tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76566852784776813652024-03-14T05:34:15.620-04:00The Lydian StonesMarly Youmanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377938366750387442noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656685278477681365.post-52565194430660044912012-02-14T07:10:00.000-05:002012-04-25T10:45:25.240-04:00Nester chooses Blake<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihkzyFKdAetGl1YTClGHAyVxq5YkmOGS4HuKmgxRi3H0sZbfIBtokJ8UG0FYUnm9IhPcqPmeBz1JY8l6s3c3IXVQDQellBG0QAH7QoJ19DshcmHxL8xoLtcBHHrM96BFwb0cN5yDV_uTQ/s1600/nester+final+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihkzyFKdAetGl1YTClGHAyVxq5YkmOGS4HuKmgxRi3H0sZbfIBtokJ8UG0FYUnm9IhPcqPmeBz1JY8l6s3c3IXVQDQellBG0QAH7QoJ19DshcmHxL8xoLtcBHHrM96BFwb0cN5yDV_uTQ/s400/nester+final+cover.jpg" width="272" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #38761d;">Buy the book</span></b> <b><i><a href="http://robbi-shadowknows.blogspot.com/">HERE</a></i></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Visit Robbi at</span> <a href="http://redroom.com/member/robbi-nester">Red Room</a></b></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">ABOUT ROBBI NESTER, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">HER NEW BOOK, AND HER CHOICE OF POEM</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">In my first year as an
undergraduate in college, I entered another world. Up to that time, I did not
find school amenable. In fact, I hated it. Given a choice, I would have cut
class any day, and spent all my time strolling through the Franklin Institute
or perusing the stacks at the library.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">But college was a whole different
animal. These teachers actually encouraged questions, and spurred on my
enthusiastic response to the texts we studied. My favorite class of those
idyllic early years was a multi-disciplinary course on the English Romantic
period, exploring it from a scientific, philosophical, political, as well as a
literary perspective. My favorite writer from that period, who had something to
say about all those disciplines, was William Blake.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Blake’s most anthologized work is
probably “The Tyger,” from his <i>Songs of
Innocence and Experience.</i> Many critics have tackled this work, but they do
not agree on its meaning or the light it might shed on Blake’s probable answers
to the thorny theological questions it raises.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">I chose this poem from among all
those I admire because it seems a fit way to celebrate my own forthcoming
chapbook, <i>Balance</i>, composed of 15
poems following a sequence of yoga poses developed by B.K.S. Iyengar. Mr.
Iyengar introduced this particular sequence in his book, <i>Light on Life</i>, as a way of promoting emotional stability.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">On the literary side, my book was
inspired in part by Blake’s <i>Songs of
Innocence and Experience</i>, a poetic work based emphatically on a concept and
one that integrates visual and verbal art. Despite their ability to stand
alone, the lyrics in this work cannot be considered wholly apart from their
context in the work as a whole or, for that matter, their place in Blake’s
overall system.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Not being a visual artist, as
Blake was, I sought out a willing and congenial artist to collaborate with me
on my book, and ended up, by the grace of the Internet and her own generosity,
working with my first cousin, Nina Canal, an artist, fabric designer, and
musician residing in Marseilles, France. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">For my cover, I worked with the
photographer John Genesta, who, from the concept I conceived, produced the
cover photograph you see here. I also cannot forget the craftswomen on Etsy who
sold me the origami flower pictured in this photograph.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;"> Poet and publisher Karen Kelsay
Davies labored long over the book’s layout, introducing me to the business end
of writing as she went, and probably, in the process, learning more herself
about yoga and Sanskrit that she ever wanted to know.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> Unlike Blake, who acted as poet, artist, and
printer all in one <span style="color: #0b5394;">[The Tyger etching at the Met <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/17.10.42"><i>here</i></a>]</span>, I required a whole stable of collaborators to see this
project to fruition, not neglecting to mention my good friend Marly, who helped
give the project its impetus.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Palatino;"><span style="line-height: 19px;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Palatino;"><span style="line-height: 19px;"></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: large; line-height: 19px;">A SAMPLE FROM ROBBI'S BOOK - PUB DATE TODAY!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: large; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx2nIOCMyRrvNkOBA-gWApv74AsQfrJ6t4xQOC_PoNC6RMTwImNYaTIqzqY7soOKGXNpsIe0Szrohs8duM4jUN-wuIZwFi8KfT95X8PLvEKBS8Dc_FJ9VOIhWr4YEFGZ-sLdgUgQQka7Y/s1600/Supta+Vista+1+(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx2nIOCMyRrvNkOBA-gWApv74AsQfrJ6t4xQOC_PoNC6RMTwImNYaTIqzqY7soOKGXNpsIe0Szrohs8duM4jUN-wuIZwFi8KfT95X8PLvEKBS8Dc_FJ9VOIhWr4YEFGZ-sLdgUgQQka7Y/s320/Supta+Vista+1+(1).jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Supta Virasana by Nina Canal</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: large; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Supta Virasana—Reclining Hero Pose<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">On the road to the studio, the hills<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">undulate under the clouds like fish<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">in the shallows, soft morning light<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">singing on their silver scales.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I want to lie down in that light<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">and become a hill, but my mind<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">won’t let me. Let me try again<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">to still the muscles’ long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">sigh as legs enfold the hips,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">tucked under like hospital corners,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">the thighs pulled taut as a harp string,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">the ribs pried open as I <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">lie back on the folded blankets</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">exposing my heart to the world.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Come visit
my writer’s page: </span><a href="http://redroom.com/member/robbi-nester"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">http://redroom.com/member/robbi-nester</span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">and my blog,
</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://robbi-shadowknows.blogspot.com/">http://robbi-shadowknows.blogspot.com</a></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>[You may buy books from Robbi there.]</i></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">ABOUT HER CHOSEN POEM</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">William Blake may have been the first great outsider artist
to crossover into the mainstream of the literary canon. In fact, he arguably
exemplifies the Romantic concept of the poetic genius, though not in the
Byronic sense we are used to. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">“Tyger” emerges from a paired collection of lyrics, half
representing the voice of Innocence, and the other experience. Though Blake
gives a voice to each of these opposed qualities, we can never forget that each
makes up but half of the overall work, embodying Blake’s proverb from <i>The Marriage of Heaven and Hell</i>,
“Without contraries is no progression.” Perhaps it is because one may discern
this philosophy in “Tyger” that so many have chosen it to represent Blake’s
poetic oeuvre.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">We see in most elements of the poem Blake’s refusal to settle
into any uncomplicated pattern or perspective. This is so of the poem’s poetic
form, something critics often disagree about. The poem is composed of 6 four
line stanzas with four beats per line, as I scan it. However, though Blake sets
a pattern in the first stanza of largely trochaic rhythm, with an accented
first syllable and unaccented second one, in the stanzas to follow, it riffs
freely on the theme, varying the order of the stresses. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The last stanza largely mirrors the first, reflecting the tiger’s
own “fearful symmetry.” In the same way, the work’s accentual rhythm allows
Blake to vary the position of accented syllables over the course of the work to
begin and end it as a sort of incantation, but emulate along the way the hammer
of a blacksmith God, crafting the beast, the beating of the tiger’s
newly-minted heart, or the shocked stutter of the speaker, rendered
inarticulate before the wonder of God’s creation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Syntactically and also thematically, the poem reminds us of
the biblical <i>Book of Job</i>,
particularly those passages late in the book, where, in a catalogue of
rhetorical questions, God challenges Job to best his creative power.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">In its penultimate stanza, Blake’s poem asks the most
significant of the poem’s questions:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> When the stars threw down their spears,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> And watered heaven with their
tears,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Did he smile his work to see? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Did he
who made the Lamb make thee?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">This is not the poem’s final stanza, since that comes
full circle to repeat the incantatory first four lines, yet it poses the major
question we are left with at the end of the work. The martial image of the stars
“[throwing] down their spears” evokes both the fallen angels of Milton’s epic <i>Paradise Lost</i> and the <i>Book of Job</i>, where God tells how “the
morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (38.7).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">For the speaker of this poem, the joy of such celestial
beings does not seem so apparent. They respond to God’s immanent act of
creation with hostility and sadness, suggesting that in their view, there may
be something suspect about the whole endeavor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Here, as elsewhere in Blake’s work, we discern more than a
hint of Gnosticism, a doctrine that brands all of material creation as
inherently flawed, the product of a demiurge akin to Blake’s own Nobodaddy. Yet
at the same time, these celestial beings “Water heaven with their tears,” an
act that promotes the growth of this same creation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The tiger is at once a beautiful creature and, like Job’s
Leviathan, the fearsome object of our awe. Though it is both at once, we cannot
so emphatically answer yes to the poem’s ultimate question, “Did he who made
the Lamb make thee?” Blake leaves the question unresolved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">In contrast, the resolution of the <i>Book of Job</i> strikes us as singularly unsatisfactory. Even if God
replaces all of Job’s progeny with new offspring and returns him to full health
and the respect of his community, does this make up for what he has lost? Not
hardly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The question of evil cannot be glossed over in any blithe
way. It must remain a question, as Blake leaves it here in his poem, which I
see as a response to that biblical book and to Milton’s epic, <i>Paradise Lost</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Like the other works
in the collection, this poem appears on an illuminated plate Blake has etched.
Many commentators have noted the oddly toothless demeanor of the tiger in this
plate. Unlike the fierce and fiery beast described in the poem, emblem of
divine creation or warfare, this tiger, with its slight, stuffed animal smile
and rounded edges, seems oddly toothless. <span style="color: #0b5394;">[<i>The Tyger </i>illumination can be seen <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyger"><i>here</i></a>.]</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">While most regard this as an artistic failing, I see it as
yet another example of Blake’s dialectical style, confronting things with their
own opposites, and leaving us to puzzle out the meaning. Does this mean that
the speaker of the poem is an unreliable narrator of sorts, who mistakes the
nature of the beast he describes? Or is it an effort to remind us that the tiger,
while it might gladly rend and consume human flesh, does so not out of malice
but as a means of survival, as many of us eat other creatures’ flesh? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Blake’s questioning did not arise <i>ex nihilo</i>. He is known to have studied mystical as well as canonical biblical traditions. Questioning
the nature of divine creation is common among the mystics of Judaism, whom the
self-tutored Blake may well have studied. Faced with evil circumstances as daunting as Job’s, the 15<sup>th</sup> century scholar Isaac Luria was part of
the community Queen Isabella persecuted in the Inquisition and ultimately
expelled from Spain. Faced with the conundrum of a monotheistic deity who allowed
such evil to occur, Luria crafted a
creation myth to explain the existence of evil in the world we inhabit known as
“breaking the vessels.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">In this myth, it is the act of creation itself that
inadvertently leads to evil coming into the material world, since the “shells”
of material creation, akin to clay cracking in the kiln, are too imperfect to
contain God’s divine creative light.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The task of human beings, in this mythos, is to collect the
shards of fractured divinity immured in unlikely and apparently evil places of
the world and send them back to their source. This process is called “tikkun
olam.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Blake’s system similarly envisions a purpose for human beings
of countering evil with imagination and artistic creation. In his view, it is
our task to challenge orthodoxies of all sorts, and thus emulate God’s creative
energy. Blake’s work exercises this capacity in his readers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Christian orthodoxy explains away the obvious rifts between
the often capricious nature of the deity portrayed in the Tanakh, the Hebrew
Bible, and the God of mercy embraced by the Christian tradition. But
characteristically, Blake challenges us to note these lacunae, and explains
them by suggesting that these are indeed two different Gods, not faces of the
same one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Thus, when he asks “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” he
is speaking not just of the material world but of the two traditions, two
bodies of religious texts, with the Lamb taking on its symbolic meaning as
Jesus, not just the companion poem to “The Tyger” in Blake’s work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Yet at the same time, the merciful and gentle face of deity
cannot account for the reality of the world we live in. The existence of this
other tradition, other deity, other text is necessary to describe our world
adequately. Ultimately, the creative tension between these two views is
essential to spur us onward, toward our own divinely inspired acts of creation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">THE POEM</span></div>
<span style="background-color: #cccccc;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc;">THE
TYGER</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; font-size: 13.5pt;">Tyger! Tyger! burning bright </span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">In the forests of the night, </span><br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">What immortal hand or eye </span><br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">Could frame thy fearful symmetry? </span><br />
<br />
</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-size: 13.5pt;">In what distant deeps
or skies<br />
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?<br />
On what wings dare he aspire?<br />
What the hand dare sieze the fire? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-size: 13.5pt;">And what shoulder,
& what art.<br />
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?<br />
And when thy heart began to beat,<br />
What dread hand? & what dread feet? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-size: 13.5pt;">What the hammer? what
the chain?<br />
In what furnace was thy brain?<br />
What the anvil? what dread grasp<br />
Dare its deadly terrors clasp? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-size: 13.5pt;">When the stars threw
down their spears,<br />
And watered heaven with their tears,<br />
Did he smile his work to see?<br />
Did he who made the Lamb make thee? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-size: 13.5pt;">Tyger! Tyger! burning
bright<br />
In the forests of the night,<br />
What immortal hand or eye<br />
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="background-color: #cccccc;">1794</span><span style="background-color: white;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>Marly Youmanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377938366750387442noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656685278477681365.post-46110079732308862002012-02-07T14:26:00.002-05:002012-02-07T14:26:43.627-05:00Alas<span style="font-size: large;">As the Lydians--the Stoners? the Lydian Stoners?--seem to give me all feast or famine, and I am either awash in finished posts or else have nothing, I think we shall have to wait a bit for a next post! </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">See you then--shall announce on Twitter, <a href="http://www.thepalaceat2.blogspot.com/">The Palace at 2:00 a.m.,</a> and facebook.</span>Marly Youmanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377938366750387442noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656685278477681365.post-12453765715895931162012-02-03T04:43:00.002-05:002012-02-03T04:44:30.702-05:00Almost "The Lydian Stones"...<span style="background-color: #cccccc; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 19px; text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.cassandrapages.com/the_cassandra_pages/2012/02/szymborska.html">Adams</a> on Szymborska:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cccccc; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 19px; text-align: left;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cccccc; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 19px; text-align: left;">"Yesterday, when I heard the news, it seemed ironic and coincidental that I had just taken down her book and quoted from it here two days before. But then again, perhaps it wasn't so odd, because, as I said, I re-read her poems often. It was Szymborska who I had planned to pick for Marly Youmans' "Lydian Stones" project - a choice that would probably seem too obvious now. But at the time, looking at the jacket photograph with her ever-present cigarette, I had wondered how she was doing, with no idea she was in the process of leaving the world."</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cccccc; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 19px; text-align: left;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cccccc; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 19px; text-align: left;">Take a love at Beth's tribute to the just-departed poet<a href="http://www.cassandrapages.com/the_cassandra_pages/2012/02/szymborska.html"> here.</a></span>Marly Youmanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377938366750387442noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656685278477681365.post-19125115266812002832012-01-31T09:48:00.001-05:002012-01-31T11:28:26.134-05:00Sharpe chooses Gautier<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/262126_10150315667201352_687986351_9878769_3724749_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" aria-busy="false" aria-describedby="fbPhotosSnowboxCaption" border="0" class="spotlight" height="400" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/262126_10150315667201352_687986351_9878769_3724749_n.jpg" width="392" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yolanda Sharpe in Krasnoyarsk</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;">About Yolanda Sharpe<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;">Yolanda
Sharpe, originally from Detroit, Michigan, lives in upstate New York. She is a
painter, whose mediums are oils, encaustic, and watercolor. Ms. Sharpe is a
Professor of painting and drawing at the State University of New York – College
at Oneonta. She is also a 2011 United States Fulbright Scholar fo</span><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;">r the Russian
Federation. In early 2011, she traveled to Krasnoyarsk, Russia, a city in
northern Siberia, to teach graduate students about various advanced processes
for watercolor painting. During this time, Yolanda presented her drawings and
encaustic paintings in two exhibition venues: </span><b style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;"><i>Crazy</i></b><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;">, a group exhibit in
the city, and </span><b style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;"><i>Fragments</i></b><i style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;">, </i><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;">a solo
exhibit at the Krasnoyarsk State Institute of Fine Arts gallery.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;">The
Aerospace Academy of Krasnoyarsk invited Yolanda to present information about
the topic, <b>Art + Business</b> to their
students. This was a lecture and discussion format, and the topic focused on
many practical skills for contemporary artists in that region to help them
navigate the world of commerce, galleries, and art business via the Internet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;">Yolanda
Sharpe has exhibited national in the States, and will exhibit <b><i>Urban
Fragments</i></b>, a solo presentation of encaustic paintings, at the
Birmingham-Bloomfield Art Center, Birmingham, Michigan fall, 2012. Please visit
her web site at: <a href="http://yolandasharpe.com/">yolandasharpe.com</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;">Ms.
Sharpe is also an accomplished vocalist (soprano) who performed in various solo
concert venues. A recent performance was at the Music Hall in Krasnoyarsk,
Russia. A forthcoming concert is April 2012, in Cooperstown, New York. It will
be a benefit concert for the local Food Banks. Yolanda sang and performed
supernumerary roles for Glimmerglass Opera several times, and also
performed-in-training title roles, <i>Aida</i>,
and <i>Norma</i>, several years ago in
Binghamton, New York.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="color: #262626; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;">About the poems from <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_nuits_d'%C3%A9t%C3%A9">Les Nuits d’Été </a>– Villanelle, and Le Spectre de la Rose</i> </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;">The songs are a result of
combined work between two notable 19<sup>th</sup> century artists: <span style="background-color: #cccccc;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-family: Palatino; font-size: 14pt;">Théophile Gautier </span><span style="color: #262626; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;">(August 30, 1811 - October 23, 1872), a French poet, dramatist,
novelist, journalist, art critic, and literary critic, and Hector Berlioz (December
11, 1803-March 8, 1869), a French Romantic composer. Berlioz’s </span><b style="color: #262626; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;"><i>Les
Nuits d’Été </i></b><span style="color: #262626; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;">was written in 1856. Many of his songs were originally
written for amateur singers, and were later adapted and orchestrated for professional
concert performance.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;">Studying this background of
this particular body of songs, I learned that <b><i>Les Nuits d’Été</i></b>, which I
always thought of as a six-song cycle, was never intended for performance as a
single work. Berlioz never did so. Thus I have selected to sing some songs from
the entire collection this coming April. Performing only a sample from Gautier’s
poems is no crime, indeed!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;">Villanelle</span></i><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;"> is buoyant, evoking
the colors and energy of early spring. It is the season for love, and I like
the way the poem and music are blended to remind us that the detritus of winter
and gray skies are dissolved into the various pictures and images that this piece
conjures up. To sing it, one has to be ebullient, and focused on the gem-like
mirth that comes from each note and word.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;">Le Spectre de la Rose </span></i><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;">is a gorgeous melody
that is layered, rich, and luscious. For me the Rose becomes so many things.
She is generous, loving, sad, resigned to her premature death, and yet
triumphant. The Rose is content to be placed on the breast of the man who
carries her everywhere. He is unaware of her love for him, and the fact that
she lives forever. Because she returns to her original home in paradise, she
has an aroma that is eternal. I think that I should sing clear legato lines for
each word-phrase to convey the beauty of this glorious flower and her fate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://yolandasharpe.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/thrifty-operationsNEW.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" class="size-full wp-image-866" height="400" src="http://yolandasharpe.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/thrifty-operationsNEW.jpg" style="line-height: 115%;" title="Rose I, encaustic on panel, 23 by 22.5 inches" width="388" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: 13px; text-align: left;">Rose I, encaustic on panel, 23 by 22.5 inches (2009)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;"><b><br /></b></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;"><b><br /></b></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;"><b>TWO POEMS </b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;"><b>by<span style="background-color: #cccccc;"> </span></b></span><b style="background-color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 48px;">Théophile Gautier</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 48px;"> </span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 48px;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 48px;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype';"><span style="font-size: 19px;">English translations by composer Edward Lein<i><b> <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/edwardlein/Home/translations/berlioz-gautier-les-nuits-d-ete">here</a></b></i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 48px;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<b><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">VILLANELLE</span></b><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
<br />
Quand viendra la saison nouvelle,<br />
Quand auront disparu les froids,<br />
Tous les deux nous irons, ma belle,<br />
Po</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">ur cueillir le muguet aux bois ;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">
<br />
Sous nos pieds égrenant les perles,<br />
Que l'on voit au matin trembler,<br />
Nous irons écouter les merles<br />
Nous irons écouter les merles siffler.<br />
<br />
Le printemps est, venu ma belle,<br />
C'est le mois des amants béni,<br />
Et l'oiseau, satinant son aile,<br />
Dit des vers au rebord du nid.<br />
<br />
Oh! viens, donc, sur ce banc de mousse<br />
Pour parler de nos beaux amours,<br />
Et dis-moi de ta voix si douce,<br />
Et dis-moi de ta voix si douce : "Toujours".<br />
<br />
loin, bien loin, égarant nos courses,<br />
Faisant fuir le lapin caché,<br />
Et le daim au miroir des sources<br />
Admirant son grand bois penché ;<br />
Puis chez nous, tout heureux, tout aises,<br />
En panier enlaçant nos doigts,<br />
Revenons rapportant des fraises<br />
Revenons rapportant des fraises des bois.</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype';"><span style="font-size: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" aria-busy="false" aria-describedby="fbPhotosSnowboxCaption" class="spotlight" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/317429_10150388475926427_681856426_10417035_523786081_n.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fragment from Yolanda's "Green and Still Moon" from the "Watercolor Revisited"<br />
show at Wayne State University (2011). Photo by Gilda Snowden.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;">LE SPECTRE DE LA ROSE</span></div>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype'; font-size: 14pt;"><br />
Soulève ta paupière close<br />
Qu'effleure un songe virginal!<br />
Je suis le spectre d'une rose<br />
Que tu portais hier au bal.<br />
Tu me prise encore emperlée<br />
Des pleurs d'argent de l'arrosoir,<br />
Et, parmi la fête etoilée,<br />
Tu me promenas tout le soir.<br />
O toi qui de ma mort fus cause,<br />
Sans que tu puisses le chasser,<br />
Toutes les nuits mon spectre rose<br />
A ton chevet viendra danser.<br />
Mai ne crains rien, je ne réclame<br />
Ni messe ni De Profundis,<br />
Ce léger parfum est mon âme,<br />
Et j'arrive du paradis.<br />
Mon destin fus digne d'envie,<br />
Et pour avoir un sort si beau<br />
Plus d'un aurait donné sa vie;<br />
Car sur ton sein j'ai mon tombeau,<br />
Et sur l'albâtre où je repose<br />
Un poête avec un baiser<br />
Ecrivit: "Ci-git une rose,<br />
Que tous les rois vont jalouser."</span>
<br />
<br />Marly Youmanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377938366750387442noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656685278477681365.post-24884724953002376112012-01-24T09:47:00.000-05:002012-01-31T09:01:25.425-05:00Next up--<span style="font-size: large;">Slight delay... I am waiting on a small but essential bit of information about the next piece. It is quite interesting, featuring the choice of painter (head of the SUNY-Oneonta art department for twelve years) and singer Yolanda Sharpe, so please come back for a look!</span>Marly Youmanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377938366750387442noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656685278477681365.post-25606394998135457882012-01-17T00:04:00.000-05:002012-01-18T10:06:57.763-05:00Farmer chooses Reece<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.zeitgeistnyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Jonathan-Farmer.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #c9c9c9; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clear: left; color: #e33b3b; font-family: Helvetica, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: 600; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: -5px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px; padding-top: 5px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-424" height="300" src="http://www.zeitgeistnyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Jonathan-Farmer-295x300.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-style: initial; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; display: block; float: right; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 3px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Jonathan Farmer" width="295" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Double portrait of Jonathan Farmer by Caroline Luther.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span><br />
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>About </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Jonathan Farmer</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Jonathan Farmer is the Founder, Editor in Chief, and Poetry Editor of <a href="http://atlengthmag.com/"><i>At Length</i></a>. He lives in Durham, North Carolina, with his amazing wife and is a founding member of <a href="http://hingeliterary.org/"><i>The Hinge Literary Center</i></a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>About the poem</b></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;">There are two places where I’m most in love with this poem: the first two lines (“Those mornings I traveled north on <span style="text-transform: uppercase;">I</span>91,/passing below the basalt cliff of East Rock”) and the run of description that begins with “<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">blue, spider-delicate in a nest of tubes.”) And then there’s one more that I love even more, but couldn’t love without those: “It is correct to love even at the wrong time.” Each one exemplifies a characteristic of Spencer Reece’s talent:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span style="font-size: large;">The first, his incredible ability create a metrical line so varied it sounds almost sculptural, a product of (I suspect) incredible patience that somehow stays in the lines even after that slow work is done.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the second, his phenomenal talent for phrase-making, which is, I think, the aspect of his writing that is easiest to overlook, because it seems least consistent with his over-riding humility.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">And finally: his ability to move, without warning, into these short, generalizing sentences that seem less to summarize than to articulate a need; they are, I think, the perceptive after-image of an intelligence that has taken Reece’s own advice from another </span><a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/237490" rel="nofollow" style="color: #234786; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px;" target="_blank"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">poem</span></a><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">: “We can never be with loss too long” (which also happens to be another of those generalizing lines.) I typically find these more consoling than convincing, a well-earned act of compassion extending, finally, even to his own compassion.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Which brings me to the mystery of this poem, for me: why am I so happy to have it, this piece of writing that seems to put Reece (Reece’s speaker) at the center of a story about the suffering of others? I usually hate that. It usually reeks of narcissism. But here it just breaks my heart (and, one of the oddities of art, heals it too—but more on the healing of hearts in a bit.)</span></span><br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span style="font-size: large;">I think the answer is only partly poetic. Or: I think the poetic part is dependent on something else. It’s risky to conflate biography and writing. But it’s also worth noting the obvious fact that writers are people, and that we write within the interplay of emotions, experiences, expectations and obligations &c. that add up to an identity. And while I wouldn’t love Reece’s poems without the virtues I mentioned above, I love them in large part because they are so <i>kind</i>—a word that (both ancestrally and actually) has a lot in common with kin.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span style="font-size: large;">And there is a profound sense of human kinship in Reece’s poems, a sense of the slow and patient <i>work </i>of such belonging—work that seems to have started long before the poem, back in the life the poem describes, and which stretches a person beyond the ease of being among his or her familiars. Reece the poet and Reece the speaker feel not just humble but humbled, so thoroughly that it does make sense, finally, to extend compassion to oneself, not because “I” matter more than anyone else, but precisely because “I” don’t. To explain it in another way (and then on to the poem, I promise), here are a few lines from a poem by Czeslaw Milosz that I turn to for consolation in my worst moments. I often think of them when I’m reading Reece:</span></span><br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Love means to learn to look at yourself<br />The way one looks at distant things<br />For you are only one thing among many.<br />And whoever sees that way heals his heart,<br />Without knowing it, from various ills….</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b> The poem</b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
</div>
<h1 style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">ICU</span></span></h1>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #4d493f; text-transform: uppercase;">BY</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #4d493f; text-transform: uppercase;"> </span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; text-transform: uppercase;">SPENCER REECE</span></span></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 18.75pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<i><span style="color: #505050;"><span style="font-size: large;">For A.J. Verdelle</span></span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: #505050;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></i></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 18.75pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #505050;"><span style="font-size: large;">Those mornings I traveled north on <span style="text-transform: uppercase;">I</span>91,</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #505050;"><span style="font-size: large;">passing below the basalt cliff of East Rock</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #505050;"><span style="font-size: large;">where the elms discussed their genealogies.</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #505050;"><span style="font-size: large;">I was a chaplain at Hartford Hospital,</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #505050;"><span style="font-size: large;">took the Myers-Briggs with Sister Margaret,</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #505050;"><span style="font-size: large;">learned I was an <i>I</i> drawn to <i>E</i>s.</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #505050;"><span style="font-size: large;">In small group I said, “I do not like it—</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #505050;"><span style="font-size: large;">the way so many young black men die here</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #505050;"><span style="font-size: large;">unrecognized, their gurneys stripped,</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #505050;"><span style="font-size: large;">their belongings catalogued and unclaimed.”</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #505050;"><span style="font-size: large;">On the neonatal ICU, newborns breathed,</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #505050;"><span style="font-size: large;">blue, spider-delicate in a nest of tubes.</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #505050;"><span style="font-size: large;">A Sunday of themselves, their tissue purpled,</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #505050;"><span style="font-size: large;">their eyelids the film on old water in a well,</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #505050;"><span style="font-size: large;">their faces resigned in their see-through attics,</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #505050;"><span style="font-size: large;">their skin mottled mildewed wallpaper.</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #505050;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is correct to love even at the wrong time.</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #505050;"><span style="font-size: large;">On rounds, the newborns eyed me, each one</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #505050;"><span style="font-size: large;">like Orpheus in his dark hallway, saying:</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<i><span style="color: #505050;"><span style="font-size: large;">I knew I would find you, I knew I would lose you.</span></span></i><span style="color: #505050;"></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: 'bookman old style', 'new york', times, serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
</div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<i><span style="font-size: large;">Poem used by permission of Spencer Reece.</span></i><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #c9c9c9; color: #777777; font-family: Helvetica, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px;"></span><br />
<div>
<br /></div>Marly Youmanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377938366750387442noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656685278477681365.post-52346386112653635172012-01-09T09:00:00.000-05:002012-01-17T01:21:56.642-05:00Hicks-Jenkins chooses Youmans<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2BFaJbFbLFmTjS3OOYa4MyKxZpKt6eor1w0eERVnENbytlxfKzI-hVGWjmP-aazM_T8vE7mChLdtBB18WN2M6Izmm5LA_nIHN1t7RNT1l_dK3P2JJN7WSjSCdLMuGGcXh8uGVfbHMfpw/s1600/bluemarches.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="375" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2BFaJbFbLFmTjS3OOYa4MyKxZpKt6eor1w0eERVnENbytlxfKzI-hVGWjmP-aazM_T8vE7mChLdtBB18WN2M6Izmm5LA_nIHN1t7RNT1l_dK3P2JJN7WSjSCdLMuGGcXh8uGVfbHMfpw/s400/bluemarches.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Clive Hicks-Jenkins, "Journey's End," 1999</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>Clive Hicks-Jenkins earned the honor of being the first to turn in a piece for </i>The Lydian Stones. <em>However, to publish it immediately meant that the very first post would be about the person behind the site, and that smacked of self-love to me. So I have delayed it until now. However, I am quite pleased and honored that Clive wanted to write about a poem of mine, and the post is a good celebration of a friendship that began through encounters with</em> <em>words and pictures. If you want more, be sure and visit him at his<a href="http://www.hicks-jenkins.com/"> site</a>, where you can see many a jeweled "story, wings, or saint" and visit the Artlog. I should add that my upcoming collection of poems, </em>The Foliate Head, <em>will feature four foliate heads by Clive Hicks-Jenkins, one on the cover and three as division pages. </em></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><em>--M.Y.</em></span><br />
<b><br /></b><br />
<b><br /></b><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">About Clive Hicks-Jenkins</span></b><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Clive Hicks-Jenkins is a painter living and working in the Ystwyth Valley in West Wales. 2011 marked his sixtieth birthday, an event celebrated with a career retrospective at the National Library of <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1321395153_0">Wales</span>, where over two hundred painting, prints, drawings and 'private press' books were assembled for the exhibition. He has produced two book covers for <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1321395153_1">Marly</span> Youmans, <i>Val/Orson</i> and <i>The Throne of Psyche</i>, with several more planned. Marly is one of six poets who produced works linked thematically to the artist's paintings, compiled as <i>The Book of Ystwyth: six poets on the art of Clive Hicks-Jenkins </i>and published earlier this year by Grey Mare Press.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">About the poem</span></b></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Perhaps it will be considered partisan to have selected a poem by a friend about one of my own paintings, but as the painting sprang from a significant event and the poem has assumed significance because of its beauty and insight, then so be it. Marly and I forged a friendship through the medium of e-mails. We had been forging away for some time when out of the blue tumbled five poems from her together with a dedication proclaiming them a celebration of my forthcoming sixtieth birthday. All five were extraordinary, stand alone works that didn't require the proximity of the paintings to validate them, though poems and paintings are reproduced together in <i>The Book of Ystwyth</i>. <i>The Blue Marches</i> takes its theme of loss from a painting made as a <i>memento mori</i> after my father's death. To this day I don't know how the poet captured so much that I was intending in paint that couldn't be conveyed, by me at any rate, in words. I can't recall sharing my feelings with her about my father's death. However Marly has an extraordinary intuition wedded to empathy, which in part must account for the illusion that she opened a secret door in the back of my head, stepped in and took a stroll around. That requires curiosity, tenderness, subtlety, and something that I can only describe as poetic genius. For me that's what Marly is, a poet of genius. I believe she will be discovered by those who love poetry. I believe she will be remembered.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><strong>The Poem</strong></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">THE BLUE MARCHES</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 11pt;">“. . . this early painterly approach to objects</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 11pt;"> can be seen in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journey’s End</i>, the little still-life/landscape</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 11pt;"> painting of my dad’s tea mug standing in front </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 11pt;"> of Tretower Castle.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">–Clive Hicks-Jenkins</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">There’s nothing here bejeweled with twig and flower,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">No wolfish fur that burns as if a kiln</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Had been flung wide to let in sprays of salt,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">And most of all, no story, wings, or saint.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Instead there is the seepage of a blue</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Not twilight: low, continual dim glow</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Dispersed from borderlands beyond this world.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">So here is landscape as the stillest life,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">So here is still life hunkered in the grass,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Estranged from lamplit houses, grown outscale.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">There’s nothing here but cup and keep and tree,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">And tree resembles keep, and keep is tree</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Truncated—cup is stump of leaning tree.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">No teller yet, unless the tale be one</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Older than the famed white book of Rhydderch,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Older than the red of Hergest, older</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">By far than these… Fetch me a magic fruit</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">So I can taste its glistening cells and gulp</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">The stubborn words that linger out of reach.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">In blueing light, a father’s mug might be</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">The grail, might be Welsh cauldron, wombed with life,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Might over-brim with death-drink, colorless.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">There’s nothing but a shadow in the cup!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Its clipper ship in sail is doldrum-glazed,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Forgets the fragrance of <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">darjeeling</place></city> seas.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">The motte, a mound of good Welsh earth, was his,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">As was the tower vacant to the sky,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">The kingdom known as Powys long ago,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">And all the rainy borderland of blue—</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">All things that flee and hide in borderlands</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Between the earth and sky belonged to him.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">But now he has passed through that realm of dreams</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">And left you wondering by hills of earth,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">And long you’ll muse, and long you’ll meditate</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">And never understand the world you brushed</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Across that sheet of paper: world where tree</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Is keep, and keep is tree, and cup can loom</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;">As high as high Tretower or a tree.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 11pt;">—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journey’s End, 1999</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 11pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 11pt;"><i>Reprinted by permission of the author.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 11pt;"><i>Offered by a reader, following some posting confusion, and used with thanks: "</i>Comments are most welcome. If you have no Google account (or AIM, etc.), choose 'Name/URL.' It is not necessary to add the URL unless you have one and choose to do so."<i> </i></span></div>
</div>Marly Youmanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377938366750387442noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656685278477681365.post-81073847023800722402011-12-20T20:15:00.000-05:002012-01-11T01:23:13.543-05:00Reeser chooses Gioia<i>"Reeser chooses Gioia" will be the post until after Epiphany, since this is such a busy time of the year...</i><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU6xuBkYukTN1-EAvmiys7RRCvV2ZwmmlRNshLAdoCj3ee4WNVUHXeqIIW-rKVT-XvohvwQ2JmIRTH6IriO6vX2Qx_Ud5DMgtiF1rdqotZuVVQDIdcIJ-JxBR0X-7CWNN00UjD1l1iz5Y/s1600/Reeser.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU6xuBkYukTN1-EAvmiys7RRCvV2ZwmmlRNshLAdoCj3ee4WNVUHXeqIIW-rKVT-XvohvwQ2JmIRTH6IriO6vX2Qx_Ud5DMgtiF1rdqotZuVVQDIdcIJ-JxBR0X-7CWNN00UjD1l1iz5Y/s400/Reeser.jpg" width="277" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Poet Jennifer Reeser chooses a poem by Dana Gioia.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>About Jennifer Reeser</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Jennifer Reeser is the author of two
collections, <i>An Alabaster Flask</i>, and <i>Winterproof</i>, and is also creator of the
Shakespearean series <i>Sonnets from the
Dark Lady</i>. She has contributed poems, scholarly articles and translations
of French and Russian literature to such journals as <i>POETRY, The Hudson Review, The Formalist, Light Quarterly</i> and <i>The National Review</i>. Her work has
appeared in numerous anthologies, including Longman’s <i>An Introduction to Poetry</i>, and <i>Phoenix
Rising: The Next Generation of American Formal Poets</i>. She is the former
assistant editor to <i>Iambs and Trochees</i>.
She is a poetry consultant on faculty at the West Chester Poetry Conference.
She lives amid the bayous of southern Louisiana.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>About the poem</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Noon. It is the strongest, brightest
time of day. Artists are advised to examine their subjects in this full
spectrum white light, in order that they may clearly see all variegation in
temperature and value. Light from the
noonday sun is the hardest light spill possible, the most accurate revealing
light source available to the eye. In this poem, I most appreciate the repetitive,
ongoing aspect of perception – the interrogative -- set unexpectedly in the
day, as opposed to morose, covert, romantic, deadening night. However rueful the speaker’s message may be, the
manner of his presentation is optimistic. This is (after all) the <i>better </i>man being given life, allowed to
speak, the poem taking issue with its message, arguing against itself. The reader learns that this is the man who is
not, and yet here he is, regardless; the very fact of his presence, a positive
statement. The music of stanza three is
irresistible, with its caesuras and alliteration, the “spin” of its last
inquiry, as it were, spilling over into the unforeseen image of the rose. Horticultural
wisdom goes that roses would rather drink than eat. I find the poem’s fierce vulnerability to be appealing,
and its refusal of irony to be a relief.
Its courtly diction overarches, beautifies and mitigates like a garden
arbor the choler taking place beneath. As a reader, I feel a sense of inclusion
through the speaker’s insistence on meaning. For me, the final line is
unforgettable.</span></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The poem</span></b><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">INTERROGATIONS AT
NOON </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Just before noon
I often hear a voice, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Cool and
insistent, whispering in my head. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">It is the better
man I might have been, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Who chronicles
the life I've never led. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">He cannot
understand what grim mistake </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Granted me life
but left him still unborn. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">He views his
wayward brother with regret </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">And hardly
bothers to disguise his scorn.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">"Who is the person you pretend to
be?" <br />
He asks, "The failed saint, the simpering bore, <br />
The pale connoisseur of spent desire, <br />
The half-hearted hermit eyeing the door? <br />
<br />
"You cultivate confusion like a rose <br />
In watery lies too weak to be untrue, <br />
And play the minor figures in the pageant, <br />
Extravagant and empty, that is you."</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">--<a href="http://www.danagioia.net/">Dana Gioia </a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><i>"Interrogations at Noon" reprinted by permission of Dana Gioia. </i></span></div>Marly Youmanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377938366750387442noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656685278477681365.post-67045957684166961122011-12-13T08:45:00.000-05:002012-01-11T01:21:41.597-05:00Owen chooses Frost<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdp7pfegGsH31YOraB4HL3smgImgKOKgo8sMGePxrRyG53Zagfn2QX1Ue04w05GjLzo1zpY4ItmAH3755yJ9euoY65_zj3g9Tn4UFG7kQc_6s_YodQfiDhqJ4tOtAvOV3jSAJiKJqCpVI/s1600/owendragons.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdp7pfegGsH31YOraB4HL3smgImgKOKgo8sMGePxrRyG53Zagfn2QX1Ue04w05GjLzo1zpY4ItmAH3755yJ9euoY65_zj3g9Tn4UFG7kQc_6s_YodQfiDhqJ4tOtAvOV3jSAJiKJqCpVI/s400/owendragons.jpg" width="262" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/04/drawing-out-the-dragons-author-james-a-owen-aims-to-inspire/">Here's</a> what wired.com says about James and this book.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">About James A. Owen</span></b><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">James A. Owen is a Merchant
Prince, in training to become a Philosopher King. He writes, he draws,
and he never leaves skidmarks at the edge of a cliff. In his spare time,
he is redesigning an entire town. He is allergic to cats, among other
things. And he can do Jeff Bridges' smile from TUCKER with uncanny
accuracy.</span><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />About the poem</span></b><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">This is my favorite poem because of the last stanza. The rest is just a
delivery system to get to those lines, which embody my most passionate
goals in life. Work being play for mortal stakes may sum up my life's
choices - conscious and otherwise.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The Poem</span></b><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">TWO TRAMPS IN MUD TIME</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Out of the mud two strangers came</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And caught me splitting wood in the yard,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And one of them put me off my aim</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And let the other go on a way.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I knew pretty well what he had in mind:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He wanted to take my job for pay.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Good blocks of oak it was I split,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">As large around as the chopping block;</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And every piece I squarely hit</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The blows that a life of self-control</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Spares to strike for the common good,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">That day, giving a loose my soul,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I spent on the unimportant wood.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The sun was warm but the wind was chill.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You know how it is with an April day</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">When the sun is out and the wind is still,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You're one month on in the
middle of May.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">But if you so much as dare to speak,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A wind comes off a frozen peak,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And you're two months back in the middle of March.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">His song so pitched as not to excite</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A single flower as yet to bloom.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It is snowing a flake; and he half knew</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Winter was only playing possum.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Except in color he isn't blue,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">But he wouldn't advise a thing to blossom.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The water for which we may have to look</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">In summertime with a witching wand,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">In every wheelrut's now a brook,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">In every print of a hoof a pond.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Be glad of water, but don't forget</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The lurking frost in the earth beneath</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">That will steal forth after the sun is set</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And show on the water its crystal teeth.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The time when most I loved my task</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The two must make me love it more</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">By coming with what they came to ask.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You'd
think I never had felt before</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The grip of earth on outspread feet,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The life of muscles rocking soft</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And smooth and moist in vernal heat.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Out of the wood two hulking tramps</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">(From sleeping God knows where last night,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">But not long since in the lumber camps).</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">They thought all chopping was theirs of right.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Men of the woods and lumberjacks,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The judged me by their appropriate tool.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Except as a fellow handled an ax</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">They had no way of knowing a fool.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Nothing on either side was said.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">They knew they had but to stay their stay</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And all their logic would fill my head:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">As that I had no right to play</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">With what was another man's work for gain.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">My right might be love but theirs was need.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And where the two exist in twain</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Theirs was the better right--agreed.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">But yield who will to their separation,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">My object in living is to unite</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">My avocation and my
vocation</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">As my two eyes make one in sight.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Only where love and need are one,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And the work is play for mortal stakes,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Is the deed ever really done</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">For Heaven and the future's sakes.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">--Robert Frost (1874-1963)</span><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Poem in public domain.</span></i>Marly Youmanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377938366750387442noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656685278477681365.post-57646977736582300252011-12-06T07:30:00.000-05:002012-01-11T01:22:59.937-05:00Stephenson chooses Robertson<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhevoOajF8bWLTNiPMwhQKygxEPZElZrmOlp3tP1ONjtoDGYtTdRCqu3z5YKlsx2LfHbXABGQaNP8Vunksgpm9SREyWxcuY-BgZNgvMajtLWVa5s5hvoCMEE1B9OIWH15vhoyqG_q-TZAQ/s1600/stephenson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhevoOajF8bWLTNiPMwhQKygxEPZElZrmOlp3tP1ONjtoDGYtTdRCqu3z5YKlsx2LfHbXABGQaNP8Vunksgpm9SREyWxcuY-BgZNgvMajtLWVa5s5hvoCMEE1B9OIWH15vhoyqG_q-TZAQ/s320/stephenson.jpg" width="271" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">About Hannah Stephenson</span></b> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: large;">Hannah Stephenson is a
poet and instructor based in Columbus, Ohio. Recently, her work has appeared in<i> Contrary,</i> <i>Huffington Post</i>, <i>The Nervous
Breakdown, MAYDAY, qarrtsiluni</i>, <i>Spoonful,</i>
and <i>Fiddleblack</i>. For more of her
work, visit her daily poetry site, The Storialist (<a href="http://www.thestorialist.com/"><span style="color: #000099;">www.thestorialist.com</span></a>).</span><br />
<div class="FreeForm">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="FreeForm">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Times, serif;">About the poem</span></b></span></div>
<div class="FreeForm">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I first
encountered Robin Robertson’s “New Gravity” in what is arguably the best way to
discover new poems we come to fall in love with: in books we select from
shelves in bookstores for no reason, when we aren’t looking for anything. I
didn’t recognize the poet’s name, but I liked the sound of it, and the look and
feel of his narrow, sparse book </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman Italic', serif; font-size: large;">A
Painted Field</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> (and
its dark cover showing an enormous expanse of dark sky, and a very thin strip
of water).</span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">This poem is
the first in the book, and the first that I read. When I bought the book, I put
two little dots around the title of this poem in pen, maybe to preemptively
help me fish it from my mind.</span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I’ve
returned to it often in the decade since I first read it. It’s only ten lines
(and two sentences!), yet I admire how much story and scene Robertson gives us.
We know the season (fall, I assume, based on the fallen leaves), the cemetery
setting, and the people present. </span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">More than
that, the simple earnestness of this poem is staggering. Robertson’s voice is
so un-self-conscious and calm here--when I read this poem, I think, “This is
the only way the poem could be.” He shows restraint, too--gives us just the
right amount of detail. I admire how trusting he was of his own voice in
writing this, how certain that this moment mattered and he wanted to give it to
us. Sincerity and clarity are powerful tools. I need this reminder.</span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">The poem</span></b></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> </span></div>
<div class="FreeFormA">
<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: large;">New Gravity</span></div>
<div class="FreeFormA">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="FreeFormA">
<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: large;">Treading through
the half-light of ivy</span></div>
<div class="FreeFormA">
<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: large;">and headstone, I
see you in the distance</span></div>
<div class="FreeFormA">
<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: large;">as I’m telling our
daughter</span></div>
<div class="FreeFormA">
<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: large;">about this place,
this whole business:</span></div>
<div class="FreeFormA">
<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: large;">a sister about to
be born,</span></div>
<div class="FreeFormA">
<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: large;">how a life’s new
gravity suspends in water.</span></div>
<div class="FreeFormA">
<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: large;">Under the oak, the
fallen leaves</span></div>
<div class="FreeFormA">
<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: large;">are pieces of the
tree’s jigsaw;</span></div>
<div class="FreeFormA">
<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: large;">by your father’s
grave you are pressing acorns</span></div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times, serif; font-size: large;">into the shadows to
seed.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times, serif; font-size: small;"><i>Note from Marly: I have failed in getting in touch with Robin Robertson for a permission, so this one could be temporary--however, I hope that if he finds his way here, he will like finding his words with Hannah's comments about discovering wideness and clarity in ten lines.</i></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><br />
<div class="BodyA">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></div>
<div class="FreeForm">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span></div>Marly Youmanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377938366750387442noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656685278477681365.post-57516861745553017772011-11-29T13:00:00.000-05:002012-01-11T01:22:00.037-05:00Robbins chooses O'Siochain<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbQBxSfZlrW-roffVGTivodtNCyS_Hz_HbL46gzXqIXyy_bPATEKdUvAcr7ggEVGC9NBTXLD2kpXcWoHZsc-cTR1WECCbwn5Kzuojv2w-mnHWzeGnMQYKzhIr33K5EYLxadTH9e5lYS3E/s1600/philippa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbQBxSfZlrW-roffVGTivodtNCyS_Hz_HbL46gzXqIXyy_bPATEKdUvAcr7ggEVGC9NBTXLD2kpXcWoHZsc-cTR1WECCbwn5Kzuojv2w-mnHWzeGnMQYKzhIr33K5EYLxadTH9e5lYS3E/s400/philippa.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<b><br /></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>About Philippa Robbins</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">I was born in London in 1964. I am a painter and
live and work in Wales. My work is figurative. I'm working on
still-lifes and landscape at the moment and am artist in residence on an
architectural project in West Wales.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">My website is <a href="http://www.philipparobbins.com/">www.philipparobbins.com</a> and recently finished work and work in progress can also been seen on <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/philsr/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.flickr.com/photos/philsr/.</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>About the poem</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">This is a poem
written by <a href="http://www.therecusant.org.uk/#/ruary-osiochain-poems/4533482732">Ruary O'Siochain</a> and I first heard it, read by him, at his
marriage last year to Kathrin. It tells of their re-meeting early in
their relationship after a short spell of having not seen each other,
neither of them certain that the other was still feeling the same as
they had those few weeks earlier.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">I find the poem has a
quality to it like a classic old film--immediately familiar and
unelaborate with separate focus on each little scene skirting the asking
of the question. It's beautifully poignant and romantic, reserved and,
in the telling, complete.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>The poem</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">SPECKLED HEN </span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">Later I drank</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">the most beautiful</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">pint;</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">Old Speckled Hen.</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">It was early May</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">afternoon</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">in the Sunday park.</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">The east wind</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">kept isolate people</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">all moving</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">in the bright sunshine.</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">The tree we lay under</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"> </span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">was full of fresh leaves.</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">How many greens?</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">we asked,</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"> </span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">shimmering emerald</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">dancing to the brush</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">of a squirrel’s tail.</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">Winter is always long</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">and hard.</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">The deep barrier blue</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">now in place</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">above us, and you asked -</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">“Are we still all right,</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;">then?”</span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="yiv1918554625Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"> --Ruary O'Siochain</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>By permission of the poet</i></span>Marly Youmanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377938366750387442noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656685278477681365.post-73273272521473912822011-11-22T14:14:00.000-05:002012-01-11T01:22:36.022-05:00Digby chooses Hopkins<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG5b3P3thyphenhyphenpyQUbW_V3HA_bvkFrbb0qwmbHjns0g8Qgp03qv2Z9Cr806eDN7O4yGHHzl1TqYJh-5t98ncQkwBDbHBJHCFDVXwz5So21LDCYJW-k1GPbk5FZapM3WLfeoKM5tLggogK87w/s1600/Digby.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG5b3P3thyphenhyphenpyQUbW_V3HA_bvkFrbb0qwmbHjns0g8Qgp03qv2Z9Cr806eDN7O4yGHHzl1TqYJh-5t98ncQkwBDbHBJHCFDVXwz5So21LDCYJW-k1GPbk5FZapM3WLfeoKM5tLggogK87w/s400/Digby.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Clive Hicks-Jenkins earned the honor of being first because he was so wonderfully quick in response, but as it seemed a little self-serving to make one of my own poems go first, I have delayed him and begin with the myriad-minded <a href="http://thepalaceat2.blogspot.com/2011/11/into-light.html">Paul Digby</a>. Every post at </i>The Lydian Stones<i> will contain three sections: a short biography of a featured artist, along with a picture of some kind; his or her commentary on a favorite poem as well as links to further work or information about the poet; the chosen poem. This post contains a little celebratory extra, a piece of Paul Digby's music.</i></span><br />
<div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>About Paul Digby</b></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;">A biography is rather difficult for me to write. I enjoy many aspects of creative work and
dabble in musical composition, painting (figurative/portraiture), light poetry,
pottery, life drawing, and much else. I
studied composition as a teenager but decided upon a hiatus from that when in
my early twenties. Over the past ten
years I have slowly returned to it because I can now write orchestral and
choral work using sampled instruments and voices. There is a very steep learning curve to the
process of scoring an orchestral work, but I am tenacious by nature and rather
stubborn about the whole thing. In the
past I wrote much piano music (my first instrument) but found that
unsatisfactory. I have recently taken up
oil painting, and find this to be a rich experience for me, and one that goes
hand-in-hand with musical composition work.
I both paint and write music to express the same ideas at the same
time. Communicating ideas in this way
keeps me sane.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Without this, I would simply talk an awful lot.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;">******</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Ascension</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">When writing this music recently--as part of an art show
experience --I attempted to express both ethereal and earthy immediacy within
the work.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The piece explores the idea of the “ascension of us all”--and
also, what we would wish to ascend from.
The boy solo calls to us throughout.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/mVqM2sWoUqU" width="420"></iframe></span>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>About the poem</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I was first introduced to the work of <a href="http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/284">Gerard Manley Hopkins</a>
while still at school and studying toward my 'A' level in English
Literature. I must have been fifteen or
sixteen at the time. It was the work of
this poet that woke me up to the beauty of the sound of poetry. I realized then that words held meanings that
sometimes became more powerful when put out into the air, as music. For me, poetry is spoken music. Poetry has rhythm, texture, and tonally modulating
qualities that arrest my attention. It
was this realization that woke me up to poetry and I have been awake to it ever
since.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Gerard Manley Hopkins' work displays a very strong Christian
faith, and although I am an atheist, essentially, I find beauty and integrity
in his work and admire his faith and his appreciation of beauty in this world.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I have been reading his poetry for nearly forty years now,
and his poetry remains as fresh and wonderful to me as it was the first time I
read him.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“Pied Beauty” expresses so much that I love about life. There is also an acceptance of mystery “(who
knows how?)” that I find appealing for its simplicity.</span><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;">To read this poem is a joy.
To read this poem aloud, well . . . that pushes something beautiful out
into the world.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>The poem</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;">PIED BEAUTY </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;">GLORY be to God for dappled things—</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;">For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;">For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;">And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;">All things counter, original, spare, strange;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;">With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;">He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Praise him.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">--Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Poem in public domain.</i> </span></div>Marly Youmanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377938366750387442noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656685278477681365.post-47467399389884601152011-11-15T20:27:00.001-05:002011-11-22T07:25:57.088-05:00COMING NOVEMBER 22nd<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Xwd1FLk_iPvvRbHsN6ih8-7kKtsg4AXIaccIFjoZ7aXyhAe_x9SOiXlL_yXo3V402zUOtkS1Ven9ZE-VO8raKhN_uObi6hBf3hX9EeLEHc1YQKBRGLReHM1Dh-sYgFDp_ISdQEiyY84/s1600/086.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Xwd1FLk_iPvvRbHsN6ih8-7kKtsg4AXIaccIFjoZ7aXyhAe_x9SOiXlL_yXo3V402zUOtkS1Ven9ZE-VO8raKhN_uObi6hBf3hX9EeLEHc1YQKBRGLReHM1Dh-sYgFDp_ISdQEiyY84/s320/086.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stones and poetry book in Marly's writing room.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">THE LYDIAN STONES will begin on my birthday and is meant as a gift to readers and those who love all branches of the arts. Please e-follow or plan to visit on the 22nd, when the first pebble will be tossed onto the site of a future cairn made up of many stones, bright or dark, memorials and markers of encounters with beauty and shapeliness.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Future posts will appear on Tuesdays as well... I am mulling which one to post first. Not the one somebody did relating to me--that would be immodest, even on a birthday. Maybe one that has music and poetry. Always good to have a little music on one's natal day. </span></div>Marly Youmanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377938366750387442noreply@blogger.com5