"the true, desired form of you"

Grizzled and white the old man leaves
the sweet place, where he has provided for his life,
and leaves the little family, filled with dismay
that sees its dear father failing it:

then, from there, dragging his aged limbs
through the last days of his life,
aiding himself by what strength of will he can,
broken by years, and wearied by the road:

he reaches Rome, following his desire,
to gaze on the image of Him
whom he hopes to see again in heaven:

so, alas, I sometimes go searching,
lady, as far as is possible, in others
for the true, desired form of you.


Petrarch, from the Canzoniere, translated by A.S. Kline.

Female Nude with Blue Cloth, Koloman Moser, c.1013

"The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore"

Fifteen completely delightful minutes long:

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.

"Whole and alive, like an untorn language"

What explains poetry is that life is hard
But better than the alternatives,
The no and the nothing. Look at this light
And color, a splash of brilliant yellow

Punctuating an emerald text, white swans
And mottled brown ducks floating quietly along
Whole and alive, like an untorn language
That lacks nothing, that excludes

Nothing. Period. Don’t you think
It is our business to defend it
Even the day our masters start a war?
To defend the day we see the daffodils?


From "Daffodils" by Alicia Ostriker. The complete poem is here.


I recently did a Q&A with Ostriker for Chapter 16. She's a brilliant writer, with interesting things to say about religion, poetry and politics. You can read the interview here.


Photo by BitterGrace. Share freely.

To Osip Mandelstam

Where did this feeling come from?
…They”re not the first, these curls
I’ve caressed, and I’ve kissed
Lips darker than yours.

Stars have flared and died
(Where did this feeling come from?)
And eyes as well, flared and died
Before my very eyes.

And often in the dead of night
I’ve heard more wonderful songs
(Where did this feeling come from?)
Lying in a singer’s arms.

Where did this feeling come from?
What shall I do with it, singer
Who just stopped by, pretty boy
With the bedroom eyes.


"To Osip Mandelstam" by Marina Tsvetaeva, from The Stray Dog Cabaret: A Book of Russian Poems, translated by Paul Schmidt.

*With thanks to Howard, a wise and delightful friend of the blog.

Liebespaar, Koloman Moser, c.1913

"He's such a quiet little chap"

I love my little Teddy Bear,
He's such a friendly fellow,
His fur, beautiful and soft,
Is neither brown or yellow.
He plays but never quarrels with me,
And keeps me gay and jolly,
And I don't have to punish him
As often as my Dolly.
He's such a quiet little chap,
No impish schemes he hatches,
He never barks, he has no fleas,
At least he never scratches.

"Bears" by Eula Smith-Zimmerman

Illus. by Raphael Kirchner (1876-1917)

"A severed hand is an ugly thing"

...A severed hand

Is an ugly thing, and man dissevered from the earth and stars and his history...for contemplation or in fact...

Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness, the greatest beauty is

Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe. Love that, not man

Apart from that, or else you will share man’s pitiful confusions, or drown in despair when his days darken.

From "The Answer" by Robinson Jeffers. The complete poem (uncorrupted by Blogger's stubborn template) is here.

January 20 is the 50th anniversary of the death of Robinson Jeffers. I'm not sure I disagree with Mark Jarman's assessment that Jeffers is "a very great, bad poet," but his poems thrill me, even so. You can find Jeffers expounding on what Jarman calls his "unjust" vision here.


Clouds Over the Sea, Ivan Alvazovsky, 1889

Sweet

A nice little compilation of vintage erotica. Some of these pictures are silly, a few are weird, but most of them are just charming. I can't help noticing how many of the women are reading...

"Now I am alone, following the downwar slur"

Walking at Night
William Stafford

Now I am alone, following the downwar slur
Of blowing sleet past lights, and I remember:
The tremendous little train, quiet now with evening,
Sagging along that valley on the way home;
Those fragile Sunday mornings,
The men and women giving those days away,
Never caring what comes over the curve of the earth,
Measuring juke box life by drinks in a war boom bar,
Wearing wings from death by terror across the ocean;
Those walls sweeping together with walls in corners of knot-eyed wood;
Those persons looking at each other, their lives a richness;
And transported choirs of heroes on a buoyant sea.

Now, in a time of darkness and cold,
Those islands of fairness, piercing and staggering,
Live breathlessly like children dashing through a room;
And I have become a student of having
And not having.


From Another World Instead: The Early Poems of William Stafford, 1937-1947

Stafford was born on this day in 1914. There's a nice long profile on him at the Poetry Foundation.

Moonlight and Frost, Alexander Helwig Wyant, c.1890

MLK, in honor of the day

"Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary." ~ Martin Luther King Jr.


*This quote is from "On being a good neighbor," one of the sermons in Strength to Love. I encourage you to click over and read King in context, for a change.

The Charity, Mihail Mohov, 1842

"Don't ask why my strange heart loves you"

Don’t ask why my strange heart loves you.
Do you know how corals are formed at the bottom of the ocean?
Waves are talking about a sleeping beauty
but you live far away from the waves’ voice.
Your thought is a steep cave
against which my life is crashing in vain.

From "Don't Ask Again" by Vesna Parun


Hermaphroditus and the Nymph Salmacis, Bartholomeus Spranger, c.1580

The story of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis (from Book IV of Metamorphoses, trans. by A.S. Kline) is here.