Literature and Art

Comment

Comment by Guido Vermeulen on February 10, 2012 at 5:02pm

My friend Simonne who is for a conference in Portland, Oregon found some books for me; impressive list!

Kenneth Patchen
Poemscapes - A letter to god
But even so
Hallelujah Anyway
We meet (Preface by Devendra Banhart - New directions/advance uncorrected proof, not for sale)

Delmore Schwartz
Letters of Delmore Schwartz (selected and edited by Robert Phillips
Selected poems - Summer knowledge
Last and Lost Poems  (edited by Robert Phillips)
The ego is always at the wheel - Bagatelles

GV

Comment by Guido Vermeulen on February 4, 2012 at 5:39pm

3d «illustration» around a new poem by David Stone called THE CRYSTAL BAND.

Fragment:

Hydrogen mouths yelled

Devious voices

abhored time

Comment by Guido Vermeulen on February 4, 2012 at 5:35pm

THE INNOCENT SLEEPERS ARE ALWAYS GUILTY

Inspired by Kafka, who else!

Comment by Guido Vermeulen on February 2, 2012 at 6:35pm

Mourn poet lovers, mourn!

One of the great European poets died yesterday ...

The End and the Beginning

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble 
to the sides of the road, 
so the corpse-laden wagons 
can pass.

Someone has to get mired 
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.

Someone must drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
Someone must glaze a window,
rehang a door. 

Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left 
for another war.

Again we'll need bridges
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged 
from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls how it was. 
Someone listens
and nods with unsevered head.
Yet others milling about 
already find it dull.

From behind the bush
sometimes someone still unearths 
rust-eaten arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew
what was going on here
must give way to
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass which has overgrown
reasons and causes,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth 
gazing at the clouds.

Wisława Szymborska 

(2 July 1923 – 1 February 2012)

1996 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Translated from Polish by: Joanna Maria Trzeciak

Comment by Guido Vermeulen on January 28, 2012 at 3:29pm

David is a great writer. He uses the kind of language that forces me to consult a dictionnary and there are not too many people who have that effect on me (hihi).

Also I like how he sometimes uses a «faits divers» of actuality and then transforms this into a general cry or reflection on the state of the world. It can be a murder in Baltimore or like in the Kaliningrad poem the fact that the captain abandonned his ship when it was sinking before the Italian coast.

Small detail that maybe was not reported in the US press. The captain sailed as close to the coast as possible to please his main waiter who then could wave to his sister who lived in the nearby town. The sister was so silly she announced the irresponsable manoeuver on Facebook! This is case again where reality depasses fiction!

Comment by Guido Vermeulen on January 27, 2012 at 4:55pm

New REBEL poem from David Stone!!!

 

The Kaliningrad depository

 

On the Danube, the ferry overturned.

An ancient order of knights,

pooled in water stripes,

found gold won at poker.

The captain abandoned ship

before the passengers.

In the lobby of the Grand Hotel,

Alcuin found gold painted

ice cream flecks,

demolished robes,

atomic secrets hidden

in gold bathroom faucets.

Elder citizens, instigators

of disease retribution,

prosecuted witnesses.

The long knives

on hydrogen foils

crossed villages and streams.

In Kaliningrad , graduates

of military intelligence,

the ancient order of knights

established to eradicate

Prussian paganism,

the moral imperative

of the Konigsberg philosophe,

suds, flakes, toys in boxes,

traffic managers, airport scans,

body patdowns, express lines

for preferred customers,

gold nuggets in leather briefcases,

luxury hotels with a view

of night grilles, gold leaf

nourished predicates

shed in war college

power point presentations.

 

In the corner office

wolves (big?bad?).

In the military base corridor;

black cats (panthers? Mutated snow leopards?)

tromped, joined the owls

in the maintenance closet.

 

 

David Stone, USA

19 January 2012

 

Comment by cheryl penn on January 26, 2012 at 8:15am

Guido - thats fantastic :-) X

Comment by Guido Vermeulen on January 25, 2012 at 10:02pm

Second collage linked with the first one and with the same text fragment

Comment by Guido Vermeulen on January 25, 2012 at 3:47am

She was expecting a baby.
What are you having? he wondered, watching the sunset.
“I think it’s going to be a star,” she said quietly, answering his thoughts.
He only smiled, caressing her head. She still looked like a girl—slim and lithe, her shoulders buried in a golden waterfall of hair.
Last time she gave birth to a wave. Emerald green—just like the color of her eyes—and it added music to the ocean.
“The ocean is silent on the inside and sounding on the outside,” she had said. “It needs music...” She had not known she was pregnant with the wave.

 

Collage by Guido Vermeulen around a text by Ginger Mayerson

Comment by Guido Vermeulen on January 23, 2012 at 6:48pm

AND A HAIKU from Reiko Fuji

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• …
• 48
• 49
• 50
• 51
• 52
• …
• 75
• Next ›
• Page