Robert Creeley: The Warning
For love—I would
split open your head and put
a candle in
behind the eyes.
Love is dead in us
if we forget
the virtues of an amulet
and quick surprise.
Yesterday we should have celebrated Keith Haring (b. May 4, 1958), who was swallowed up by AIDS in 1990, but left a bright legacy as one of the most iconic contemporary artists…
Above: Untitled, 1982 - sumi ink on paper (Keith Haring Foundation)
Today is also the birthday of one of my favorite American poets, Gary Snyder, Beat/S.F. Renaissance/Eco-shaman - 82 today!
—
Gary Snyder: A spring night in Shokoku-ji
Eight years ago this May
We walked under cherry blossoms
At night in an orchard in Oregon.
All that I wanted then
Is forgotten now, but you.
Here in the night
In a garden of the old capital
I feel the trembling ghost of Yugao
I remember your cool body
Naked under a summer cotton dress.
(Source: lumpy-pudding)
“A writer should never install himself before a panorama, however grandiose it may be. Like Saint Jerome, a writer should work in his cell. Turn the back. Writing is a view of the spirit. “The world is my representation.” Humanity lives in its fiction. This is why a conqueror always wants to transform the face of the world into his image. Today, I even veil the mirrors.” — Blaise Cendrars (Paris Review, The Art of Fiction No. 38)
W. H. Auden: Lullaby
Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.
Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit’s carnal ecstasy.
Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.
Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find the mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.Above: Photograph of Auden in profile, with inscription “Utopian youth grown old Italian. With love from Wystan” (The Beinecke)
Max Beckmann: Tanz in Baden-Baden, 1923 - Oil on Linen (Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen München)
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