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The Lovers’ Chronicle 23 May – passin’ by – art by Carl Bloch, Amaldus Nielsen, Luis Ricardo Falero – & József Rippl-Rónai – birth of Jane Kenyon

23 May 2024 By Rhett 0 In Quotes, Rhett

Dear Z, Today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his muse. I agree with Mac Tag’s comment at the end. What about you Zazie? Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

this question asked
once ago;

“Listen, have you ever been…”

and the answer then,
no, of course

i knew it happened
now and then
and that it could be

everything

we made love that night
and i believed

just tryin’ to capture

two feelin’s in one

i feel everything

and nothin’

keepin’ close, sinkin’

down, waitin’, listenin’

pale starlight affords

indistinct sight, but eyes

keen and used to the dark,

recognize you, farther out

passin’ by, almost without

sound, meltin’ into the night

tryin’ to be
a good steward
of what i have
protectin’ my time,
now that it is mine
feedin’ the vision,
avoidin’ the noise
havin’ good verse
and melodies
in my ears
callin’ out beauty,
and not shyin’
from sorrow
bein’ by myself

you know
just passin’ by

“Listen, have you ever been…”
no
“Well, it happens now and then
and it is wonderful.”

we made love that night
and i believed her
up until i rode away

Stars begin to lighten
the earlier blackness
From the wide flat sweep
blows a cool wind, fragrant
with the breath of sage
Keepin’ close to the edge
of the cottonwoods,
swiftly and silently westward
sinkin’ down in the gloom,
waitin’, listenin’
The pale starlight affords
indistinct sight, but eyes
keen and used to the dark,
recognize…
Then, farther out on the sage,
a horsemen passes by,
almost without sound,
specter like
meltin’ into the night

Today is the birthday of Carl Heinrich Bloch (Copenhagen, May 23, 1834 – February 22, 1890); Danish painter.

Bloch met his wife, Alma Trepka, in Rome, where he married her on 31 May 1868. They were happily married until her early death in 1886. The sorrow over losing his wife weighed heavily on Bloch, and being left alone with their eight children after her death was very difficult for him.

Bloch died of cancer on 22 February 1890. His death came as “an abrupt blow for Nordic art” according to an article by Sophus Michaelis. Michaelis stated that “Denmark has lost the artist that indisputably was the greatest among the living.” Kyhn stated in his eulogy at Bloch’s funeral that “Bloch stays and lives.”

Gallery

Woman at her toilet

Kristus i Gethsemane have, RM 203a, 1865-1879,

Prometheus’ befrielse, 1864,

Christian II i fængslet på Sønderborg Slot, 1871, Statens Museum for Kunst

Selvportræt, 1888, Galleria degli Uffizi

Skuespilleren Kristian Mantzius i sit studereværelse, 1853, Den Hirschsprungske Samling
Samson hos filistrene, 1863, Statens Museum for Kunst
Fra et romersk osteria, 1866, Statens Museum for Kunst
Den syttenårige Prins Christian (Chr. IV), Det Nationalhistoriske Museum på Frederiksborg Slot
Landskab med hus og have ved havet, aften, Ellekilde, 1880, Den Hirschsprungske Samling
Portræt af stiftsprovst, dr. theol. P.C. Rothe, 1881
Portræt af gehejmeetatsråd A.F. Krieger, 1882, Det Nationalhistoriske Museum på Frederiksborg Slot

Today is the birthday of Amaldus Nielsen (Amaldus Clarin Nielsen; Halse, Norway; 23 May 1838 – 10 December 1932); painter.

In October 1868 in Christiania he married Johanne Nicoline Augusta Vangensteen, born 1845. She died in March 1886 from a diphtheria epidemic. After a period of grief, he married Laura Tandberg (1857–1928) in February 1888 in Risør. Nielsen died in December 1932, aged 94, from pneumonia.

Gallery


Portrait by Olaf Isaachsen (1863)

Late in the day

20220523_195833

Morning at Ny-Hellesund (1885)
View of a Fjord (1890)
People on the Beach (1894)
Evening at Frederiksstad (1909)

Self portrait (1924), Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest.

Today is the birthday of Luis Ricardo Falero (Granada; May 23, 1851 – December 7, 1896 London); painter. He specialized in female nudes and mythological, orientalist and fantasy settings. His most common medium was oil on canvas. Falero’s paintings are held mostly within private collections in Europe and the United States, although a watercolour of the ‘Twin Stars’ is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Falero had a particular interest in astronomy and incorporated celestial constellations into many of his works, such as “The Marriage of a Comet” and “Twin Stars”. His interest and knowledge of astronomy also led him to illustrate the works of Camille Flammarion.

In 1889, in Rochford, Essex, Falero married Maria Cristina Spinelli, and in 1891 they were living at 100 Fellows Road, Hampstead. His wife was Italian and had a connection with Atina in the Province of Frosinone.

In 1896, the year of his death, Maud Harvey sued Falero for paternity. The suit alleged that Falero seduced Harvey when she was 17, first serving as his housemaid, and then model. When he discovered she was pregnant, he dismissed her. She won the case and was awarded five shillings per week in support of their child.

Falero died at University College Hospital, London, at the age of 45, leaving an estate valued for probate at £1,139. His widow María Cristina Falero was his executrix.

Gallery

Self portrait oil on canvas

Festival of the Witches (1880)

The Balance of the Zodiac

A Fairy Under Starry Skies.

Today is the birthday of József Rippl-Rónai (Kaposvár, Hungary; 23 May 1861 – 25 November 1927); painter. He first introduced modern artistic movements in the Hungarian art.

He believed that for an artist not only is his body of work significant, but also his general modus vivendi, even including the clothes he wore. He thus became interested in design, which led to commissions such as the dining room and the entire furnishings of the Andrássy palace, and a stained-glass window in the Ernst Museum, (both in Budapest). Between 1911 and 1913 his exhibitions in Frankfurt, Munich and Vienna were highly successful. His last major work, a portrait of his friend Zorka, was painted in 1919, and in 1927 he died at his home, the Villa Róma in Kaposvár.

Gallery

Woman Combing Her Hair

After the bath

Park with nudes

Parisian Woman (1891)
My Father and Uncle Piacsek with Red Wine (1907)
Studio at Kaposvár (1911)
Still-life with Mask (1910)
Woman with Three Girls (1909) Brooklyn Museum

Jane_Kenyon And on this day in 1947, poet Jane Kenyon was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She married fellow poet Donald Hall and they lived on his family’s farm in New Hampshire. Kenyon said…

“Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phone off the hook. Work regular hours.”

“A poet’s job is to find a name for everything: to be a fearless finder of the names of things.”

Hall wrote: “[W]e got up early in the morning. I brought Jane coffee in bed. She walked the dog as I started writing, then climbed the stairs to work at her own desk on her own poems. We had lunch. We lay down together. We rose and worked at secondary things. I read aloud to Jane; we played scoreless ping-pong; we read the mail; we worked again. We ate supper, talked, read books sitting across from each other in the living room, and went to sleep. If we were lucky the phone didn’t ring all day. In January Jane dreamed of flowers, planning expansion and refinement of the garden. From late March into October she spent hours digging, applying fifty-year-old Holstein manure from under the barn, planting, transplanting, and weeding.”

That near about describes a perfect existence. How I wish I had that with you, Muse.

Mac Tag

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The Lovers’ Chronicle 22 May – no comfort – verse by Gérard de Nerval – art by Fritz von Uhde, Hildegard Thorell, Mary Cassatt & Belmiro Almeida

22 May 2024 By Rhett 0 In Books, Love

Hey Z, Today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag. Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

there is now
of a much different sort
than back then

the consistent writin’
that began in mid 2017
brought in a certain kind

before that,
the Nerval years,
there was very little

just grateful now
that whatever inside
kept hangin’ in there
till real comfort with you

Pale Love, Pale Rider

ok, not gonna go

all Nerval on y’all

but i sure could

is it that contentment

often leads to sadness

forcin’ one to think

of the misfortune

that seems to follow

return once more

it is wise, in the beautiful

season of age, to believe

what we are talkin’ about

the dream is a second life

a place to lay your weary head

no longer git upset

is it that contentment
can lead to sadness
forcin’ one to think
of the misfortune
that follows closely

is it wise to believe
in else,
besides this

to dream
is to find comfort

tell all, tell it
Revelator
with in kind words
to the eased

twilight, fast fallin’
a horseman crosses
the dark line of low ground
to become more distinct
as he climbs the slope,
movin’ swiftly, comin’ sharply
into sight as he tops a ridge
to show wild and black
above the horizon,
and then passes down ,
dimmin’ into the purple of the sage

the pale afterglow in the west
darkens with the mergin’
of twilight into night
the sage spreads out
black and gloomy

one dim star glimmers
in the southwest sky
the sound of the trottin’ horse
ceases, and there is silence
broken only by the faint,
dry patterin’ of cottonwood leaves
in the soft night wind

no home,
no comfort,
no rest,
no place
to lay your weary head

Matters not what this way comes
I will find them, just for you

On this day in 1762 the Trevi Fountain in Rome is officially completed and inaugurated by Pope Clement XIII.

Trevi Fountain
Italian: Fontana di Trevi

The Trevi Fountain (Italian: Fontana di Trevi) is a fountain in the Trevi district in Rome, Italy, designed by Italian architect Nicola Salvi and completed by Pietro Bracci. Standing 26.3 metres (86 ft) high and 49.15 metres (161.3 ft) wide, it is the largest Baroque fountain in the city and one of the most famous fountains in the world. The fountain has appeared in several notable films, including Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and the eponymous Three Coins in the Fountain.

Gérard de Nerval
by Nadar

Today is the birthday of Gérard de Nerval (Gérard Labrunie; Paris 22 May 1808 – 26 January 1855 Paris); writer, poet, essayist and translator. A major figure of French romanticism who worked in many genres, he is best known for his poems and novellas, especially the collection Les Filles du feu (The Daughters of Fire), which includes the novella Sylvie and the poem El Desdichado. He died by suicide during the night of 26 January 1855, by hanging himself from a sewer grating in the rue de la vieille-lanterne, a narrow lane in the fourth arrondissement of Paris. He left a brief note to his aunt: “Do not wait up for me this evening, for the night will be black and white.” The poet Charles Baudelaire observed that Nerval had “delivered his soul in the darkest street that he could find (délier son âme dans la rue la plus noire qu’il pût trouver).”

Corilla

Mazetto : Vous avez l’air contrarié.
Fabio : C’est que le bonheur me rend triste ; il me force à penser au malheur qui le suit toujours de près.

Corilla dans Les Chimères – La Bohême galante – Petits châteaux de Bohême, Gérard de Nerval, éd. Gallimard, coll. Poésie / Gallimard, 2005, partie Second château, Petits châteaux de Bohême, p. 224

Il est sage d’aimer dans la belle saison de l’âge ; plus sage de n’aimer pas.

Corilla dans Les Chimères – La Bohême galante – Petits châteaux de Bohême, Gérard de Nerval, éd. Gallimard, coll. Poésie / Gallimard, 2005, partie Second château, Petits châteaux de Bohême, p. 239

Emilie

Vallier : Eh bien ! C’est toute l’aventure du sergent prussien tué par Desroches.
Wilhelm : Desroches ! Est-ce du lieutenant Desroches que vous parlez ?

Emilie dans Les Filles du feu, Gérard de Nerval, éd. Folio, coll. Classique/Folio, 2007, p. 295

Aurélia, 1853

Le rêve est une seconde vie.

Aurélia, dans Œuvres, Gérard de Nerval, éd. Gallimard, coll. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1960, p. première phrase

Rien n’est indifférent, rien n’est impuissant dans l’univers ; un atome peut tout dissoudre, un atome peut tout sauver.

Aurélia, dans Œuvres, Gérard de Nerval, éd. Gallimard, coll. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1960, p. 404

Les Faux Saulniers, 1868

Il est des gens qui crient très haut qu’ils n’ont jamais voulu se vendre ; c’est peut-être qu’on ne se serait jamais soucié de les acheter.

Les Faux Saulniers, dans Œuvres, Gérard de Nerval, éd. Gallimard, coll. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1960, p. 443

Le carnet de Dolbreuse

La vertu, chez les uns, c’est peur de la justice ; chez beaucoup c’est faiblesse ; chez d’autres, c’est calcul.

Le carnet de Dolbreuse, dans Œuvres, Gérard de Nerval, éd. Gallimard, coll. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1960, p. 430

Today is the birthday of Fritz von Uhde (Friedrich Hermann Carl Uhde; Wolkenburg, May 22, 1848 – February 25, 1911 Munich); painter of genre and religious subjects. His style laying between Realism and Impressionism, he was once known as “Germany’s outstanding impressionist” and he became one of the first painters who introduced en plein air art in his country.

Gallery

Uhde in 1902

Uhde, young

Uhde, self-portrait, 1898

The Mealtime Prayer or Grace before the Meal (1885) by Fritz von Uhde

Let the little children come to me (1883)
Christ with a Farm Family (ca. 1887–88)
The Last Supper (1886)
Road to Emmaus (1891)

Sisters in the Sewing Room (1883)
Christus and Nicodemus (1896)
Road to Bethlehem; also known as The Difficult Journey (1890)
At the Window (1890)
Portrait of Therese Karl (1890)
Shepherdess at the Dachau Camp (1890)
Winter Landscape (1890)
The Ascension of Christ (1897)
Girls on the Veranda (1901)
In the Garden (1901)
The reading girl (1902).
Seated Angel on the Stairs (1910)
Holy Night (1911)

Today is the birthday of Hildegard Katarina Thorell (née Bergendal; Kroppa parish, Värmland County 22 May 1850 – 2 February 1930); painter. Thorell mainly painted large portraits, for example “Modersglädje” (Maternal Joy) och “Damporträtt” (Female Portrait).

In 1872 she married the auditor Oskar Reinhold Thorell. She studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm from 1876 to 1879, where she was the only married female student. She became an agré at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in 1883 and was apprenticed to Bertha Wegmann. Later she travelled to Paris, where she studied with Léon Bonnat and Jean-Léon Gérôme.

Gallery

“Lady in Mourning”

Modell med spegel (1899) oil on canvas

Today is the birthday of Belmiro Almeida (Belmiro Barbosa de Almeida 22 May 1858, Serro – 12 June 1935, Paris); Brazilian painter, illustrator, sculptor and caricaturist.

Gallery

Self-portrait (1883)

Efeitos do sol

Prince Obá (1886)
The Chatterbox (1893)
Vase with Flowers (1893)
Arrufos
(The Spat, 1887)
Street in Italy (circa 1889)
Bad News (1897)
The Discoverers (1899)
Boy with Mandolin (1890s)
The Guard’s Fit (1904)
Lady with Rose (circa 1905)
Mulher in circles, 1921
Painter Belmiro
Alegoria

Mary Cassatt
Self-portrait by Mary Cassatt, c. 1878, gouache on paper, 23⅝ × 16 3/16 in., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Today is the birthday of Mary Cassatt (Mary Stevenson Cassatt; Pennsylvania, May 22, 1844 – June 14, 1926 Château de Beaufresne, near Paris); American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists. Cassatt often created images of the social and private lives of women. She was described by Gustave Geffroy in 1894 as one of “les trois grandes dames” of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Berthe Morisot.

Gallery

Young Woman in a Black and Green Bonnet, 1890, Princeton University Art Museum

The Boating Party 1893–94, oil on canvas, 35½ × 46 in., National Gallery of Art, Washington

Tea, 1880, oil on canvas, 25½ × 36¼ in., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Summertime, c. 1894, oil on canvas, Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago

Woman Standing Holding a Fan, 1878–79, (Amon Carter Museum of American Art)

Reading “Le Figaro” (1878), Collection Mrs. Eric de Spoelberch, Haverford, Pennsylvania

Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt Seated, Holding Cards, c. 1880–84, oil on canvas, 74 × 60 cm, National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC. NPG.84.34 Cassatt hated it later and wrote to her dealer Paul Durand-Ruel in 1912 or 1913 that “I don’t want anyone to know that I posed for it.”

Self-Portrait, c. 1880, gouache and watercolor over graphite on paper, 32.7cm x 24.6cm, National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC. NPG.76.33

Woman with a Pearl Necklace in a Loge, 1879, oil on canvas, 81.3 c 59.7 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Portrait of Madame Sisley (1873)
The Reader (1877), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
In the Box (1879)
Lydia Leaning on Her Arms, Seated in Loge (1879)
Miss Mary Ellison (1880)
Lilacs in a Window (1879)
Young Woman in Green, Outdoors in the Sun (1914)
The Fitting, ca. 1890, drypoint and aquatint, Brooklyn Museum
Woman Standing, Holding a Fan, 1878–79, Amon Carter Museum of American Art

Cherie, on this day in 1885, poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France, Victor Hugo died in Paris at the age of 83. His best-known works are the novels Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris (also known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) and for his poetry, particularly Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles. His books are in my library. In 1833 he met the French actress Juliette Drouet. They became lovers and she abandoned her theatrical career afterwards to dedicate her life to her lover. Oh to know what it would feel like to be loved like that! Is he more fortunate to have been blessed with his writin’ skills or to have been blessed with her love?

Au revoir Cherie,

Mac Tag

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The Lovers’ Chronicle 21 May – beginnin’ – art by Henri Rousseau

21 May 2024 By Rhett 0 In Rhett

Dear Zazie, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his muse. Visit us on twitter @cowboycoleridge. Z, miss you. Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

that is survivin’ right
whenever an end comes
seekin’ a way out,
preferably constructive,
and particularly,
when it was not seen comin’

been through several
both seen and not seen
some self inflicted
bitter about some, sure
and still standin’
because of this,
comin’ here
and spreadin’ it all
over the page

yes, a good place to go
on this day,
more so than others
when reminded
about all good things

no explainin’, without
followin’ this trail
since inception

only way to get here
what will be seen as
the start of the bookend
on this tale of seekin’
and findin’ what matters

Pale Love, Pale Rider

of loss and lost

seems what most

of this has been about

clueless for so long

took almost a lifetime

for it to come into focus

chosen of anyone

of that there is

plenty doubt

of beginnin’s and endin’s

another take on what

this has been for

all i ever wanted

was to give this

do you know
where it begins

i at least
figured out that much
though it took too long

s’pose some never do
so later is better
than not at all

i even know
where it ends
though it is too late

but most never do
so knowin’ is better
than not

do you know

…………

let the verse ride
on the breath
of a lovely woman
let it soar
on the winds
of abandon

seekin’ beauty and sorrow
wherever they may be

that my friend, is all that matters
that is all that can be hoped for

Ray wrote and sang;
“The way of the fallen is hard”
only every day Ray
every damn day

This note was written on 21 May 2012…

Dear Zazie Lee,

Do you still come here for coffee? I hope so. Sorry for my long absence. I have missed you so. I was talkin’ to my friend Mac Tag and he asked me for a favour. Seems he has lost his Muse. I hate it when that happens! He would not elaborate on what happened, just that she was gone. He asked if I could leave a note here periodically from him to her. I think he needs an outlet for his feelin’s and views this as a tribute to her. Mac Tag is a poet and a philosopher and I expect his notes will be romantic and sad and funny and inspirin’. Here is his first note. Rhett. PS. Jett says hey and he misses you too.

To My Muse, You shined a light into my darkness and gave me back my words. For that I am ever grateful. I am glad you walked into my life. My words are dedicated to you.

for J

I must let my verse ride its luck

On the back of the ardent breath

Of a lovely, fervent woman

Must let it soar across the sky

On the winds of true abandon

Seekin’ beauty where it may lie

That my friend, is all that matters

That is all that I can hope for

Today is the birthday of Henri Rousseau (Henri Julien Félix Rousseau; Laval, France; May 21, 1844 – September 2, 1910 Paris); Post-Impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier (the customs officer), a humorous description of his occupation as a toll collector. Ridiculed during his lifetime by critics, he came to be recognized as a self-taught genius whose works are of high artistic quality. Rousseau’s work exerted an extensive influence on several generations of avant-garde artists. The American poet Sylvia Plath was a great admirer of Rousseau, referencing his art, as well as drawing inspiration from his works in her poetry. The poem, Yadwigha, on a Red Couch, Among Lilies (1958), is based upon his painting, The Dream, whilst the poem Snakecharmer (1957) is based upon his painting The Snake Charmer. The song, The Jungle Line, by Joni Mitchell, is based upon a Rousseau painting.

In 1868, he married Clémence Boitard, his landlord’s 15-year-old daughter, with whom he had six children (only one survived). Clémence died in 1888 and he married Josephine Noury in 1898.

Gallery

Mauvaise surprise

Rendez-vous dans la forêt

Self-portrait of the Artist with a Lamp

Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!) (1891) was the first of many jungle scenes for which Rousseau is best known.

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope, 1905

La Rêve (1910), MoMA

Rousseau in 1902

Self Portrait (1890), National Gallery, Prague

A Carnival Evening, 1886, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Boy on the Rocks, 1895–97, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
The Sleeping Gypsy, 1897, MoMA, New York
La tour Eiffel peinte par Henri Rousseau, 1898, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Le Moulin (The Mill), c. 1896, Musée Maillol, Paris
Exotic Landscape, 1908, Private collection
Fight Between a Tiger and a Buffalo, 1908, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio
In a Tropical Forest Combat of a Tiger and a Buffalo, 1908-1909, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
The Flamingoes, 1907, Private collection
The Football Players, 1908, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Muse Inspiring the Poet (Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire and Marie Laurencin), 1909, Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland
The Equatorial Jungle, 1909, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
The Snake Charmer, 1907, Musée d’Orsay, Paris
The Repast of the Lion, c.1907, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Bouquet of Flowers, 1910, Tate Gallery, London

Mac Tag

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The Lovers’ Chronicle 20 May – discovery – Shakespeare’s Sonnets – birth of Honoré de Balzac – art by Henri-Edmond Cross

20 May 2024 By Rhett 0 In Love, Poems, Songs

Dear Zazie, Hey Z, guess whose birthday is today? The late, great Joe Cocker! So you know what that means; we have to play one of our favorite songs! Here is Cocker’s version of the Randy Newman song, from the official video from the movie 9 1/2 Weeks, our song, and the song of the day “You Can Leave Your Hat On”. We do not own the rights to this song or the video.

And here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag. Does the Dark Lady speak to you? Rhett

The Lover’s Chronicle

Dear Muse,

for you can this be written on this day
not necessarily countin’ the ways
for that has been done ad infinitum
but just of you and the inspiration
of told and untold beauty and sorrow
in many ways dashed across these pages
save this, perhaps the time presents itself
now that 60 winters have besieged us,
and dug deep furrows in our memories,
our youth’s proud missteps looked upon only;
the means for gettin’ from nowhere to here
we can look and tell the story seen there
now is the time the plot we develop
two livin’ as one and this carries on

Pale Love, Pale Rider

we are there, watchin’

the last of twilight

and the oncomin’ dusk

through the gloamin’

come the first stars

while the flames

from our camp fire

cause the shadows

around us to dance

all has been as i had seen

the settin’ sun,

the glowin’ embers,

the feelin’ of you

look in the rear view, tell me what you see
what was and could be, the discoveries
await, to give each other sweet release

in the rear view, that which was understood
bore not any sense of the true vision
the discoveries were still to be made

the world is far from here

we sit, watchin’
the last of twilight
and the oncomin’ dusk

the final light of day
leaves the sky,
through the gloamin’
come the first stars,
bright and wide apart

we watch the spaces
between them fill,
while near us the flames
and embers of the fire
grow brighter

some while after darkness
fully comes, we join

all has been as i had seen
in my thoughts beforehand…
the falls with the sun
settin’ on them,
the sinkin’ camp-fire,
the sound of the water,
the feelin’ of you

On this day in 1609 Shakespeare‘s sonnets were first published, most likely without his permission. The book contained 154 sonnets, all but two of which had never been published before. Shakespeare, or the publisher Thomas Thorpe, dedicated the collection to “Mr. W.H.” whose identity has never been known. The poems are about love, sex, politics, youth, and the mysterious “Dark Lady.” I feel honoured to know that the Dark Muse that speaks so well to me also visited Shakespeare. I suppose at one time or another she has inspired most poets. Hers is the only voice I hear now and I must hear a voice. So, let us now pay tribute to the Dark Muse with one of Shakespeare’s “Dark Lady” Sonnets:

CXXVII
In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name;
But now is black beauty’s successive heir,
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame:
For since each hand hath put on Nature’s power,

Fairing the foul with Art’s false borrowed face,
Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my mistress’ eyes are raven black,
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem
At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,
Sland’ring creation with a false esteem:
Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,
That every tongue says beauty should look so.

Select quotations of The Sonnets of William Shakespeare.

I

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die

II

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,
Thy youth’s proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter’d weed of small worth held

III

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another

Die single and thine image dies with thee.

IV

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thy self thy beauty’s legacy?
Nature’s bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,
And being frank she lends to those are free

V

Flowers distill’d, though they with winter meet,
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

VI

Be not self-will’d, for thou art much too fair
To be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir.

VII

Lo! in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving with looks his sacred majesty

VIII

Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy

IX

Beauty’s waste hath in the world an end,
And kept unused the user so destroys it.

X

For shame! deny that thou bear’st love to any,
Who for thy self art so unprovident.

XI

Let those whom nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:

XIV

Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck;
And yet methinks I have astronomy,
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons’ quality…

XV

When I consider every thing that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment,
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment…

XVI

To give away yourself, keeps yourself still,
And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill.

XVII

If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say ‘This poet lies’

XVIII

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate

XIX

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
And burn the long-liv’d phoenix, in her blood

Yet, do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.

XXI

O! let me, true in love, but truly write,
And then believe me, my love is as fair
As any mother’s child, though not so bright
As those gold candles fix’d in heaven’s air…

XXIII

O! learn to read what silent love hath writ:
To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.

XXIX

For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

XXX

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.

XXXI

Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,
Which I by lacking have supposed dead;
And there reigns Love, and all Love’s loving parts,
And all those friends which I thought buried.

Their images I lov’d, I view in thee,
And thou — all they — hast all the all of me.

XXXII

If thou survive my well-contented day,
When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover,
And shalt by fortune once more re-survey
These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover,
Compare them with the bettering of the time,
And though they be outstripp’d by every pen,
Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,
Exceeded by the height of happier men.

LVII

Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.

LX

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow

LXIV

This thought is as a death which cannot choose
But weep to have, that which it fears to lose.

LXV

O! none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

LXVI

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry

LXXI

No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Then you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot
If thinking on me then should make you woe.

LXXIII

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

LXXXIII

I impair not beauty being mute,
When others would give life, and bring a tomb.

There lives more life in one of your fair eyes
Than both your poets can in praise devise.

LXXXIV

Who is it that says most, which can say more,
Than this rich praise, — that you alone, are you?

LXXXVII

Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing
And like enough thou know’st thy estimate:
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.

XCI

And having thee, of all men’s pride I boast:
Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take
All this away and me most wretched make.

XCIV

They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow:
They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces

XCVII

How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December’s bareness everywhere!

CI

Truth needs no colour, with his colour fixed;
Beauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay;
But best is best, if never intermixed?

Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
Excuse not silence so, for’t lies in thee

CII

My love is strengthen’d, though more weak in seeming;
I love not less, though less the show appear;
That love is merchandiz’d, whose rich esteeming,
The owner’s tongue doth publish every where.

CIV

To me, fair Friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed
Such seems your beauty still.

CVI

For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

CVII

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Supposed as forfeit to a confin’d doom.

CVIII

What’s in the brain, that ink may character,
Which hath not figur’d to thee my true spirit?

CIX

For nothing this wide universe I call
Save thou, my Rose; in it thou art my all.

CXV

Love is a babe, then might I not say so,
To give full growth to that which still doth grow?

CXVI

If this be error and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

CXXI

'Tis better to be vile than vile esteem'd,
 When not to be receives reproach of being;
 And the just pleasure lost, which is so deem'd
 Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing

CXXVII

In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name

CXXIX

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action

CXXX

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I grant I never saw a goddess go, —
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:

CXXXII

Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,
Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain,
Have put on black and loving mourners be,
Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.

CXXXIII

Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan
For that deep wound it gives my friend and me!
Is’t not enough to torture me alone,
But slave to slavery my sweet’st friend must be?

CXXXV

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy ‘Will,’
And ‘Will’ to boot, and ‘Will’ in over-plus;
More than enough am I that vex’d thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.

CXXXVIII

When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutor’d youth,
Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.

CXLI

In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes,
For they in thee a thousand errors note;
But ’tis my heart that loves what they despise,
Who, in despite of view, is pleased to dote.

CXLV: ‘I hate’, from hate away she threw,
And sav’d my life, saying ‘not you’.

CXLVI

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
[Fool’d by] these rebel powers that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?

CXLVII

Past cure I am, now Reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,
At random from the truth vainly express’d;

For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

CXLVIII

O! how can Love’s eye be true,
That is so vexed with watching and with tears?
No marvel then, though I mistake my view;
The sun itself sees not, till heaven clears.

CL

If thy unworthiness rais’d love in me,
More worthy I to be belov’d of thee.

CLI

Love is too young to know what conscience is,
Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?

CLII

For I have sworn thee fair; more perjur’d I,
To swear against the truth so foul a lie!

CLIV

Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.

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Today is the birthday of Honoré de Balzac (born Honoré Balzac, Tours 20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850 Paris); novelist and playwright. Perhaps best known for a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie Humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 Fall of Napoleon Bonaparte. Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters. The city of Paris, a backdrop for much of his writing, takes on many human qualities. He wrote for 14 to 16 hours a day in a white dressing gown, and downed cup after cup of strong, black coffee. He considered himself “the secretary of French society,” and was so thorough that Oscar Wilde once said, “The 19th century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac.” Many of Balzac’s works have been made into films, and they continue to inspire other writers. Balzac suffered from health problems throughout his life, possibly due to his intense writing schedule. In 1850, Balzac married Ewelina Hańska, a Polish aristocrat and his longtime love; he died in Paris five months later.

Penser, c’est voir! me dit-il un jour emporté par une de nos objections sur le principe de notre organisation. Toute science humaine repose sur la déduction, qui est une vision lente par laquelle on descend de la cause à l’effet, par laquelle on remonte de l’effet à la cause; ou, dans une plus large expression, toute poésie comme toute oeuvre d’art procède d’une rapide vision des choses.

Le véritable amour est éternel, infini, toujours semblable à lui-même; il est égal et pur, sans démonstrations violentes; il se voit en cheveux blancs, toujours jeune de cœur.

Mes avis sur vos relations avec les femmes sont aussi dans ce mot de chevalerie: Les servir toutes, n’en aimer qu’une.

Lorsque les femmes nous aiment, elles nous pardonnent tout, même nos crimes; lorsqu’elles ne nous aiment pas, elles ne nous pardonnent rien, pas même nos vertus!

Les femmes les plus vertueuses ont en elles quelque chose qui n’est jamais chaste.

L’amour est la plus mélodieuse de toutes les harmonies, et nous en avons le sentiment inné.La femme est un délicieux instrument de plaisir, mais il faut en connaitre les frémissantes cordes, en étudier la pose, le clavier timide, le doigté changeant et capricieux.

Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu’il a été proprement fait.

— Je suis tourmenté par de mauvaises idées.
— En quel genre? Ça se guérit, les idées.
– Comment?
– En y succombant.

“I am tormented by temptations.”
“What kind? There is a cure for temptation.”
“What?”
“Yielding to it.”

Oh! voilà l’amour vrai, sans chicanes: il est ou n’est pas; mais quand il est, il doit se produire dans son immensité.

Henri-Edmond Cross
Self-Portrait with Cigarette, 1880

Today is the birthday of Henri-Edmond Cross (Henri-Edmond-Joseph Delacroix; Douai, Nord, France 20 May 1856 – 16 May 1910 Saint-Clair, Var, France); painter and printmaker. He is most acclaimed as a master of Neo-Impressionism and he played a role in shaping the second phase of that movement. He was an influence on Henri Matisse and many other artists. His work was instrumental in the development of Fauvism.

In 1909 Cross was treated in a Paris hospital for cancer. In January 1910 he returned to Saint-Clair, where he died of the cancer just four days short of his 54th birthday, on 16 May 1910. His tomb, in the Le Lavandou cemetery, features a bronze medallion that his friend Théo van Rysselberghe had designed. In July 1911, the city of Cross’s birth, Douai, mounted a retrospective exhibition of his work.

Gallery

Tempête à venir

20230520_160917

Glade dans la forêt

Madame Hector France, 1891, Musée d’Orsay

The farm, evening, 1893, private collection

L’air du soir, c. 1893, Musée d’Orsay

La Plage de Saint-Clair, 1896

La fuite des nymphes, c. 1906, Musée d’Orsay

Une clairière en Provence (Étude), c. 1906

Cypresses at Cagnes, 1908, Musée d’Orsay

Regatta in Venice, 1898/1908

Sunset on the Lagoon, Venice 1898–1893
La Ferme, matin, 1893
Fisherman, 1895
Landscape, c. 1896–1899
La barque bleue, 1899
La maison rose, c. 1901–1905
Ponte San Trovaso, 1902–1905
La Chaîne des Maures, 1906–1907
La baie à Cavalière, 1906–1907
Le Bois, 1906–1907
Dormeuse nue dans la clairière, 1907
Hafenszene, by 1910

Mac Tag

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The Lovers’ Chronicle 19 May – crowns – art by Claude Vignon – photography by John Vachon

19 May 2024 By Rhett 0 In Love, Poems, Quotes, Random, Songs

Dear Zazie, Today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his muse. Visit us on Twitter @cowboycoleridge. Z, be cool, be safe, be smart. Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

yes, this is where
dusk delays long hours
and the never still air
stirs our hair as we wait

we have been here
suspended in our time
in this moment attune
with our rhythm and rhyme

and we find in the night,
in the streams, we find
the will, the way to cover
our newfound dreams

wherefore did i so much tempt

just tryin’ to catch

the feelin’s as they fly,

and use them to explain

belief, purpose,

comes when sought

cast into verse,

that you, in the comin’,

may know my devotion

in the mornin’

when the lovers

in dreams

open their eyes,

do you wake too

awake in bed partin’ thick curtains
of dreams and am startled by
the rapid return to reality

three o’clock, but you knew that,
under the suspension of belief
gropin’ for somethin’ to hold on to

the way the memories keep comin’
visions ebbin’ and flowin’ amidst
moonlight slantin’ across the floor

when do you git to the point
where enough is enough

never

and this,
many believe
you git to choose who you want

chilly, rain comin’
ready…
Newbury, playin’
wood stove burnin’
red wine pourin’
wish you were here achin’

Nothin’ more intense

nor more intimate

than to be inside

your mind. So c’mon

baby, let me in

******

if i had the strength

I would change my mind

and find my way back, but

oh, you know the rest

So c’mon baby

Let me go easy

Lyrics inspired by a Tennessee Williams poem called Clover. And a love song of the day and more quotes. Dedicated to you.

Crowns

Yes, this is the land where
Dusk delays long hours late
And the never still air
Stirs our hair as we wait

We have been here since noon
Suspended in our time
In this moment attune
With our rhythm and rhyme

And we find in the night,
In the darkness of streams,
We find the stars are white
Crowns that cover our dreams

Today is the birthday of Claude Vignon (Tours, France 19 May 1593 – 10 May 1670 Paris); painter, printmaker and illustrator who worked in a wide range of genres. During a period of study in Italy, he became exposed to many new artistic currents, in particular through the works of Caravaggio and his followers, Guercino, Guido Reni and Annibale Caracci. A prolific artist, his work has remained enigmatic, contradictory and hard to define within a single term or style. His mature works are vibrantly coloured, splendidly lit and often extremely expressive.

Gallery

Flora

La parabole du serviteur impitoyable (1629), Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours.

David avec une épée et la tête de Goliath (1620-1623), Austin), musée d’art Blanton.
Une jeune femme, dont la maternité semble prochaine, implore la justice d’un guerrier(vers 1621), Dijon, Musée Magnin.
Lamentation de saint Pierre(1623-1630), Stanford Museum.
Salomon et la Reine de Saba (1624), Louvre.
Cléopâtre se donnant la mort (vers 1640-1650), Rennes, musée des beaux-arts.

Le jeune Chanteur (vers 1622) Paris, musée du Louvre.

John Vachon
Vachon in 1942

Today is the birthday of John Vachon (John Felix Vachon; Saint Paul, Minnesota May 19, 1914 – April 20, 1975 New York City); photographer. He worked as a filing clerk for the Farm Security Administration before Roy Stryker recruited him to join a small group of photographers, including Esther Bubley, Marjory Collins, Mary Post Wolcott, Jack Delano, Arthur Rothstein, Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Gordon Parks, Charlotte Brooks, Carl Mydans, Dorothea Lange and Ben Shahn, who were employed to publicize the conditions of the rural poor in America.

He received a bachelor’s degree in 1934 from the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, then named the College of St. Thomas. In about 1938 he married Millicent Leeper who was known as Penny. She died in 1960. Vachon married Françoise Fourestier in 1961. Vachon served in the United States Army in 1945.

“In Omaha I realized that I had developed my own style with the camera. I knew that I would photograph only what pleased me or astonished my eye, and only in the way I saw it.”

Gallery

Girl at NYA (National Youth Administration) woodworking shop in the war training program.
San Augustine, Texas

Bismarck, North dakota

20220519_195958

Ranson, South dakota

Luguillo Beach

Boat Launching from Luguillo Beach

*********************************************************************************

The song of the day is Lips of an Angel by Jack Ingram

Mac Tag

Then catch the moments as they fly,

And use them as ye ought, man:

Believe me, happiness is shy,

And comes not ay when sought, man.

Robert Burns

I cast my heart into my rhymes,

That you, in the dim coming times,

May know how my heart went with them

After the red-rose-bordered hem.

W.B. Yeats

In the morning when you open your eyes, do the lovers in your dreams wake up too. Ray Wylie Hubbard

But wherefore did you so much tempt the heavens? Shakespeare

claude vignon, clover, cowboy coleridge, crowns, john vachon, love letter, love song, muse, ray wylie hubbard, robert burns, shakespeare, tennessee williams, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle, wb yeats, Zazie

The Lovers’ Chronicle 18 May – only one – photography by Gertrude Käsebier

18 May 2024 By Rhett 0 In Love, Quotes, Random

Dear Zazie, Today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his muse. Follow us on twitter at @cowboycoleridge. Hope your day is goin’ the way you would have it. Not sure Mac Tag is right. It works for me, but I am not sure it would work for everyone. What do you think? Rhett

The Lover’s Chronicle

Dear Muse,

we come to the verse
here in our favorite place
your head restin’ on my chest

this is how it was dreamed
it would happen only it is better
a daily demonstrative devotional
made possible by two who came
to discover together what could
only be found here in our arms

Pale Love, Pale Rider

oh discovery
yes my old friend
but said differently,
sans

not gonna talk about that one
nope, sick and worn out of that
as certainly y’all must be by now

just gonna go on, as compelled,
to say, fine here with this vision
followin’ these words wherever
they lead and welcome back

oh, discovery

this comes close to why

wilde said;

“How can a woman

be expected to be happy

with a man who insists

on treating her

as if she were a perfectly

normal human being.”

whether you feel it,

i believe it

and so you have

the daily demonstrative

devotion i feel

for this, anyhow

here is how
it works

start with you
then cast a multitude
of words at the page
then start cullin’
most of ’em out
till left with nothin’
but what is as close
as possible
at that moment
to the essence
of how it felt
with you
by my side

not sure
what is worth writin’
and what is not

take it
where you find it
but do not
hold on too long

so much to give
to so many

love ’em all
let the verse
sort ’em out

leavin’ behind a wide swath
of broken-hearted-debris

is it all because
the one was never found
the one that could
quell the need
the one that could
complete the search

a dance
when done well
possesses so

but when time
and choices
conspire
to rob
of chances

well, one learns
the ways of without

Sometimes I think Rhett has it figured out. He takes love where he finds it and never makes a commitment. He has loved some beautiful women and he always made it clear to them that he was not interested in any sort of commitment. Interestin’ how his twin Jett is the total opposite when it comes to love. Jett falls in love and wants to marry every lovely woman that crosses his path. He is always lookin’ for a future ex-wife. He too has loved some gorgeous women but he has left a wide swath of broken-hearted-debris behind him. So, I think his way is not the way. I believe that neither one of them have met the one yet. The one that would make Rhett want to give up his wanderin’ ways. The one that would make Jett stop lookin’ for whatever he is lookin’ for. I know I found the one in you, muse. The question I have asked and will ask again; Is the one the only one?

They came to the clearin’
just above the falls
and he helped her down
For a moment she stood
restin’ her head on his chest
Then she looked round
and he heard her whisper;
“Beautiful, so beautiful”
Still holdin’ her…
This is how
I have dreamed
it would happen
Only it is better
than my dreams
I have meant we should see
our first sundown here…
and our first sunrise

Gertrude Käsebier
Portrait of the Photographer, manipulated self-portrait

Today is the birthday of Gertrude Käsebier (Des Moines 18 May 1852 – 12 October 1934 New York City); in my opinion, one of the most influential American photographers of the early 20th century. She is known for her evocative images of motherhood, her powerful portraits of Native Americans and her promotion of photography as a career for women.

On her twenty-second birthday, in 1874, she married twenty-eight-year-old Eduard Käsebier, a financially comfortable and socially well-placed businessman in Brooklyn. In 1884, they moved to a farm in New Durham, New Jersey, for a healthier environment in which to raise their children.

Käsebier later wrote that she was miserable throughout most of her marriage. She said, “If my husband has gone to Heaven, I want to go to Hell. He was terrible… Nothing was ever good enough for him.” At that time, divorce was considered scandalous, and the two remained married while living separate lives after 1880. This unhappy situation later served as an inspiration for one of her most strikingly titled photographs – two constrained oxen, titled Yoked and Muzzled – Marriage (c. 1915).

In spite of their differences, her husband supported her financially when she began to attend art school at the age of 37, a time when most women of her day were well-settled in their social positions. Käsebier never indicated what motivated her to study art, but she devoted herself to it wholeheartedly. Over the objections of her husband, in 1889, she moved the family back to Brooklyn to attend the newly established Pratt Institute of Art and Design full-time. Eduard Käsebier died in 1910, finally leaving his wife free to pursue her interests as she saw fit.

Gallery

Zitkala Sa, Yankton Sioux, ca.1898

Yoked and Muzzled – Marriage (c. 1915)

20220518_200019

Chief Iron Tail, 1898, U.S. Library of Congress

Chief Flying Hawk, 1898, U.S. Library of Congress

Portrait of photographers Frances Benjamin Johnston and Käsebier on the patio of a hotel in Venice, Italy, 1905

Käsebier in 1908

Miss N (Portrait of Evelyn Nesbit), 1903
Clarence White Sr., 1897-1910
Blessed Art Thou among Women, ca.1899
Portrait of Alfred Stieglitz, 1902
Auguste Rodin, 1905
Chester Beach, 1910
Portrait of George Luks (American painter), ca.1910
The Clarence White Family in Maine (American photographer), 1913
John Murray Anderson, ca.1914-1916
Rose O’Neill, ca.1907
Portrait of Robert Henri (American painter), ca.1907
Dorothy, ca.1900
Indian Chief, ca.1901
The Red Man, 1903

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all

Mac Tag

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being. – Oscar Wilde

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root: it is what you fear. I do not fear it: I have been there. – Sylvia Plath

Eyes spiritualised by death can judge,

I cannot…… – W.B. Yeats

Decidi ser feliz, porque é bom para a saúde. (I decided to be happy, because it is good for your health.) – Voltaire

As full of spirit as the month of May, And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer. – Shakespeare

I’ve never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give. – Sylvia Plath

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The Lovers’ Chronicle 17 May – more dreams – verse by Jacint Verdaguer – Día das Letras Galegas – art by Georgette Agutte & A. J. Casson

17 May 2024 By Rhett 1 In Love, Poems, Quotes, Random, Songs

Dear Z, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his Muse. Do you live your dreams, or dream your life? Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

Guy wrote and sang it best;
“Well he’s one of those who knows
that life is just a leap of faith
Spread your arms and hold you breath
And always trust your cape”

actin’ out desires
no longer confined
to dreams

more than imagined,
a smile, then, you

cara mia, come,
spread your arms

yes more please

comfort here
now that we are all done
with that damn foolishness

whatever possessed, ah well,
just gonna leave it lie, no point
in gettin’ wound up, but
this could lead to my new
favorite thing to write
about and hell, might
even be profound;

the absurdity appalls

i miss your songs

today, pourin’ this verse

tryin’ to fill in the gaps

need direction for this

so of course, turn to you

who could from dawn

till dusk, inspire all of this

so much has been said

so much remains

for the one that sings to me

wave on wave feel it comin’

who could at dawn come

“I miss your songs.”

today, inside the verse
amidst wild flowers
on the plains
or in the moonlight,

everything since,
there on the steps
the one who yesterday
sang to you, who today
would give and give to return

more than imagined,
a smile, then, will you

have we not been
through enough

wave on wave
cara mia, come,
towards the day

helluva dream…

fine sense of humor…
you get sent
on this amazin’ trip
a trip from which
you will never return

and along the way
you discover the purpose
of the journey
to find the one
you cannot be without

but (here is where
the humor comes in),
you keep choosin’
the wrong damn one

and then (here is where
humor sticks the knife
in and twists),
you meet the most
incredible woman
ever
but she is completely
beyond your reach

and you complete
the journey
without

helluva life

………

“But you’ll be alone.”
i have been alone before
and i will be fine

Dreams and Desires

So much has been said
So little has been said
So much remains to be said
Or does it

Which is better
To act out one’s desires

Or keep them to oneself

Hidden in one’s dreams

How to know

Which desires, when acted on,

Will bring more pleasure than pain

More good than grief

How to know

Which desires should be kept

Safely tucked away

Deep inside dreams

Desires versus dreams

Dreams and/or desires

That is the challenge

To balance the two

To live in the sunshine

To limit the what ifs

To limit the regrets

To live a life one can believe in

********************************************************************************************

Wish I was back
In the Chili Parlor Bar
Drinkin’ Mad Dog Margaritas
And writin’ a song for him

RIP Guy Clark

Today is the birthday of Jacint Verdaguer i Santaló (Folgueroles May 17, 1845 – June 10, 1902 Vallvidrera, Barcelona); writer, regarded as one of the greatest poets of Catalan literature and a prominent literary figure of the Renaixença, a cultural revival movement of the late Romantic era. The bishop Josep Torras i Bages, one of the main figures of Catalan nationalism, called him the “Prince of Catalan poets”. He was also known as mossèn (Father) Cinto Verdaguer, because of his career as a priest, and informally also simply “mossèn Cinto” (with Cinto being a short form of Jacint).

Niuada de calàndries, poetes de ma terra;
jo enyoro vostres càntics d’amor dintre la mar;
avui, que el maig aboca ses flors pel pla i la serra,
ai!, qui pogués a l’hora de l’alba refilar!

A Montserrat tot plora,
tot plora d’ahir ençà,
que allí a l’escolania
s’és mort un escolà.
L’escolania, oh Verge,
n’és vostre colomar:
a aquell que ahir us cantava,
qui avui no el plorarà?

Més si jo et tinc, per què m’enyoro?;
si tu em somrius, doncs, de què ploro?
Lo cor de l’home és una mar,
tot l’univers no l’ompliria;
Griselda mia,
deixa’m plorar!

Ja hi he navegat prou
per les mars de la terra,
de golfos de neguit,
d’onades de tristesa.
Barqueta mia, anem,
anem-se’n, barca meva,
cap a la mar del cel
avui que està serena.

Rosalia_de_Castro-retrato On this day in 1863 – Rosalía de Castro publishes Cantares Gallegos, her first collection of poetry and the first book in the Galician language. This day is commemorated every year as the Día das Letras Galegas (“Galician Literature Day”), an official holiday of the Autonomous Community of Galicia.

28.

Bosques, casa, sepulturas,
Campanarios e campanas
Con sons vagos de doçuras
Que despertan ¡ai! ternuras
Qu’ en jamais podran ser vanas!

Risas, cantos, armonia,
Brandas músicas, contento,
Festas, dansas, alegria,
Se trocou na triste e fria,
Xorda vós do forte vento.

—Cantares gallegos

And today is the birthday of A. J. Casson (Alfred Joseph Casson; Toronto; May 17, 1898 – February 20, 1992 Toronto); member of the Canadian group of artists known as the Group of Seven. He joined the group in 1926 at the invitation of Franklin Carmichael, replacing Frank Johnston. Casson is best known for his depictions in his signature limited palette of southern Ontario, and for being the youngest member of the Group of Seven.

Gallery

Alfred_Joseph_Casson,_A.R.C.A_(I0023643)

20230517_195651

20230517_200107

And so it seems I must always write you letters here that I can never send. – Sylvia Plath

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. – Oscar Wilde

There is a unique rightness and beauty to life which can be shared with a fellow human being who believes in the same basic principles. Sylvia Plath

Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink the wild air. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Song of the Day is “Dreams” by Taken By Trees.

Mac Tag

Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge

cowboy coleridge, Día das Letras Galegas, dreams, dreams and desires, Jacint Verdaguer i Santaló, love letter, love poem, love song, muse, oscar wilde, quotes, ralph waldo emerson, Rhett, Rosalía de Castro, sylvia plath, taken by trees, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle, twt, Zazie

The Lovers’ Chronicle 16 May – bar ditches and far flung wishes – art by Laura Wheeler Waring & Tamara de Lempicka – verse by Adrienne Rich

16 May 2024 By Rhett 0 In Love, Quotes, Random

Dear Zazie, Today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his muse. Visit us on twitter @cowboycoleridge. How are ya’ Z? All is well with me. Still workin’ out. Cattle business is still challengin’. Still have some pretty girls who will give me shelter from the storms. Like Mac Tag says: Still tryin’ to keep myself somewhere between the bar ditches and my far flung wishes. Ciao, Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

that about describes
the current coordinates

most of the time in one,
sometimes thought to be
in the other only to find
sadly mistaken

these words dashed
clarity sought and found
just keep that in sight
and the present course
enough time perhaps
to matter, to make

whatever happens for this, our bodies
tender, delicate our lovemakin’, curled
together afterwards the innocence
and wisdom of the place found here—
the live, insatiate dance of our touch
firm, protective, searchin’, reachin’
where we had been waitin’ years

for myself,

the conscious

and recollected years

lived to this day

as much as possible

of mind and spirit, spent

in the effort to grasp

the meanin’ of these words

to trace them to their source

and to understand the wonder

this i find again

when the ruins are cleared

somewhere between

somewhere between…

the verse binds us
nothin’ else can keep
from the faraway

nothin’ takes us,
not longin’,
not promise

what will be done
in the long
nights without

always here
from the start

among the wild
horses on the plains

what will we do
between

somewhere
between the bar ditches
and these far flung wishes
somewhere between alone and you

Tryin’ to keep myself somewhere
between the bar ditches
and my far flung wishes
Somewhere between alone and you
Somewhere between the bottle and sober
But right now is bar ditch time
play some Hank and pass the Jack
and hope for days of far flung wishes

Today is the birthday of Laura Wheeler Waring (Hartford, Connecticut; May 16, 1887 – February 3, 1948 Philadelphia); artist and educator, best known her paintings of prominent African Americans that she made during the Harlem Renaissance. She taught art for more than 30 years at Cheyney University in Pennsylvania.

Gallery

20230516_201635

Marian Anderson

woman with bouquet, ca. 1940

Tamara de Lempicka
portrait photograph by Dora Kallmus of d’Ora Studio, Paris, 1929

Today is the birthday of artist Tamara Łempicka (born Maria Górska, Warsaw; 16 May 1898 – 18 March 1980 Cuernavaca, Mexico), also known as Tamara de Lempicka; painter active in the 1920s and 1930s, who spent her working life in France and the United States. Perhaps best known for her polished Art-Deco portraits of aristocrats and the wealthy, and for her highly stylized paintings of nudes.

Born in Warsaw, Lempicka briefly moved to Saint Petersburg where she married a prominent Polish lawyer, then travelled to Paris. Her style was a blend of late, refined cubism and the neoclassical style, particularly inspired by the work of Jean-Dominique Ingres. She was an active participant in the artistic and social life of Paris between the Wars. In 1928 she became the mistress of wealthy art collector from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Baron Raoul Kuffner. After the death of his wife in 1933, the Baron married Lempicka in 1934, and thereafter she became known in the press as “The Baroness with a Brush”.

Following the outbreak of World War II in 1939, she and her husband moved to the United States and she painted celebrity portraits, as well as still lifes and, in the 1960s, some abstract paintings. Her work was out of fashion after World War II, but made a comeback in the late 1960s, with the rediscovery of Art Deco.

In Paris, the Łempickis lived for a while from the sale of family jewels. Tadeusz proved unwilling or unable to find suitable work. Their daughter, Kizette, was born, adding to their financial needs. Her first paintings were still lifes and portraits of her daughter Kizette and her neighbor.

Her breakthrough came in 1925, with the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts which later gave its name to the style Art Deco. She exhibited her paintings in two of the major venues, the Salon des Tuileries and the Salon des femmes peintres. In the same year, she had her first major exposition in Italy, in Milan, organized for her by Count Emmanuele Castelbarco. For this show Lempicka painted 28 new works in six months. During her Italian tour, she took a new lover, the Marquis Sommi Picenardi. She was also invited to meet the famous Italian poet and playwright, Gabriele d’Annunzio. She visited him twice at his villa on Lake Garda, seeking to paint his portrait; he in turn was set on seduction. After her unsuccessful attempts to secure the commission, she went away angry, while d’Annunzio also remained unsatisfied.

In 1928, she was divorced from Lempicki. The same year she met Raoul Kuffner, a Baron of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire and art collector. He commissioned her to paint his mistress, the Spanish dancer Nana de Herrera. Lempicka finished the portrait (which was not very flattering to the de Herrera) and took the place of de Herrera as the mistress of the Baron. She bought an apartment on rue Méchain in Paris, and had it decorated by the modernist architect Robert Mallet-Stevens.

In 1929, Lempicka painted one of her best-known works, Autoportrait (Tamara in a Green Bugatti), for the cover of the German fashion magazine Die Dame. This showed her at the wheel of a Bugatti racing car, wearing a leather helmet and gloves and wrapped in a gray scarf, a portrait of cold beauty, independence, wealth and inaccessibility. In fact she did not own a Bugatti automobile; her own car was a small yellow Renault, which was stolen one night when she and her friends were celebrating at La Rotonde in Montparnasse.

She travelled to the United States for the first time in 1929 to paint a portrait of the fiancée of the American oilman Rufus T. Bush and to arrange a show of her work at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. Lempicka’s career reached a peak during the 1930s. She painted portraits of King Alfonso XIII of Spain and Queen Elizabeth of Greece. Museums began to collect her works. In 1933 she traveled to Chicago where her pictures were shown alongside of those of Georgia O’Keeffe, Santiago Martínez Delgado and Willem de Kooning.

The wife of Baron Kuffner died in 1933. De Lempicka married him on 3 February 1934 in Zurich. She was alarmed by the rise of the Nazis, and persuaded her husband to sell most of his properties in Hungary and to move his fortune and his belongings to Switzerland.

In the winter of 1939, following the outbreak of World War II, Lempicka and her husband moved to the United States. They settled first in Los Angeles. The Paul Reinhard Gallery organized a show of her work, and they moved to Beverly Hills, settling into the former residence of the film director King Vidor. In 1943, Baron Kuffner and de Lempicka relocated to New York City.

In the postwar years, she continued a frenetic social life, but she had fewer commissions for society portraits. Her art deco style looked anachronistic in the period of postwar modernism and abstract expressionism. She expanded her subject matter to include still lives, and in 1960 she began to paint abstract works and to use a palette knife instead of her smooth earlier brushwork. She sometimes reworked earlier pieces in her new style.

Baron Kuffner died of a heart attack on November 1961 on the ocean liner Liberté en route to New York. Following his death, Lempicka sold many of her possessions and made three around-the-world trips by ship. In 1963 Lempicka moved to Houston, Texas to be with Kizette and her family. She continued to repaint her earlier works. She repainted her well-known Autoportrait (1929) twice between 1974 and 1979; Autoportrait III was sold, though she hung Autoportrait II in her retirement apartments, where it would remain until her death. The last work she painted was the fourth copy of her painting of St. Anthony.

In 1974 she decided to move to Cuernavaca, Mexico. De Lempicka died in her sleep on 18 March 1980. Following her wishes, her ashes were scattered over the volcano of Popocatepetl.

Gallery

20220516_194320

Self-portrait, Tamara in a Green

Four nudes

Perspective

young woman in a blue dress

musician

strawhat

And today is the birthday of Adrienne Rich (Adrienne Cecile Rich; Baltimore, Maryland; May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012, Santa Cruz, California); poet, essayist and feminist. i believe, one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century, who brought the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse. Rich criticized rigid forms of feminist identities, and valorized what she coined the “lesbian continuum”, which is a female continuum of solidarity and creativity that impacts and fills women’s lives.

Verse

Whatever happens with us, your body
will haunt mine—tender, delicate
your lovemaking, like the half-curled frond
of the fiddlehead fern in forests
just washed by sun. Your traveled, generous thighs
between which my whole face has come and come—
the innocence and wisdom of the place my tongue has found there—
the live, insatiate dance of your nipples in my mouth—
your touch on me, firm, protective, searching
me out, your strong tongue and slender fingers
reaching where I had been waiting years for you
in my rose-wet cave—whatever happens, this is.

Floating Poem, Unnumbered” from “Twenty-One Love Poems,” from The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977 by Adrienne Rich. Copyright © 1978 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Mac Tag

I want to love somebody because I want to be loved. – Sylvia Plath

bar ditches, cattle, cowboy coleridge, far flung wishes, hank, jack, Love, love letter, muse, sylvia plath, Tamara de Lempicka, tea with tater, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle, twt, Zazie

The Lovers’ Chronicle 15 May – helluva consequence – art by Viktor Vasnetsov – birth of Katherine Anne Porter – photography by Richard Avedon

15 May 2024 By Rhett 0 In Love, Quotes, Random

Dear Zazie, Today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his muse. Visit us on twitter @cowboycoleridge. Hope all is well with you. Take care of yourself. Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

conscious and recollected years have been lived to now in the shadow of past romantic miscues, and most of the energies of mind and spirit have been spent in the effort to grasp the meanin’ of those wrong turns, to trace them to their sources and to understand the logic of these failures, only to discover from this vantage that it was a necessary process to get to us

Pale Love, Pale Rider

not talkin’ ’bout promises,

nor false hopes, and not

gonna get all romantic

about it

plenty enough drama

in the world now

just writin’ what i feel,

pourin’ out my stories

and lettin’ ’em go

where they may

all to say that i care

at least i can know

the truth about that

regrets
sure, got ’em stacked
up like cord wood
the trick is to not let ’em
eat you up, or to minimize
how much of you it eats up

and there are two kinds;
those you can do
somethin’ about
and those you cannot
never been one to worry
about what cannot
be controlled

so to those i cannot
do anything about
i say, adieu

the ones i could do
somethin’ about,
those are tough

i like to think
i have ’em
under control

but there is one
that haunts
and takes
a little piece
day by day

some choices come
with a helluva consequence

no false hopes
no more foolin’
could not live
that way anymore

listenin’ to voices
from the past
tellin’ their stories
lettin’ ’em explain
how things happened

at least i know now
whatever happens
assurances made
in the silence
a promise made
in hopefulness

A vignette:

A man, fiftyish, dressed very specifically; starched black jeans pressed tight and stacked over black cowboy boots, long sleeve grey pearl snap shirt worn over a long sleeve white Henley shirt, black leather vest, black denim sport coat with a white linen monogrammed pocket square, full-length black oilskin duster, 6-X silver belly cowboy hat, sits at a table in the outdoor section of a small hotel bar somewhere in the New Mexico Rockies. He is drinkin’ Dow’s 30 Year Old Tawny Port and smokin’ an Arturo Fuente Opus X Perfexion No. 2 pyramid. He is writin’ a letter:

You ask if I have regrets
I God, of course I do
got ’em stacked up like cord wood
The trick with regret is to not let it
eat you up, or to minimize
how much of you it eats up
And there are two kinds of regret;
those you can do somethin’ about
and those you cannot
Never been one to worry
about what I cannot control
So to the regrets I cannot do anything about
I say, adios, adieu, ciao, see ya’ later
Now the ones I could do somethin’ about,
those are the tough ones
I like to think I have ’em under control
so one of ’em does not come rollin’
off the stack and knock me down
But there is one regret
that haunts me night and day
Each day she takes a little piece of me
I made a choice, and that choice
came with a consequence
Helluva consequence

Viktor Vasnetsov
Self-portrait, 1868

Today is the birthday of Viktor Mikhaylovich Vasnetsov (May 15, 1848, Lopyal, Vyatka Governorate – July 23, 1926, Moscow); artist who specialized in mythological and historical subjects. He is considered the co-founder of Russian folklorist and romantic nationalistic painting and a key figure in the Russian revivalist movement.

Gallery

Alenushka

Moving House, 1876

The Flying Carpet, 1880

Baptism of Prince Vladimir, a Vasnetsov’s fresco from Kiev Cathedral

Bogatyrs (1898), one of Vasnetsov’s most famous paintings, depicts mythical Russian knights Dobrynya Nikitich, Ilya Muromets and Alyosha Popovich

Vasnetsov’s painting of Ivan the Terrible

Katherine Anne Porter
Porter in 1930

Today is the birthday of Katherine Anne Porter (Indian Creek, Texas, May 15, 1890 – September 18, 1980 Silver Spring, Maryland); Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist. Her 1962 novel Ship of Fools was the best-selling novel in America that year, but her short stories received more critical acclaim. She is known for her penetrating insight. Her work deals with dark themes such as betrayal, death and the origin of human evil. In 1990, Recorded Texas Historic Landmark number 2905 was placed in Brown County, Texas, to honor the life and career of Porter.

Select Writings

I don’t want any promises, I won’t have false hopes, I won’t be romantic about myself. I can’t live in their world any longer, she told herself, listening to the voices back of her. Let them tell their stories to each other. Let them go on explaining how things happened. I don’t care. At least I can know the truth about what happens to me, she assured herself silently, making a promise to herself, in her hopefulness, her ignorance.
- “Old Mortality” in Pale Horse (1939)

The road to death is a long march beset with all evils, and the heart fails little by little at each new terror, the bones rebel at each step, the mind sets up its own bitter resistance and to what end? The barriers sink one by one, and no covering of the eyes shuts out the landscape of disaster, nor the sight of crimes committed there.
- “Pale Horse, Pale Rider” (1939)

For myself, and I was not alone, all the conscious and recollected years of my life have been lived to this day under the heavy threat of world catastrophe, and most of the energies of my mind and spirit have been spent in the effort to grasp the meaning of those threats, to trace them to their sources and to understand the logic of this majestic and terrible failure of the life of man in the Western world.
In the face of such shape and weight of present misfortune, the voice of the individual artist may seem perhaps of no more consequence than the whirring of a cricket in the grass, but the arts do live continuously, and they live literally by faith; their names and their shapes and their uses and their basic meanings survive unchanged in all that matters through times of interruption, diminishment, neglect; they outlive governments and creeds and the societies, even the very civilization that produced them. They cannot be destroyed altogether because they represent the substance of faith and the only reality. They are what we find again when the ruins are cleared away.
- Flowering Judas, Introduction to Modern Library edition (1940)

They had both noticed that a life of dissipation sometimes gave to a face the look of gaunt suffering spirituality that a life of asceticism was supposed to give and quite often did not.
- Ship of Fools (1962) Pt. 3

Miracles are instantaneous, they cannot be summoned, but come of themselves, usually at unlikely moments and to those who least expect them.
- Ship of Fools (1962) Pt. 3

The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one’s own — even more, one’s own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being.
- “Herr Freytag” in Ship of Fools (1962) Pt. 3

And today is the birthday of Ricard Avedon (New York City; May 1923 – 1 October 2004 San Antonio, Texas); fashion and portrait photographer. He worked for Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue and Elle specializing in capturing movement in still pictures of fashion, theater and dance. An obituary published in The New York Times said that “his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America’s image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century”.

Hollywood presented a fictional account of Avedon’s early career in the 1957 musical Funny Face, starring Fred Astaire as the fashion photographer “Dick Avery.” Avedon supplied some of the still photographs used in the production, including its most noted single image: an intentionally overexposed close-up of Audrey Hepburn’s face in which only her noted features – her eyes, her eyebrows, and her mouth – are visible.

Hepburn was Avedon’s muse in the 1950s and 1960s, and he went so far as to say: “I am, and forever will be, devastated by the gift of Audrey Hepburn before my camera. I cannot lift her to greater heights. She is already there. I can only record. I cannot interpret her. There is no going further than who she is. She has achieved in herself her ultimate portrait.”

In 1944, Avedon married 19-year-old bank teller Dorcas Marie Nowell, who later became the model and actress Doe Avedon; they did not have children and divorced in 1949. The couple summered at the gay village of Cherry Grove, Fire Island, and Avedon’s bisexuality has been attested to by colleagues and family. He was reportedly devastated when Nowell left him.

In 1951, he married Evelyn Franklin; she died on March 13, 2004.

Gallery

By Irving Penn

Elizabeth Taylor

With Sophia loren

Cher

Marilyn

Mac Tag

It is so much safer not to feel, not to let the world touch one. – Sylvia Plath

For we are but obedient to the thoughts

That drift into the mind at a wink of the eye. – W.B. Yeats

arturo fuente, cigars, cowboy coleridge, katherine anne porter, love letter, muse, opus x, port, regret, sylvia plath, tea with tater, the lovers almanac, twt, viktor vasnetsov, wb yeats

The Lovers’ Chronicle 14 May – reverence – art by Thomas Gainsborough – verse by Marian Osborne – Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway

14 May 2024 By Rhett 1 In Love, Quotes, Random

Dear Zazie, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his muse. Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

to go deeper, beneath what most see, what it means, this thing, oh, it is very clear, to feel continuously a sense of existence, to be brought together, an offerin’; to combine, to create; it is our gift, nothin else is of the slightest importance; how unbelievable it is here with you

castin’ glances
freshly disheveled
furtive smile
the curves
the fullness
the way you move

reverence
with every touch
hands, movin’
with purpose

numberless dreams

a lifetime
not enough
to do justice

this, here, now
with you
matters

how believable
you and i will know

oh, me
that is an easy question…
this,
here,
now,
in front of a blank page
with you

………

“Sadly in search of and one step in back of
himself and his slow movin’ dreams”

castin’ glances
freshly disheveled
furtive smile
the curve
from your waist
down to your hips
fullness of breasts
the way your legs flash
when they move

reverence
with every touch
hands tremblin’,
movin’ with purpose
urgent responses

numberless dreams
once i lived my dreams
now i dream my life
fill my sleep
with dreams of you

Wonderful beauty
fullness of lips
eyes castin’ fervent glances
hair, freshly disheveled
furtive smile. The curve
from her waist
down to her hips
fullness of breasts
The way her legs flash
when they move
skin flushed
body fervid

Reverent hands
Every touch, as if the first
hands tremblin’,
yet movin’ with purpose
gently pushin’, pullin’
response urgent, ardent

Numberless dreams
Once I lived my dreams
Now I dream my life
Fill my sleep with numberless dreams
of your wonderful beauty
and my reverent hands

Thomas Gainsborough
Self-portrait (1759)

Today is the christening day of Thomas Gainsborough (Sudbury 14 May 1727, died 2 August 1788 London); portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. In my opinion, he was the dominant British portraitist of the second half of the 18th century. He painted quickly, and the works of his maturity are characterised by a light palette and easy strokes. He preferred landscapes to portraits, and is one of the originators of the 18th-century British landscape school. Gainsborough was a founding member of the Royal Academy.

Gallery

Lady Lloyd and Her Son, Richard Savage Lloyd, of Hintlesham Hall, Suffolk (1745–46). At the time, his clientele included mainly local merchants and squires.

Margaret Burr (1728–1797), the artist’s wife, c. early 1770s
The Artist’s Daughters (c. 1759)

Ann Ford (later Mrs. Philip Thicknesse), 1760

The Blue Boy (1770). The Huntington, California.

His later pictures are characterized by a light palette and easy strokes. Portrait of Anne, Countess of Chesterfield, 1777–1778

Girl with Pigs, 1781–82, said by Sir Joshua Reynolds to be “the best picture he ever painted”

Clayton Jones, 1745
Portrait of a Woman, 1750
The Painter`s Daughters Chasing a Butterfly (1756)
A Man Called Mr. Wood, the Dancing Master (1757)
Mary Little, Later Lady Carr
Portrait of the Composer Carl Friedrich Abel with his Viola da Gamba (c. 1765)
The lawyer Joshua Grigby III, 1760/1765
Sir Robert Clayton, ( 1769)
The Linley Sisters (1772)
The Gravenor Family (1775)
Johann Christian Bach (1776)
Gainsborough`s Daughter Mary (1777)
Portrait of James Christie (1778)
Colonel John Bullock (c. 1780)
An officer of the 4th Regiment of Foot (c. 1776–1780)
Lady in Blue (c. 1780)
Madame Lebrun (1780)
Mrs. Sarah Siddons (1785)
Her Grace, Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (1787)
Mrs Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1787)

Landscape in Suffolk (1748)
River Landscape (undated)
Coastal Landscape with a Shepherd and His Flock
The Mall in St. James’s Park
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Andrews (c. 1748–1750)
Hilly Landscape with Figures Approaching a Bridge (c. 1763), watercolour
Road from Market
Landscape with Stream and Weir

The Harvest Wagon (c. 1784)

Today is the birthday of poet Marian Osborne (Montreal, May 14, 1871 – September 5, 1931 Ottawa). From her we get the Poem of the Day:

Love’s Anguish

Shall I with lethal draughts drowse every thought
And let the days pass by with silent tread,–
Dream that the vanished hour I long have sought
Is once more mine, and you no longer dead?
How shall I grasp the skirts of happy chance
And calm my spirit in adventurous ways,
Like bold Don Quixote hold aloft my lance
Against the world without thy meed of praise?
How can I live through long discordant days,
How cheat despair, or speed Time’s lagging feet,
Since I have lost the fragrance of love’s ways
That turned life’s winter into springtime sweet?
Come to me, Death, come, ere it be too late;
Thy kiss alone can draw the sting of Fate.

We shall carry on the anguish theme and rock out with The Song of the Day from the Italian rock band Shide – “Anguish”.

Come to me, come before it is too late. Thy kiss alone can draw the sting of anguish.

And on this day in 1925 – Virginia Woolf‘s novel Mrs Dalloway is published. The novel details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional high-society woman in post–First World War England. Created from two short stories, “Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street” and the unfinished “The Prime Minister,” the novel addresses Clarissa’s preparations for a party she will host that evening. With an interior perspective, the story travels forwards and back in time and in and out of the characters’ minds to construct an image of Clarissa’s life and of the inter-war social structure.

Mrs Dalloway (1925) select passages

Portrait of Virginia Woolf c 1917 by Roger Fry (1866-1934)

Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

It was enemies one wanted, not friends.

A whole lifetime was too short to bring out, the full flavour; to extract every ounce of pleasure, every shade of meaning.

What she loved was this, here, now, in front of her; the fat lady in the cab. Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here there, she survived. Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself.

But to go deeper, beneath what people said (and these judgements, how superficial, how fragmentary they are!) in her own mind now, what did it mean to her, this thing she called life? Oh, it was very queer. Here was So-and-so in South Kensington; some one up in Bayswater; and somebody else, say, in Mayfair. And she felt quiet continuously a sense of their existence and she felt what a waste; and she felt what a pity; and she felt if only they could be brought together; so she did it. And it was an offering; to combine, to create; but to whom? An offering for the sake of offering, perhaps. Anyhow, it was her gift. Nothing else had she of the slightest importance; could not think, write, even play the piano. She muddled Armenians and Turks; loved success; hated discomfort; must be liked; talked oceans of nonsense: and to this day, ask her what the Equator was, and she did not know. All the same, that one day should follow another; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; that one should wake up in the morning; see the sky; walk in the park; meet Hugh Whitbread; then suddenly in came Peter; then these roses; it was enough. After that, how unbelievable death was! — that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all.

Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.

Those of you who know us, know we are big fans of Virginia Woolf.

Mac Tag

Through the clear atmosphere I stretch around on the wonderful beauty. – Walt Whitman

I bring you with reverent hands / The books of my numberless dreams. – W.B. Yeats

I am the man . . . . I suffered . . . . I was there. – Walt Whitman

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The Lovers’ Chronicle 23 May – passin’ by – art by Carl Bloch, Amaldus Nielsen, Luis Ricardo Falero – & József Rippl-Rónai – birth of Jane Kenyon

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The Lovers’ Chronicle 22 May – no comfort – verse by Gérard de Nerval – art by Fritz von Uhde, Hildegard Thorell, Mary Cassatt & Belmiro Almeida

Corilla

Emilie

Aurélia, 1853

Les Faux Saulniers, 1868

Le carnet de Dolbreuse

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The Lovers’ Chronicle 21 May – beginnin’ – art by Henri Rousseau

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The Lovers’ Chronicle 20 May – discovery – Shakespeare’s Sonnets – birth of Honoré de Balzac – art by Henri-Edmond Cross

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The Lovers’ Chronicle 19 May – crowns – art by Claude Vignon – photography by John Vachon

Crowns

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The Lovers’ Chronicle 18 May – only one – photography by Gertrude Käsebier

The Lovers’ Chronicle 17 May – more dreams – verse by Jacint Verdaguer – Día das Letras Galegas – art by Georgette Agutte & A. J. Casson

The Lovers’ Chronicle 16 May – bar ditches and far flung wishes – art by Laura Wheeler Waring & Tamara de Lempicka – verse by Adrienne Rich

The Lovers’ Chronicle 15 May – helluva consequence – art by Viktor Vasnetsov – birth of Katherine Anne Porter – photography by Richard Avedon

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Select Writings

The Lovers’ Chronicle 14 May – reverence – art by Thomas Gainsborough – verse by Marian Osborne – Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway

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Love’s Anguish

Mrs Dalloway (1925) select passages

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