Dear Zazie Lee,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.  Maybe love?  Maybe not?  Maybe he is a fool?  What do you think?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

an after thought,
or a, not even thought
whatever,
whichever,
either one works

yeah sure, want
still comes around
with hope
taggin’ along
but they are easily
dismissed

had my fill
of all of that
and quite content
to sit on the sidelines
and watch it all go by

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

as he was unattached
and in nobody’s debt,
no one troubles themselves
about him anymore
“Is that what you are afraid of?”
it is what i want

“Is that what you want
or is that a play for attention?”
touche, mon petit chou
how did you git to be
so damn observant
and so pretty

“Well I always know
I am getting somewhere
when you engage your
flattery or humor
self-defense mechanisms
So answer the question…”

“What do you really want?”
for you to read my verse
“That’s it? That’s all you want?
To spend your life alone
writing songs and poetry?”

well there is what i want
and what i will have
the one i know
the other i do not

and i am not the only one
usin’ self-defense,
you know what i want
“I want to hear you say it.”
i want you, damnit
and that scares
the ever lovin’ life outta me

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Here is Jett’s response to Adele’s letter.

Dear Adele,

So, could I have loved you had things been different?  I could wax poetic and write:  How could I have loved you, let me count the ways.  Wait, let us throw some more questions out there.  Are there degrees of love?  Did I love you?  Do I still love you?  Was/is it lust or love?  And one qualification; nothin’ but honesty between us, right?

George Stubbs
A self-portrait

Today is the birthday of George Stubbs (Liverpool; 25 August 1724 – 10 July 1806 London); painter, best known for his paintings of horses.

In 1756 he rented a farmhouse in the village of Horkstow, Lincolnshire, and spent 18 months dissecting horses, assisted by his common-law wife, Mary Spencer.

Gallery

A Lion Attacking a Horse, oil on canvas, 1770, by Stubbs. Yale University Art Gallery

Whistlejacket. National Gallery, London.

 

Mares and Foals in a Landscape. 1763–68.

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

Dorothea Tanning
Max Ernst and Tanning in 1948. Photo by Robert Bruce Inverarity in the Smithsonian Institution collection.

Today is the birthday of Dorothea Margaret Tanning (Galesburg, Illinois; August 25, 1910 – January 31, 2012 Manhattan); painter, printmaker, sculptor, writer, and poet. Her early work was influenced by Surrealism.

After an eight-year relationship, she was married briefly to the writer Homer Shannon in 1941.

Julien Levy gave Tanning two one-person exhibitions (in 1944 and 1948), and also introduced her to the circle of émigré Surrealists whose work he was showing in his New York gallery, including the German painter Max Ernst.

Tanning first met Ernst at a party in 1942.  Later he dropped by her studio to consider her work for an exhibition of work by women artists at The Art of This Century gallery, which was owned by Peggy Guggenheim, Ernst’s wife at the time.  As Tanning recounts in her memoirs, he was enchanted by her iconic self-portrait Birthday (1942, Philadelphia Museum of Art).  The two played chess, fell in love, and embarked on a life together that took them to Sedona in Arizona, and later to France.  They lived in New York for several years before moving to Sedona, where they built a house.  Tanning and Ernst were married in 1946 in a double wedding with Man Ray and Juliet Browner in Hollywood.

In 1949, Tanning and Ernst relocated to France, where they divided their time between Paris and Touraine, returning to Sedona for intervals through the early and mid 1950s.  They lived in Paris and later Provence until Ernst’s death in 1976, after which Tanning returned to New York.  She continued to create studio art in the 1980s, then turned her attention to her writing and poetry in the 1990s and 2000s, working and publishing until the end of her life.  Tanning died on January 31, 2012, at her Manhattan home at age 101.

Gallery

‘Deidre’, 1940

Birthday, 1942, oil on canvas, 40 1/4 x 25 1/2 in./102.2 x 64.8 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art. ©The Estate of Dorothea Tanning

 

Artodyssey

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Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.  Has a cowboy ever taken you away?  Do you want a cowboy to take you away?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

we vow to each other

this affection,

this shared vision

give and to that more

this we have

created together,

the sum of all we have read,

all the music we have heard,

all we have witnessed

all we have loved

gather while we may,

this held today

will not fade away

© copyright 2022 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

a dream…

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

all the words i have read
all the friends i have made
all the women i have loved
all the sins committed
and times of madness,
well travelled in

not makin’ excuses
nor seekin’ forgiveness
for this existence

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

first talk of one thing
then another
while tranquil music
cascades
we try the effect
of exchangin’ verse
mine and yours

the words dispatch
the affairs of the world
the verses amount
to prayers
we offer up
to stave off time
to never let go

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love Pale Rider

i know this;
the heart that shuts out
romantic passion
can write some dang
fine sad verse

finally feel
indigenous
immersed in verse

“I want you to feel
you deserve to be
with someone special.”
deserves got nothin’
to do with it

to not know what
it is to love well
or to be well loved

what you feel is real
what you do with it is all

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Since my words are currently dictated by the Dark Muse and my letters have been more about the lack thereof than love, I thought I would turn again to Jett for inspiration.  He received an interestin’ letter from his friend Adele:

Dear Jett,

I have been in a cowboy state of mind for about a week now.  A week ago, I had a dream that I was in Vegas with a cowboy.  We ended up having a little too much to drink, well really a lot too much, and had the most amazing sex of my life.  Then we went back out on the Strip, drank some more and got married by Elvis.  He was taking me for my first horseback ride when I woke up.  It was hard to think about it this past week and not want to run out and grab the first cowboy that turned my head.  You are the only true cowboy I have ever known.  It is in your blood. Something about that honest, rugged, cowboy way.  Had things been different could you have loved me?

Adele

Stay tuned for Jett’s response.

The Song of the Day is “Cowboy Take Me Away“ by the Dixie Chicks.  (C) 1999 Monument Records

Self-Portrait at the Clavichord with a Servant, c. 1577, Oil on canvas

 

Minerva Dressing, 1613, Oil on canvas, Galleria Borghese, Rome.

Portrait of a Lady with a Lap Dog

 

John Taylor portrait engraved by Thomas Cockson, from the frontispiece of Taylor’s 1630 poetry anthology.

Today is the birthday of John Taylor (Gloucester; 24 August 1578 – 1653 London); poet who dubbed himself “The Water Poet”.

He spent much of his life as a Thames waterman, a member of the guild of boatmen that ferried passengers across the River Thames in London, in the days when the London Bridge was the only passage between the banks. His occupation was his gateway into the literary society of London, as he ferried patrons, actors, and playwrights across the Thames to the Bankside theatres.

Taylor was also the first poet to mention the deaths of William Shakespeare and Francis Beaumont in print, in his 1620 poem, “The Praise of Hemp-seed”. Both had died four years earlier:

In paper, many a poet now survives
Or else their lines had perish’d with their lives.
Old Chaucer, Gower, and Sir Thomas More,
Sir Philip Sidney, who the laurel wore,
Spenser, and Shakespeare did in art excell,
Sir Edward Dyer, Greene, Nash, Daniel.
Sylvester, Beaumont, Sir John Harrington,
Forgetfulness their works would over run
But that in paper they immortally
Do live in spite of death, and cannot die.

 

Verse 

• Lewd did I live & evil I did dwel
  • Early author-attributed palindrome (c. 1614); reported in Dave Fisher, The Wonderful World of Palindromes (October 30, 2015).

 

• God sends meat, and the Devil sends cooks.

  Works, vol. ii, p. 85 (1630). Compare the 1735 Poor Richard’s Almanack.

• ‘Tis a mad world (my masters) and in sadnes
•  I travail’d madly in these dayes of madnes.

Wanderings to See the Wonders of the West, 1649; reported in Esther Moir, The Discovery of Britain: The English Tourists 1540-1840, page 26.

Robert Herrick
Robert Herrick, 1904 illustration based on Hesperides impression

Today is the birthday of Robert Herrick (Cheapside, London; baptised 24 August 1591 – buried 15 October 1674 Dean Prior, Devon); lyric poet and cleric.  Perhaps best known for Hesperides, a book of poems.  This includes the carpe diem poem “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”, with the first line “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may”.

Verse 

• You say to me-wards your affection’s strong;
  Pray love me little, so you love me long.
  • “Love Me Little, Love Me Long”.
• Give me a kiss, and to that kiss a score;
  Then to that twenty, add a hundred more:
  A thousand to that hundred: so kiss on,
  To make that thousand up a million.
  Treble that million, and when that is done,
  Let’s kiss afresh, as when we first begun.
  • “To Anthea: Ah, My Anthea!”
• Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
  Old Time is still a-flying,
  And this same flower that smiles today
  Tomorrow will be dying.
  The glorious Lamp of Heaven, the Sun,
  The higher he’s a-getting
  The sooner will his race be run,
  And nearer he’s to setting.
  • “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time”.

 

Jorge Luis Borges
Borges in 1951, by Grete Stern

Today is the birthday of Jorge Luis Borges (Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges; Buenos Aires; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986 Geneva); short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish-language literature.  His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and El Aleph (The Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion.

In 1967, Borges married the recently widowed Elsa Astete Millán.  The marriage lasted less than three years.

From 1975 until the time of his death, Borges traveled internationally.  He was often accompanied in these travels by his personal assistant María Kodama, an Argentine woman of Japanese and German ancestry. In April 1986, a few months before his death, they married.

Quotes:

No estoy seguro de que yo exista, en realidad. Soy todos los autores que he leído, toda la gente que he conocido, todas las mujeres que he amado. Todas las ciudades que he visitado, todos mis antepasados…

He cometido el peor pecado que uno puede cometer. No he sido feliz.

¿De qué otra forma se puede amenazar que no sea de muerte? Lo interesante, lo original, sería que alguien lo amenace a uno con la inmortalidad.

En mi juventud probé la mescalina y la cocaína pero enseguida me pasé a los pastillas de menta que me parecieron más estimulantes. Si las drogas producen el mismo efecto que el alcohol, no me interesan. Un borracho es evidentemente ridículo. He estado borracho algunas veces y lo recuerdo como una experiencia muy desagradable para los demás y para mí.

El infierno y el paraíso me parecen desproporcionados. Los actos de los hombres no merecen tanto.

Hay un concepto que es el corruptor y el desatinador de los otros. No hablo del mal cuyo limitado imperio es la ética; hablo del infinito.

Que el cielo exista, aunque mi lugar sea el infierno.

Yo, que me figuraba el Paraíso

Bajo la especie de una biblioteca

Mac Tag

Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge 

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Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  On an enchanted evenin’ in a starlit garden, have you seen a stranger, or heard someone laughin’ or found your true love?  Rhett

The Lover’s Chronicle

Dear Muse,

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Sculpture by Hannah Frank

out of the night
i thank whatever
for my unconquerable soul

in the clutch of circumstance
and after the bludgeonin’
from choices gone awry,
and countin’ up the losses,
remain unbowed
and doin’ just fine,
thank you

but damn,
some of the losses
come around once in awhile
and i struggle to hang on

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

just heard…
a childhood friend,
a free-spirited beauty
used to go to her house
and explore nascent urges
with her and her sister

gone too soon
goddamnit
it is never fair
but of course fairness,
has nothin’ to do with it
and never will
hurtin’ for her

her parents worked
for us at my uncle’s ranch
when i was growin’ up

we would ride horses
and skinny dip
in the spring fed
water tanks
and talk of dreams

some that came true
and some that never did

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

William Ernest L. Henley

Today is the birthday of William Ernest Henley (Gloucester; 23 August 1849 – 11 July 1903 Woking); poet, critic and editor of the late-Victorian era in England.  Perhaps best remembered for his 1875 poem

“Invictus”

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul

Another of his poems:

Some Starlit Garden Grey With Dew

Some starlit garden grey with dew,
Some chamber flushed with wine and fire,
What matters where, so I and you
Are worthy our desire?

Behind, a past that scolds and jeers
For ungirt loins and lamps unlit;
In front, the unmanageable years,
The trap upon the Pit;

Think on the shame of dreams for deeds,
The scandal of unnatural strife,
The slur upon immortal needs,
The treason done to life:

Arise! no more a living lie,
And with me quicken and control
Some memory that shall magnify
The universal Soul.

Today is the birthday of Eugène Lanceray (Yevgeny Yevgenyevich Lanceray, Russian: Евгений Евгеньевич Лансере; 23 August 1875 – 13 September 1946 Moscow), also often spelled Eugene Lansere; graphic artist, painter, sculptor, mosaicist, and illustrator, associated stylistically with Mir iskusstva (the World of Art).

Lanceray was the only prominent member of Mir iskusstva to remain in Russia after the Revolution of 1917. Being a representative of traditional painting (not avant-garde movement) and the bourgeoisie, he was not in great demand with the new Soviet government for a long time. Even his sister found the revolutionary milieu alien to her art and, in 1924, she fled to Paris.

Lanceray himself hated the new Soviet regime that he had to exist in after 1917. It referred to his own understanding of the historical way of Russia and the massive oppressions towards his relatives and close friends (some of them immigrated and some of them were killed). In February 1932 he left a note in his diaries: ‘There is incredible impoverishment. Of course, this is the government’s goal to bring everyone and everything to poverty, since it is easier to manage the poor and the hungry’.

Lanceray left Saint Petersburg in 1917, and spent three years living in Dagestan, where he became infatuated with Oriental themes. His interest increased during journeys made in the early 1920s to Japan and Ankara, Turkey.  In 1920, he moved to Tiflis, Georgia.  During his stay in Georgia, he lectured at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts (1922–1934) and illustrated the Caucasian novellas of Leo Tolstoy.  Amongst his students was Apollon Kutateladze.

Lanceray left Georgia in 1934, settling in Moscow, where he became engaged in the decoration of the Moscow Kazansky railway station and the Hotel Moskva.  During the same period, Lanceray also worked as a theatrical designer.

Three years before his death, he was honored with the Stalin Prize, and in 1945 he was awarded the title of the People’s Artist of the RSFSR.

Gallery

Street in Tbilisi, 1921

Today is the birthday of Hannah Frank (Glasgow 23 August 1908 – 18 December 2008 Glasgow); artist and sculptor. She was known for her art nouveau monochrome drawings until she decided to concentrate on sculpture in 1952.

Frank and her husband Lionel were members of the Glasgow group of the Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

From 25 April – 5 June 2004 the Lancaster City Museum and Art Gallery hosted the first show of the successful touring exhibition: Hannah Frank: A Glasgow Artist. This toured for five years in the run up to Frank’s 100th birthday, which coincided with the exhibition’s final destination, her alma mater, the University of Glasgow. As part of this touring exhibition, Frank had her first solo exhibition in London at Ivy House, Golders Green, home to the London Jewish Cultural Centre. At the end of the London show Frank presented her 1943 drawing Sun to the Ben Uri London Jewish Museum of Art. Although she was not able to be there, due to travelling difficulties at the age of 98, she said that she was ‘glad that people in London are becoming as enthusiastic about my work as they are in Scotland’.  She was present at the opening of the final exhibition of the tour, at the University of Glasgow Chapel, where she was given a standing ovation by the 150 guests present.

The University of Glasgow recognised Frank’s talent and “international distinction” and the day before her death (too late for her to know) a letter had been sent, offering her an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters.

Gallery

And today marks the anniversary of the death of lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II.  He wrote the words to many fine songs and of course, one of them shall be the SOD, but which one.  Well, it is not much of a stretch to go from “Some Starlit Garden Grey With Dew” to “Some Enchanted Evening”.

The Song of the Day – Frank Sinatra’s version of “Some Enchanted Evening”.

Some enchanted evenin’ in a starlit garden grey with dew, I found my true love.  I felt her call me and I flew to her and made her mine.  But then I let her go.  But then I let her go.  And now, my evenin’s are enchanted no more.

One enchanted evenin’
in a starlit garden
grey with dew, I found her
I felt her call me and
I came to her and we
made love ‘neath the stars
But then I let her go
But then I let her go
And now, my evenin’s
are enchanted no more.

Mac Tag

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Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his muse.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  Have you asked yourself; Is that all there is to love?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

enough rope
and ballads
of weariness

did not care enough
or perhaps, too much
a medley of things
long gone

a cycle of songs…
bury myself while there
then as soon as i belong
means it is time to disappear

yes
this is all there is

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

i need to see the sky
in paintin’s and pictures
in every point of view
in my memories of you

the strength
and passion
and fire of you
were in your eyes

in the moonlit grove,
all courage summoned,
turnin’ suddenly,
you face me and lean
close, so we touch
and our eyes meet

in the end
when the awakenin’ comes,
you learn what you had known,
all along, all there is

hey, guess what
today was just
like yesterday
and the day before that
and the day before that
and the day before that…
missin’ you

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker

Today is the birthday of Dorothy Parker (Long Branch, New Jersey; August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967 New York City); poet, short story writer, critic, and satirist, best known for her wit and wisecracks.  Parker became known for both her literary output in publications such as The New Yorker and as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table.  Following the breakup of the circle, Parker traveled to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting.  Her successes there, including two Academy Award nominations, were curtailed when her involvement in left-wing politics led to a place on the Hollywood blacklist.

In 1917, she met and married a Wall Street stockbroker, Edwin Pond Parker II (1893–1933), but they were separated by his army service in World War I.  She divorced Parker in 1928, and had a number of affairs.  Her lovers included reporter-turned-playwright Charles MacArthur and the publisher Seward Collins.  Her relationship with MacArthur resulted in a pregnancy, about which Parker is alleged to have remarked, “how like me, to put all my eggs into one bastard.”  She had an abortion, and fell into a depression that culminated in her first attempt at suicide.

In 1934, she married Alan Campbell, an actor with aspirations to become a screenwriter.  Like Parker, he was half-Jewish and half-Scottish.  He was reportedly bisexual.  Parker claimed in public that he was “queer as a billy goat”.  Their marriage was tempestuous, with tensions exacerbated by Parker’s increasing alcohol consumption and Campbell’s long-term affair with a married woman.  They divorced in 1947, then remarried in 1950.  Parker moved back to New York in 1952, living at the Volney residential hotel at 23 East 74th Street on the Upper East Side.  She returned to Hollywood in 1961 and reconciled with Campbell.  In the next two years, they worked together on a number of unproduced projects.  Campbell committed suicide by drug overdose in 1963.

Verse

Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)

• “The Flaw in Paganism” in Death and Taxes (1931)

Enough Rope (1926)

Ballads of a Great Weariness

Scratch a lover, and find a foe.

Observation

If I didn’t care for fun and such,

I’d probably amount to much.

But I shall stay the way I am,

Because I do not give a damn.

First printed in New York World, (16 August 1925)

Comment

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,

A medley of extemporanea,

And love is a thing that can never go wrong,

And I am Marie of Roumania.

First printed in New York World, (16 August 1925)

Résumé

Razors pain you,

Rivers are damp,

Acids stain you,

And drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren’t lawful,

Nooses give,

Gas smells awful.

You might as well live.

First printed in New York World, (16 August 1925)

News Item

Men seldom make passes

At girls who wear glasses.

First printed in New York World, (16 August 1925)

Unfortunate Coincidence

By the time you swear you’re his,

Shivering and sighing,

And he vows his passion is

Infinite, undying,

Lady, make a note of this —

One of you is lying.

First printed in Life, (8 April 1926) p. 11

Experience

Some men tear your heart in two,

Some men flirt and flatter,

Some men never look at you,

And that clears up the matter.

First printed in Life, (8 April 1926) p. 11

Rainy Night

I am sister to the rain;

Fey and sudden and unholy,

Petulant at the windowpane,

Quickly lost, remembered slowly.

First printed in New Yorker, (26 September 1926) p. 10

Inventory

Four be the things I am wiser to know:

Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.

Four be the things I’d been better without:

Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.

Three be the things I shall never attain:

Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

Three be the things I shall have till I die:

Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.

First printed in Life, (11 November 1926) p. 12

Sunset Gun (1927)

Partial Comfort

Whose love is given over-well

Will look on Helen’s face in Hell;

While they whose love is thin and wise

May view John Knox in Paradise.

First printed in Life, 24 February 1927 p. 5

A Pig’s-Eye View of Literature: Oscar Wilde

If with the literate I am

Impelled to try an epigram,

I never seek to take the credit;

We all assume that Oscar said it.

First printed in Life, (2 June 1927) p. 13

Fair Weather

They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.

First printed in New York World, (20 January 1928) p. 13

Thoughts for a Sunshiny Morning

It costs me never a stab nor squirm

To tread by chance upon a worm.

“Aha, my little dear,” I say,

“Your clan will pay me back some day.”

First printed in New Yorker, (9 April 1927) p. 31

Today is the birthday of Henri Cartier-Bresson (Chanteloup-en-Brie, France; 22 August 1908 – 3 August 2004 Céreste, France); humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35 mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment.  Cartier-Bresson was one of the founding members of Magnum Photos in 1947.[2] In the 1970s he took up drawing—he had studied painting in the 1920s.

In 1937, Cartier-Bresson married a Javanese dancer, Ratna Mohini.  They lived in a fourth-floor servants’ flat in Paris at 19, rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs (now rue Danielle Casanova), a large studio with a small bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom where Cartier-Bresson developed film. Between 1937 and 1939, Cartier-Bresson worked as a photographer for the French Communists’ evening paper, Ce soir. With Chim and Capa, Cartier-Bresson was a leftist, but he did not join the French Communist party. In 1967, he was divorced from Ratna “Elie”.  In 1970 Cartier-Bresson married Magnum photographer Martine Franck.

Gallery

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

On this day in 1964, The Supremes started a two week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with the Holland-Dozier-Holland song, “Where Did Our Love Go” the girl group’s first No.1.  That is a question I find often on my mind.

And today marks the anniversary of the death of lyricist Jerry Leiber (2011).  He and Mike Stroller wrote many wonderful songs.  The words that Leiber wrote that keep comin’ back to me today are these:

Then I fell in love, with the most wonderful girl in the world.
We would take long walks by the river or just sit for hours gazing into each other’s eyes.
We were so very much in love.
Then one day, she went away. And I thought I’d die — but I didn’t.
And when I didn’t I said to myself, “Is that all there is to love?”

I too thought I would die and of course, I did not.  But I cannot bring myself to ask; Is that all there is to love?

Mac Tag

The Song of the Day is Tony Bennett‘s version of “Is That All There Is”.

I whispered, ‘I am too young,’

And then, ‘I am old enough’;

Wherefore I threw a penny

To find out if I might love.

– W.B. Yeats

It is not far . . . . it is within reach,

Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know,

Perhaps it is every where on water and on land.

– Walt Whitman

For the heart is an organ of fire. – Kat von D

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Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Cronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  Do you have someone?  Are you askin’ yourself; Why do I have no one?   Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

purpose,
to help you discover
you have the strength
to release your inner self

© Copyright 2019 Mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

a cold heart
hardened
by heartache
or stubbornness,
or both

a chosen way
to be without
all that is entailed
in bein’ with

to be without
carryin’ on
and havin’ a little fun
before turnin’ in
with only the hope
of a dream
for company

outta my mind,
mebbe
but more and more
convinced
this is the only
way to be

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

yet another melancholy hour
when twilight falls, when the sky
forms a veil of stars against which
stand the outlines of jagged mountains

the hour at which, in the midst
of the plains, a campfire burns
while a shadow, somber, old,
indefinable, looms nearby

yet in the darkness of his hour,
undeniably, a voice, a reminder
that some things need not be
buried or scattered or left alone

hard to form words to express
the incredible things which,
carried by wind,
float in the twilight air

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Today on TLC; we got the blues.  And, we are turnin’ the reins over to Rhett:

Hey Zazie, I was lookin’ through some of our old letters, as I often do.  I came across one where you were tellin’ me about your friend Adele.  You told me she asked you why was she alone.  Then you told me about her.  You said she had it all; brains, beauty, presence, confidence, strength, wit, wisdom and it.  You said she had “it”.  The it factor.  And yet, she had no one.  Now, I have no one and I started thinkin’ about why someone like Adele had no one.  Then I thought of this poem and the song of the day.

I HAVE NO ONE

Jean-Baptiste Greuze
Self-portrait (Louvre)

Today is the birthday of Jean-Baptiste Greuze (Tournus; 21 August 1725 – 4 March 1805 Louvre); painter of portraits, genre scenes, and history painting.

Gallery 

L’Oiseleur accordant sa guitare (1757), musée national de Varsovie

 

Le Chapeau blanc (1780), musée des beaux-arts de Boston.

 

 Portrait of Benjamin Franklin, 1777

 

La Cruche cassée (1773), Paris, musée du Louvre

• 

  Mme Georges Gougenot de Croissy, née Vïrany de Varennes, 1757

• 

  The Laundress (La Blanchisseuse), 1761

• 

  Comte d’Angiviller, 1763

• 

  Portrait of Marquise de Chauvelin

• 

  Septime Sévère et Caracalla. Louvre

• 

  Nicolas-Pierre-Baptiste Anselme,

• 

  Jeune fille au ruban bleu (non daté), Rennes, musée des Beaux-Arts

• 

  W. A. Mozart, 1763-64. Yale University

• 

  Le petit mathématicien or The young mathematician

• 

  Jeune fille et le cheval

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,

You must travel it for yourself.

– Walt Whitman

Love’s language is hyperbole, but whispered. It’s easy to imagine you’ve misheard.  –  Richard Hoffman

…My body of a sudden blazed;

And twenty minutes more or less

It seemed, so great my happiness,

That I was blessed and could bless.

– W.B. Yeats

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Dear Zazie,  Hope you had a good day.  Mine was good and can be summed up in three words; chores, readin’, and grillin’.  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his muse.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  What part of what comes after to enjoy the most?  Rhett.

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

often best

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

the night
your face upturned
the song
the fadin’ light
attenuates
sweet and dark

listen
every pause
in which we lose
ourselves

rain fallin’ now
and the way you look
and what comes after

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

a guitar, and her voice
high, soft, plaintive
losin’ myself in the harmony
slow and dreamy, always
melancholy

what comes after

her in love with him,
him with her;
her with me,
i with no one

nothin’ will come of it all

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Today is the birthday of Joseph Crawhall III (Morpeth, Northumberland, England 20 August 1861 – 24 May 1913 London); artist, the son of artist Joseph Crawhall II.

In the 1880s and 1890s, his work became associated with the Glasgow Boys. He was influenced by the Impressionists, and his work, like theirs, was rejected by the art establishment, in his case in the form of the Royal Scottish Academy.

In 1887/88 he visited Tangiers with Pollock Nisbet, Robert Alexander and Robert’s son Edwin.

In the 1880s he travelled throughout Morocco and Spain, abandoning oil painting and moving to watercolours with a lighter palette.

Gallery

By his friend Edward Walton

The huntsman

The Riding School – Yale Center for British Art

The Loose Shoe – Yale Center for British Art

Tangiers Beach, A Horse Shying at a Crab – Yale Center for British Art

Tangier – Yale Center for British Art

Study of a Woman with Wide Hat – Yale Center for British Art

Horse and Rider, a Stout Huntsman on a Galloping Horse – Yale Center for British Art

Barnett Fair, putting him through his paces – Yale Center for British Art

Auntie Bee with her two Nieces in a Pony Cart – Yale Center for British Art

The governess

The flower shop

The butcher’s boy

Hackenden

American jockeys or racehorses

A Lincolnshire pasture

Bullring in Algeciras, 1891

The forge

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

On this day in 1887, Franco-Uruguayan poet,Jules Laforgue died in Paris.  He wrote a poem called “Petites misères d’octobre”. I was moved by the closing stanza…

Donc, petite, deux sous de jupe en œillet tiède,
Et deux sous de regards, et tout ce qui s’ensuit….
Car il n’est qu’un remède
A l’ennui.

which might be translated as…

So, petite, two bits of underskirt and a still-warm zipper
and two cents of glances and what comes after . . .
surely that is the remedy
for ennui.

The “what comes after” part seized me and I thought of the way we looked at each other and what came after.  Then I thought, what a great title for a song…… and Voila!  The song of the day.

The Song of the Day – The Honeydogs – “What Comes After”

Dino Campana

Today is the birthday of Dino Campana (Marradi; 20 August 1885 – 1 March 1932 Scandicci); visionary poet.  His fame rests on his only published book of poetry, the Canti Orfici (“Orphic Songs”), as well as his wild and erratic personality, including his ill-fated love affair with Sibilla Aleramo.  The 2002 film Un Viaggio Chiamato Amore, by Michele Placido, depicts their affair.  He is often seen as an Italian example of a poète maudit.

In 1916, Campana met Aleramo, the author of the novel Una donna, and began an intense and tumultuous relationship with her.  Aleramo ended their affair at the start of 1917 after a brief encounter in Christmas 1916 in Marradi.  Testimony still remains of the tragic correspondence between Campana and Aleramo, and their letters have been recently published.  This correspondence begins with a letter from Aleramo dated June 10, 1916, in which the author expresses her admiration for “Canti Orfici”, declaring the poems to have ‘enchanted and bedazzled’ her.  She was then holidaying in the Villa La Topaia at Borgo San Lorenzo, while Campana was in a critical condition at Firenzuola, recovering after being struck by partial paralysis to the right side of the body.

Dino Campana 2000 by Sandro Chia

Verse

• Notturni
  La chimera
  Non so se tra rocce il tuo pallido | Viso m’apparve, o sorriso | Di lontananze ignote | Fosti, la china eburnea | Fronte fulgente o giovine | Suora de la Gioconda O delle primavere | Spente, per i tuoi mitici pallori | Oregina o Regina adolescente… (p. 17)
• Il canto della tenebra
  La luce del crepuscolo si attenua: | Inquieti spiriti sia dolce la tenebra | Al cuore che non ama più! (p. 20)
• La Verna
  22 settembre (La Verna)
  Il corridoio, alitato dal gelo degli antri, si veste tutto della leggenda Francescana. Il Santo [Francesco d’Assisi] appare come l’ombra di Cristo, rassegnata, nata in terra d’umanesimo. La sua rinuncia è semplice e dolce: dalla sua solitudine intona il canto alla natura con fede: Frate Sole, Suor Acqua, Frate Lupo. Un caro santo italiano. (p. 28)
• II Ritorno
  L’acqua del mulino corre piana e invisibile nella gora. Rivedo un fanciullo, lo stesso fanciullo, laggiù steso sull’erba. Sembra dormire. Ripenso alla mia fanciulleza: quanto tempo è trascorso da quando i bagliori magnetici delle stelle mi dissero per la prima volta dell’infinità delle morti!… (p. 33)
• Marradi (Antica volta. Specchio velato)
  Il mattino arride sulle cime dei monti. In alto sulle cuspidi di un triangolo desolato si illumina il castello, più alto e più lontano. Venere passa in barroccio accoccolata per la strada conventuale. (p. 33)
• Immagini del viaggio e della montagna
  O se come il torrente che rovina | E si riposa nell’azzurro eguale, | Se tale a le tue mura la proclina | Anima al nulla nel su andar fatale, | Se a le tue mura in pace cristallina | Tender potessi, in una pace eguale, | E il ricordo specchiar di una divina | Serenità perduta o tu immortale | Anima! o Tu! (p. 35)
  • Ecco la notte: ed ecco vigilarmi | E luci e luci: ed io lontano e solo: Quiete è la messe, verso l’infinito | (Quieto è lo spirto) vanno muti carmi | A la notte: a la notte: intendo: Solo | Ombra che torna, ch’era dipartito… (p. 36)
• Genova
  Sotto la torre orientale, ne le terrazze verdi ne la lavagna cinerea | Dilaga la piazza al mare che addensa le navi inesausto | Ride l’arcano palazzo rosso dal portico grande: Come le cataratte del Niagara | Canta, ride, svaria ferrea la sinfonia feconda urgente al mare: | Genova canta il tuo canto! (p. 64)

 

Salvatore Quasimodo

Today is the birthday of Salvatore Quasimodo (Modica, Sicily; August 20, 1901 – June 14, 1968 Naples); author and poet.  In 1959 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature “for his lyrical poetry, which with classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our own times”.  Along with Giuseppe Ungaretti and Eugenio Montale, he is one of the foremost Italian poets of the 20th century.

Verse

Ognuno sta solo sul cuor della terra
trafitto da un raggio di sole:
ed è subito sera.

Acque e terre

• Avidamente allargo la mia mano: | dammi dolore cibo cotidiano.
• Desiderio delle tue mani chiare | nella penombra della fiamma: | sapevano di rovere e di rose; | di morte. Antico inverno.
• Di te amore m’attrista | mia terra, se oscuri profumi | perde la sera d’aranci | o d’oleandri, sereno | cammina con rose il torrente | che quasi ne tocca la foce. (Isola)
• Dolore di cose che ignoro | mi nasce: non basta una morte | se ecco più volte mi pesa | con l’erba, sul cuore, una zolla.
• E quel gettarmi alla terra, | quel gridare alto il nome del silenzio, | era dolcezza di sentirmi vivo.
• Fatica d’amore, tristezza, | tu chiami una vita | che dentro, profonda, ha nomi | di cieli e giardini. | E fosse mia carne | che dono di male trasforma.
• Ma se torno a tue rive | e dolce voce al canto | chiama da strada timorosa | non so se infanzia o amore, | ansia d’altri cieli mi volge, | e mi nascondo nelle perdute cose. (Isola)
• Mi trovi deserto, Signore, | nel tuo giorno, | serrato ad ogni luce. | Di te privo spauro, | perduta strada d’amore, | e non m’è grazia | nemmeno trepido cantarmi | che fa secche mie voglie.
• Se mi desti t’ascolto, | e ogni pausa è cielo in cui mi perdo, | serenità d’alberi a chiaro della notte.
• Si china il giorno | e colgo ombre dai cieli: | che tristezza il mio cuore | di carne!
• S’udivano stagioni aeree passare, | nudità di mattini, | labili raggi urtarsi.
• Tindari, mite ti so | fra larghi colli pensile sull’acque | dell’isole dolci del dio, | oggi m’assali | e ti chini in cuore. (Vento a Tindari)
• Ti rivedo. Parole | avevi chiuse e rapide, | che mettevano cuore | nel peso di una vita | che sapeva di circo.
• Un po’ di sole, una raggera d’angelo, | e poi la nebbia; e gli alberi, | e noi fatti d’aria al mattino.

Òboe sommerso

• Ali oscillano in fioco cielo, | labili: il cuore trasmigra | ed io son gerbido, | e i giorni una maceria. (Òboe sommerso)
• Autunno mansueto, io mi posseggo | e piego alle tue acque a bermi il cielo, | fuga soave d’alberi e d’abissi. (Autunno)
• Avara pena, tarda il tuo dono | in questa mia ora | di sospirati abbandoni. (Òboe sommerso)
• Camminano angeli, muti | con me; non hanno respiro le cose; | in pietra mutata ogni voce, | silenzio di cieli sepolti. (Alla notte)
• Città d’isola | sommersa nel mio cuore, | ecco discendo nell’antica luce | delle maree, presso sepolcri | in riva d’acque | che una letizia scioglie | d’alberi sognati. (Nell’antica luce delle maree)
• Di te amore m’attrista, | mia terra, se oscuri profumi | perde la sera d’aranci, | cammina con rose il torrente | che quasi n’è tocca la foce. (Isola)
• Ed è morte | uno spazio nel cuore. (Fresce di fiumi in sonno)
• Farsi amore un’altra morte sento | ignota a me, ma più di questa tarda, | che mi spinge sovente alle sue forme. (Convalescenza)
• I morti maturano, | il mio cuore con essi. | Pietà di sé | nell’ultimo umore hsa la terra. (Metamorfosi nell’urna del Santo)
• In te mi getto: un fresco | di navate posa nel cuore; | passi nudi d’angeli | vi s’ascoltano, al buio. (Alla mia terra)
• Io tento una vita: | ognuno si scalza e vacilla | in ricerca. (Curva minore)
• Lievita la mia vita di caduto, | esilio morituro. (Foce del fiume Roja)
• Non so odiarti: così lieve | il mio cuore d’uragano. (Dormono selve)
• Non una dolcezza mi matura, | e fu di pena deriva | ad ogni giorno | il tempo che rinnova | a fiato d’aspre resine. (L’eucalyptus)
• Odore buono del cielo | sull’erbe, | pioggia di prima sera. (Preghiera alla pioggia)
• Un sole rompe gonfio nel sonno | e urlano alberi; | avventurosa aurora | in cui disancorata navighi, | e le stagioni marine | dolci fermentano rive nasciture. (Alla mia terra)
• Seguiremo case silenziose, | dove morti stanno ad occhi aperti | e bambini già adulti | nel riso che li attrista, | e fronde battono a vetri taciti | a mezzo delle notti. (Dove morti stanno ad occhi aperti)
• Dammi il mio giorno; | ch’io mi cerchi ancora | un volto d’anni sopito | che un cavo d’acque | riporti in trasparenza, | e ch’io pianga amore di me stesso. (Dammi il mio giorno)
• Ti cammino sul cuore, | ed è un trovarsi d’astri | in arcipelaghi insonni, | notte, fraterni a me | fossile emerso da uno stanco flutto; […]. (Dammi il mio giorno)

Erato e Apòllion

• A te piega il cuore in solitudine, | esilio d’oscuri sensi | in cui trasmuta ed ama | ciò che parve nostro ieri, | e ora è sepolto nella notte. (Sillabe a Erato)
• Ad una fronda, docile | la luce oscilla | alle nozze con l’aria; | nel senso di morte, | eccomi, spaventato d’amore. (Nel senso di morte)
• Alle sponde odo l’acqua colomba, | Ànapo mio, nella memoria geme | al suo cordoglio | uno stormire altissimo. (L’ànapo)
• Dal giorno, superstite | con gli alberi mi umilio. (Sul colle delle “Terre bianche”)
• I monti a cupo sonno | supini giacciono affranti. (Apòllion)
• Mansueti animali, | le pupille d’aria, | bevono in sogno. (L’ànapo)
• Nella palude calda confitto al limo, | caro agli insetti, in me dolora | un airone morto. (Airone morto)
• Per averti ti perdo, | e non mi dolgo: sei bella ancora, | ferma in posa dolce di sonno: | serenità di morte estrema gioia. (Sillabe a Erato)
• Sillabe d’ombre e foglie, | sull’erbe abbandonati | si amano i morti. (Latomìe)
• Terrena notte, al tuo esiguo fuoco | mi piacqui talvolta, e scesi fra i mortali. (Canto di Apòllion)

Poesie

• Ancora un anno è bruciato, | senza un lamento, senza un grido | levato a vincere d’improvviso un giorno.
• Illeso sparì da noi quel giorno | nell’acqua coi velieri capovolti.
• Nello spazio dei colli, | tutto inverno, il silenzio | del lume dei velieri: | fredda immagine eterna | navigante! E qui risorge.
• Isole che ho abitato | verdi su mari immobili | D’alghe arse, di fossili marini | e spiagge ove corrono in amore | cavalli di luna e di vulcani.
• Ancora un verde fiume mi rapina | e concordia d’erbe e pioppi, | ove s’oblia lume di neve morta.

Giorno dopo giorno

• E come potevamo noi cantare | con il piede straniero sopra il cuore, | fra i morti abbandonati nelle piazze | sull’erba dura di ghiaccio, al lamento | d’agnello dei fanciulli, all’urlo nero | della madre che andava incontro al figlio | crocifisso sul palo del telegrafo? (da Alle fronde dei salici)
• Scende la sera: ancora ci lasciate, | o immagini care della terra, alberi, | animali, povera gente chiusa | dentro i mantelli dei soldati, madri | dal ventre inaridito dalle lacrime. (da Neve)
• Giorno dopo giorno: parole maledette e il sangue | e l’oro. Vi riconosco, miei simili, o mostri | della terra. Al vostro morso è caduta la pietà, | e la croce gentile ci ha lasciati. (da Giorno dopo giorno)
• Invano cerchi tra la polvere, | povera mano, la città è morta. (da Milano, agosto 1943)
• Ora l’autunno guasta il verde ai colli, | o miei dolci animali. Ancora udremo, | prima di notte, l’ultimo lamento | degli uccelli, il richiamo della grigia | pianura che va incontro a quel rumore | alto di mare. E l’odore di legno | alla pioggia, l’odore delle tane, | com’è vivo qui fra le case, | fra gli uomini, o miei dolci animali. | Questo volto che gira gli occhi lenti, | questa mano che segna il cielo dove | romba un tuono, sono vostri, o miei lupi, | mie volpi bruciate dal sangue. | Ogni mano, ogni volto, sono vostri. (da O miei dolci animali)

We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us. – Charles Bukowski

I know I have the best of time and space—and that I was never measured, and never will be measured. – Walt Whitman

Mourn –– and then onward… – W.B. Yeats

If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. You leave the same impression of something beautiful, but annihilating. – Sylvia Plath

It is perfume from a dress that makes me so digress? – T.S. Eliot

We had fed the heart on fantasies,

The heart’s grown brutal from the fare; 

More substance in our enmities

Than in our love;

– W.B. Yeats

After so many years even the fire of passion dies, and with it what was believed the light of the truth. – Umberto Eco

Who of us is able to say now whether Hector or Achilles was right, Agamemnon or Priam, when they fought over the beauty of a woman who is now dust and ashes? – Umberto Eco

When you are sad,

The mother of the stars weeps too,

And all her starlight is with sorrow mad,

And tears of fire fall gently in the dew.

– W.B. Yeats

Will you sit down with me? and we two will rail against our mistress the world and all our misery. – William Shakespeare

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Dear Zazie,  Hope you had a good day.  Mine was good and can be summed up in three words; chores, readin’, and grillin’.  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his muse.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  Rhett.

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

“How can you live like this?”
it is what keeps me alive
“No, it’s what keeps you alone!”

pale horse
where are you goin’
does your rider know…

wait
the moon will come
please wait,
that i may see
your face by moonlight

rememberin’
your hands

no one else knows,
hears the same songs,
understands the yearnin’,
the sadness, the feelin’s
unrestrained

say you will come

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

if your words are not good enough
you are not close enough

lightnin’ on the horizon
screen porch sittin’
torch lights lit
music, a drunken poet
singin’ ’bout the devil
and fallen angels

thunder rumblin’ now
pourin’ more mezcal
rememberin’
your hands…
oh my

another Saturday night

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Venus, Mars, and Vulcan, by Tintoretto

On this day in 295 BC, the first temple to Venus, the Roman goddess of love, beauty and fertility, is dedicated by Quintus Fabius Maximus Gurges during the Third Samnite War.

Jeanne Bécu, comtesse du Barry
Madame du Barry by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, 1781

Today is the birthday of Jeanne Bécu, comtesse du Barry (Vaucouleurs 19 August 1743 – 8 December 1793 Paris); the last Maîtresse-en-titre of Louis XV of France and one of the victims of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.  The officer of the king’s troops, Monsieur de Belleval, described her in his memoirs: “I can still see her carelessly seated or rather reclining in a large easy chair, wearing a white dress with wreaths of roses. She was one of the prettiest women at a court which boasted so many, and the very perfection of her loveliness made her the most fascinating. Her hair, which she often left unpowdered, was of a beautiful golden color and she had so much that she scarcely knew what to do with it all. Her wide blue eyes looked at one with an engaging frankness. She had a straight little nose and a complexion of a dazzling purity. In a word, I like everyone else fell immediately under her charm.”

As I fell immediately under your charm.

Mac Tag

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Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.  Do you wait to run?  Do you run hot for someone?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

all about routine y’all
even of a saturday mornin’…

rise before first light
turn on the music of the day
make a breakfast burrito
and dark roast coffee
in the French press
set the pitcher for sun tea
in the kitchen window
choose a cigar
from the humidor
time to light and write
and think about you

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Today we are featurin’ a letter that my friend, and Rhett’s brother, Jett received from his friend Adele.

Dear Jett,

I am sorry I have not responded to your last few letters.  I have been busy and deep in projects.  Your letters always make me smile.  My intentions are to write you back with something clever and amusing but I get interrupted and I get busy and never make it back to my intent.  I can only imagine with your creative mind that you have me off on some wonderful adventure but I am not.  I have pulled my shoulders back and moved forward with life alone.  I have often thought of our discussions about finding the one, a soul mate, or settling for someone who is close enough.  I guess I have never met anyone close enough or I don’t see the sense in putting energy in something that is not pure.  I am not sad or heart broken about it.  It is not like I feel like a wall flower and no one wants me.  There are men; but men being men, I am not interested in what most of them who attempt to darken my doorway are interested in.  But, I have not completely given up.  I still hold on to a sliver of hope that one day someone will see something far greater in me.

 

Die Frau vom Meer (1840)

Lucienne Boyer
Lucienne Boyer (1945)

And today is the birthday of Lucienne Boyer (Émilienne-Henriette Boyer, Montparnasse Quarter of Paris 18 August 1901 – 6 December 1983 Paris); diseuse and singer, perhaps best known for her version of song “Parlez-moi d’amour”.

Her melodious voice gave her the chance, while working as a part-time model, to sing in the cabarets of Montparnasse. An office position at a prominent Parisian theater opened the door for her and within a few years she was cast as Lucienne Boyer, singing in the major Parisian music halls.

In 1927, Boyer sang at a concert by Félix Mayol where she was seen by the American impresario Lee Shubert who offered her a contract to come to Broadway. Boyer spent nine months in New York City, returning to perform there and to South America numerous times throughout the 1930s. By 1933 she had made a large number of recordings for Columbia Records of France including her signature song, “Parlez-moi d’amour”. Written by Jean Lenoir, the song won the first-ever Grand Prix du Disque of the Charles Cros Academy.

Boyer lost her soldier father in World War I and had to go to work in a munitions factory to help her family get by.

In 1939, she married the cabaret singer Jacques Pills of the popular duo Pills et Tabet.

She is interred in the Cimetière de Bagneux in Montrouge, near Paris.

Parlez-moi d’amour

{Refrain}

Parlez moi d’amour
Redites-moi des choses tendres
Votre beau discours
Mon coeur n’est pas las de l’entendre
Pourvu que toujours
Vous répétiez ces mots suprêmes:
Je vous aime

Vous savez bien
Que dans le fond je n’en crois rien
Mais cependant je veux encore
Ecouter ces mots que j’adore
Votre voix aux sons caressants
Qui les murmure en frémissant
Me berce de sa belle histoire
Et malgré moi je veux y croire

{Refrain}

Il est si doux
Mon cher trésor d’être un peu fou
La vie est parfois trop amère
Si l’on ne croit pas aux chimères
Le chagrin est vite apaisé
Et se console d’un baiser
Du Coeur on guerit la blessure
Par un serment qui le rassure

{Refrain}

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Dear Zazie,  Hope you are havin’ a good day.  Mac Tag says hey and thanks for the shout out in the note you left.  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his muse.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  Do you watch over someone?  Does someone watch over you?  Have your ever been cozy with cosi?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

two eyes serve a moment
the doorway is starless still
the clock ticks
the page turns

wind comin’ through the window
keeps company all night long
till the bloomin’ orange sky
takes over at first light

not to be changed,
nor likely understood,
this life subdued

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

no accountin’
for where the mind wanders
for the random songs
or memories that appear
ever wonder where
they come from

today for example
why did i start thinkin’
about Jake and Lady Brett
not Hemingway’s birthday
nor death day, so why

s’pose i just needed
to take my inner Jake
out for a little walk
see if i can find
my Lady Brett

perhaps i needed
to make sure
the sun was still risin’

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Today marks the anniversary of the death of Venetian opera librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte in 1838.  He composed the libretto for Mozart’s opera Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti (Thus Do They All, or The School For Lovers).  Of course, I am overwhelmed with the memory of the night I gave you an opera.  A memory once so complete, now turned bittersweet.  The night I arranged for you and I to attend the dress rehearsal of Cosi.  We were in our own little world, enveloped in the sights and the sounds of the production and the feel of each other as we sat so close and I pleaded with time to wait and let us stay in that moment.  I will never forget the smell of you and the feel of you as we pressed together to whisper comments about the performance.  One of my favorite memories.

Of course…
Overwhelmed with the memory;
the night I gave you an opera
A memory so complete,
now turned bittersweet
We were cozy with Cosi,
in our own little world;
enveloped in the sights
and sounds, the feel
of each other as we
sat so close and pleaded
with time to wait and let
us stay in that moment
I will never forget
the smell of you and the
feel of you as we pressed
together to whisper
comments about the performance
One of my favorite memories of all

© copyright 2016 mac Tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

In tribute to that memory and you, here is the first song of the day:

Song of the day – Cecilia Bartoli – “Una donna a quindici anni“

On this day in 1959;  Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, the much acclaimed and highly influential best selling jazz recording of all time, is released. If you do not have a copy of Kind of Blue, there is not much i can do for you.

Also, Ira Gershwin died on this day in 1983.  My favorite Gershwin song is “Someone to Watch over Me”.  So, here is the second song of the day:

Song of the day – Amy Winehouse – “Someone to Watch over Me”

I wanted to watch over you.

Today is the birthday of Larry Rivers (born Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg; Bronx, New York; 17 August 1923 – 14 August 2002 Southampton, New York); artist, musician, filmmaker, and occasional actor.  Considered by many scholars to be the “Godfather” and “Grandfather” of Pop art, he was one of the first artists to merge non-objective, non-narrative art with narrative and objective abstraction.

He was a pop artist of the New York School, reproducing everyday objects of American popular culture as art. He was one of eleven New York artists featured in the opening exhibition at the Terrain Gallery in 1955.

During the early 1960s Rivers lived in the Hotel Chelsea, notable for its artistic residents such as Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Arthur C. Clarke, Dylan Thomas, Sid Vicious and multiple people associated with Andy Warhol’s Factory and where he brought several of his French nouveau réalistes friends like Yves Klein who wrote there in April 1961 his Manifeste de l’hôtel Chelsea, Arman, Martial Raysse, Jean Tinguely, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Christo, Daniel Spoerri or Alain Jacquet, several of whom, like Rivers, left some pieces of art in the lobby of the hotel for payment of their rooms. In 1965, Rivers had his first comprehensive retrospective in five important American museums.

His final work for the exhibition was The History of the Russian Revolution, which was later on extended permanent display at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC. He spent 1967 in London collaborating with the American painter Howard Kanovitz.

In 1968, Rivers traveled to Africa for a second time with Pierre Dominique Gaisseau to finish their documentary Africa and I, which was a part of the groundbreaking NBC series Experiments in Television. During this trip they narrowly escaped execution as suspected mercenaries.

During the 1970s, Rivers worked closely with Diana Molinari and Michel Auder on many video tape projects, including the infamous Tits, and also worked in neon.

Rivers’s legs appeared in John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1971 film Up Your Legs Forever.

Gallery

Ted Hughes
Hughes in later life

Today is the birthday of Edward James “Ted” Hughes, OM (Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire; 17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998 London); poet and children’s writer.  Perhaps one of the best poets of his generation, and one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers.  He served as Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.

Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath from 1956 until her suicide in 1963 at the age of 30.  His part in the relationship became controversial to some feminists and some American admirers of Plath.  His last poetic work, Birthday Letters (1998), explored their complex relationship.  These poems make reference to Plath’s suicide, but none addresses directly the circumstances of her death.  A poem discovered in October 2010, Last letter, describes what happened during the three days before her death.

In the summer of 1962 Hughes began an affair with Assia Wevill.  Under a cloud of his affair, Hughes and Plath separated in the autumn of 1962.  On 25 March 1969, six years after Plath’s suicide by asphyxiation from a gas stove, Assia Wevill committed suicide in the same way.  Wevill also killed her child, Alexandra Tatiana Elise (nicknamed Shura), the four-year-old daughter of Hughes.  In August 1970 Hughes married Carol Orchard, a nurse, and they remained together until his death

“The inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded case, the voice of pain — and the physical body, so to speak, of poetry, is the treatment by which the poet tries to reconcile that pain with the world.”  Amen.

Verse

The Hawk in the Rain (1957)

• Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
  A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
  Two eyes serve a movement, that now
  And again now, and now, and now
  Sets neat prints into the snow.
  • “The Thought-Fox”, line 10

• With a sudden sharp hot stink of fox,
  It enters the dark hole of the head.
  The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
  The page is printed.
  • “The Thought-Fox”, line 21

• This house has been far out at sea all night,
  The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
  Winds stampeding the fields under the window
  Floundering black astride and blinding wet
• Till day rose; then under an orange sky
  The hills had new places, and wind wielded
  Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
  Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.
  • “Wind”

• The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.
  Over the cage floor the horizons come.
  • “The Jaguar”

Lupercal (1960)

• Pike, three inches long, perfect
  Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
  Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.
  • “Pike”, line 1

• The jaws’ hooked clamp and fangs
  Not to be changed at this date;
  A life subdued to its instrument.
  • “Pike”, line 13

• Stilled legendary depth:
  It was as deep as England. It held
  Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old
  That past nightfall I dared not cast.
  • “Pike”, line 33

• I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
  Inaction, no falsifying dream
  Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
  Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.
  • “Hawk Roosting”, line 1

• It took the whole of Creation
  To produce my foot, my each feather:
  Now I hold Creation in my foot.
  Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly –
  I kill where I please because it is all mine.
  There is no sophistry in my body:
  My manners are tearing off heads –
  The allotment of death.
  • “Hawk Roosting”, line 10

• Nothing has changed since I began.
  My eye has permitted no change.
  I am going to keep things like this.
  • “Hawk Roosting”, line 22

• The gash in its throat was shocking, but not pathetic.
  • “View of a Pig”

• The deeps are cold:
  In that darkness camaraderie does not hold:
  Nothing touches but, clutching, devours.
  • “Relic”

Wodwo (1967)

• The brassy wood-pigeons
  Bubble their colourful voices, and the sun
  Rises upon a world well-tried and old.
  • “Stealing Trout on a May Morning”

• No, the serpent did not
  Seduce Eve to the apple.
  All that’s simply
  Corruption of the facts.Adam ate the apple.
  Eve ate Adam.
  The serpent ate Eve.
  This is the dark intestine.The serpent, meanwhile,
  Sleeps his meal off in Paradise—
  Smiling to hear
  God’s querulous calling.
  • “Theology”

Mac Tag

With my hands, I can play music, make tattoos, draw drawings, write, design – all with intentional Love. – Kat Von D

Every wound has a rhythm you can hum. – James Bertolino

Well, making a poem is like having a love affair with yourself. – John Hall Wheelock

Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.  – Voltaire

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