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via datura




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Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us, 
even in the leafless winter, even in the ashy city. 

I am thinking now of grief, and of getting past it;
I feel my boots trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart pumping hard. 

I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. 
I want to be light and frolicsome. 
I want to be improbable, beautiful, and afraid of nothing, 
as though I had wings.

–Mary Oliver

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Cold Poem

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Cold now.
Close to the edge. Almost
unbearable. Clouds
bunch up and boil down
from the north of the white bear.
This tree-splitting morning
I dream of his fat tracks,
the lifesaving suet.

I think of summer with its luminous fruit,
blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,
handfuls of grain.

Maybe what cold is, is the time
we measure the love we have always had, secretly,
for our own bones, the hard knife-edged love
for the warm river of the I, beyond all else; maybe

that is what it means the beauty
of the blue shark cruising toward the tumbling seals.

In the season of snow,
in the immeasurable cold,
we grow cruel but honest; we keep
ourselves alive,
if we can, taking one after another
the necessary bodies of others, the many
crushed red flowers.


—Mary Oliver 
from American Primitive

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 via growing orbits 

image via deja vu

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Do not mourn the dead: they know what they are doing.

—Clarice Lispector

The Hour of The Star 
trans. Benjamin Moser

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       –Dorianne Laux

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 via saturn rising



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It was when my little brother, who was two and a half years younger than I, died at eighteen months. My mother some days later found his footprints in the yard and tried to build something over it to keep the wind from blowing it away. That’s the most powerful image I’ve ever known.

—A. R. Ammons

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via datura

 

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Le Chants des Morts - The Song of the Dead

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Printed in one volume, size 42 x 32 cm
Manuscript of Pierre Reverdy, with Pablo Picasso
123 original lithographs, printed in red
Published on ‘vélin d’ Arches’ paper:

• 250 copies, numbered 1-250
• 20 copies, off the market, numbered I-XX

 

Pierre Reverdy, one of the most important modern poets of France, and the Spaniard Pablo Picasso, the most versatile, innovative and productive artist of the 20th century, worked together and produced this excellent book. 

Reverdy filled the pages of the book with his calligraphic handwritten poems (The Song of the Dead, 1946) expressing his personal intellectual doubts and feelings. Then, Picasso applied the strokes of his vibrant red-coloured brush, full of expressive motion, to these beautiful and luxuriant pages. 

The result is a harmonic unity, which is created by the drawing that surrounds and passes through the text. Even so, it does not overpower, but supports it. In this way, a perfect amalgamation of text and image is achieved. The book appears to be a kind of improvised dialogue; something like a friendly chat between a poet and a painter. 

Pablo Picasso was troubled for a long time about the way in which he would artistically express the poems of Reverdy. At the beginning, he drew some ‘traditional’ illustrations. However, he soon felt the need to match, somehow, the writing of the poet and its sculpting qualities with a relative, accompanying support.

Considering the impact of reality, he frees and exposes it to every useless and meaningless idea; then, by using the process of elimination, he brings it back to its meaningful elements. He does not simply try to harmonise his drawings to the text of the book.

In reality, he radically renews the relationship between the writings and the painting; he enriches it, giving it a new personal meaning.
 

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text

via datura 

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