willem both struggled with alcoholism, which eventually led to their separation in 1957. While separated, Elaine remained in New York, struggling with poverty, and Willem moved to Long Island and dealt with depression. Despite bouts with alcoholism, they both continued painting. Although separated for nearly twenty years, they never divorced, and ultimately reunited in 1976.
Gallery
Woman series
Women Singing II (1966)
Marilyn Monroe
Today is the birthday of Robert Penn Warren (Guthrie, Kentucky April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989 Stratton, Vermont); American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Warren founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935. He received the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel for his novel All the King’s Men (1946) and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1958 and 1979. Warren is the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry.
So little time we live in Time,
And we learn all so painfully,
That we may spare this hour’s term
To practice for Eternity.
- “Bearded Oaks”, Eleven Poems on the Same Theme (1942)
For fire flames but in the heart of a colder fire.
All voice is but echo caught from a sound-less voice.
Height is not deprivation of valley, nor defect of desire.
But defines, for the fortunate, that joy in
which all joys should rejoice.
- “To a Little Girl, One Year Old, in a Ruined Fortress” (1956)
I cannot recall what I started to tell you, but at least
I can say how night-long I have lain under the stars and
Heard mountains moan in their sleep. By daylight,
They remember nothing, and go about their lawful occasions
Of not going anywhere except in slow disintegration. At night
They remember, however, that there is something they cannot remember.
So moan. Their’s is the perfected pain of conscience that
Of forgetting the crime, and I hope you have not suffered it. I have.
- “A Way to Love God”, New and Selected Poems 1923–1985 (1985)
Tell me a story.
In this century, and moment, of mania,
Tell me a story.
Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.
The name of the story will be Time,
But you must not pronounce its name.
Tell me a story of deep delight.
- “Tell me A Story”
Then let us turn now — you to me
And I to you — and hand to hand
Clasp, even though our fable be
Of strangers met in a strange land
Who pause, perturbed, then speak and know
That speech, half lost, can yet amaze
Joy at the root; then suddenly grow
Silent, and on each other gaze.
- Love’s Voice
Mac Tag
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