Revolution of Snow

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,

its white flag waving over everything,

the landscape vanished,

not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,

and beyond these windows...Snow Day, Billy Collins

Update - Saturday, 5 Feb 2011. Twitter re: Egypt. Feeling way under-the-weather. Even quite ill. Oof.

If you don't have access to Al Jazeera English (very rare in the States - though I can access it just fine), watch here.

To Bend with Apples

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless Conspiring Working together; literally, to conspire is “to breathe together” (OED)

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; thatch-eves Thatch-eaves, the edge of thatched roofs

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.-first stanza, To Autumn (John Keats)

I cannot help it (the Keats business). It's all Tina at the English Muse's fault because she mentioned yesterday's NYTimes Sunday travel section. I was perhaps unnaturally happy yesterday morning when I saw the Protestant Cemetery mentioned in a 36 Hours in Rome bit. But there you are. More To Autumn posts. Last night I was tossing about & thinking about Keats & his politics. His horror at the gap between rich & poor (about which he knew quite a lot first-hand). He would be agonized by today's lack of progress. So I'll leave it there & just pick up stanza by stanza. (I'm sort of kidding.) Someone else preoccupied today with autumn & poetry today is secret, fragile skies. Lovely photograph, too. (photograph via bohemea tumblr & on Julie's blog here)

PS: I've been fussing about to get the poem layout properly & Blogger is being defiant. So in it goes, unformatted. I'll try again later. Update - I hit publish on this yesterday with the wrong time on it & the feed stuck. So if you think, I saw that yesterday. Yes, you did. It's me, not you.

The Interrupted Concert

It was on this day in 1936 that the 38-year-old Spanish poet Federico García Lorca was executed, a few weeks after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. In those first weeks, people on both sides — the leftist republicans and the right-wing nationalists — were rounded up and killed, as many as 50,000, with particularly heavy casualties against the republicans. Lorca was a leftist sympathizer, an open homosexual, and a writer who wrote about oppressed people like gypsies, so he was an easy target for the nationalists.--The Writer's Almanac

"Seventy years after his death, his voice is just as alive as on that 19 August night when bullets tried to silence it." --conclusion to this 2006 article, Poet's Death Still Troubles Spain.

Here is the link to the bilingual Fundacion Federico García Lorca (in Madrid) created by Lorca's sister, Isabel. BBC link of Lorca's life in pictures, here. I can barely write a thing as this horrific murder makes me weep.

The Interrupted Concert

The frozen sleepy pause

of the half moon

has broken the harmony

of the deep night.

The ditches, shrouded in sedge,

protest in silence,

and the frogs, muezzins of shadow,

have fallen silent.

In the old village inn

the sad music has ceased,

and the most ancient of stars

has muted its ray.

The wind has come to rest

in dark mountain caves,

and a solitary poplar—Pythagoras

of the pure plain—

lifts its aged hand

to strike at the moon. (trans. W.S. Merwin)

Night Lights

Each day concludes in a huge splurge of vermilions/... And night arrives in one gigantic step.--from Two Campers in Cloud Country (Rock Lake, Canada)*, S. Plath

I've always wanted to see the northern lights (aurora borealis). Canadians & Americans in the north will see them tonight. (Maybe.) Cool NASA link. Goodness. Meanwhile, off to the bath. I'm looking at bath posts for ideas & as always, Tina Tarnoff has something inspiring on Thought Patterns. Ready for a Bath? from August 2009.

Good night you lucky, lucky people up north.

*the poem is not about death, no matter what lunatics write; it's about sleep. And vacations, holidays. And how beautiful Ontario was on a camping trip. The End.

[bath & tree bed via Verhext tumblr]

Storm Warnings

I draw the curtains as the sky goes black
And set a match to candles sheathed in glass
Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine
Of weather through the unsealed aperture.
This is our sole defense against the season;
These are the things we have learned to do
Who live in troubled regions. -Adrienne Rich

Not Again. Yes. Again.

(lovely photograph by Virginia Gálvez)

NB--Power didn't go out during a storm; oh no. It went out at 12.03am when all was as quiet as a mouse. I intend to mount a public campaign to force Potomac Electric Power Company to reduce bills, issue reimbursement vouchers for perishables, especially for those of us on fixed incomes. Also to reimburse diabetics, & others who must use refrigerated medicines. I shall think of my opening gambit tomorrow afternoon. I shall spend all of August on it, if need be.

Fifteen+ years of unreliable service is enough. Hurricanes, etc. yes. I understand; but if the basic integrity of the structure is not maintained, this is what we get. Unacceptable. This is war. Power companies should not make profits; they cannot be responsible to shareholders & public safety simultaneously. I have finally convinced a few former colleagues of this FACT. The fact that I live in liberal Maryland might help. Watch out PEPCO--you finally snapped my last nerve. Just now.

Drunk With Pines

Happy birthday to sexy devil Pablo Neruda. He didn't look like one of the Spanish World Cup team; he's at a disadvantage, being dead & all. Still...

Drunk with Pines is from Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair*, beloved by sensitive young men everywhere as a go-to seduction aid. Well, it's true, I'm not criticizing. Worked on me. (*Translated by W.S. Merwin, newly-appointed Poet Laureate in the U.S. )

This Bird Has Flown

These are the days when Birds come back—
A very few—a Bird or two—
To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies resume
The old—old sophistries of June—
A blue and gold mistake...Emily Dickinson.

[images via Holga {Paint with your and shoot from the heart}; close your eyes, open your mind tumblr; without melissa tumblr; olivewoodgift(dot)com]

Bloomsday Wedding

In your pink wool knitted dress / Before anything had smudged anything / You stood at the altar. Bloomsday--Ted Hughes

I've been writing a remembrance of the only Molly Bloom (to me), Siobhán McKenna. Difficult to edit in time, though, & I want to post a photograph. So I thought, yes, well this will do nicely--a 54-year anniversary. I don't think of it as a failed marriage, actually. Wanted to link to the Hughes poem but it is not an easy task to find one without the requisite "He killed her" business. Then we get to the matter of photographs; same unsavory stuff. There is not a photograph--or if there is I don't remember & am too lazy to look through my bookshelves. The one that stands in on many websites is actually from a Paris honeymoon, before a Spanish summer (about which Plath wrote vividly in her notebooks, including good sketches/drawings.) This chandelier looks very celebratory out there in what I think of as a meadow, edged with darker woods.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to figure out whether or not to take Julie to the beach overnight (soon). This is a sudden & welcome question & possibility.

[chandelier by Leigh Miller Photography via we heart it ]

My Baroque Brain (Breathe II)

The afternoon before I had lain across

my bed and my cat leapt up to lie

alongside me, purring and slowly

growing dozy. By this ritual I could/ clear some clutter from my baroque brain...
The Cloisters, Wm. Matthews, greatly missed.

I must have 100+ images of (North African/Levantine baroque) bedrooms but not for tonight. This is from the Verhext tumblr; marvellous San Francisco artist Tina Tarnoff of Thought Patterns has a post using images from this site. I highly recommend a visit to Pleasure.

Off to the virtual Libyan desert tomorrow for more basket magic. If only he would...hold that thought.

Lunatic on Bulbs

Well, that's what she said. (Emily Dickinson). I'm preoccupied with gardens, the lack of one, & so on lately/always. Tiger lilies mean something to me (& to Miss D), these illustrations were in a folder, & I finally read this NYTimes article Emily Dickinson's Garden at the New York Botanical Gardens. It's on through 12 June. G'night.

[botanical image via Ray Allen's wildflowergardening.wordpress.com; second image Flora's Feast, a Masque of Flowers by British illustrator Walter Crane; third, guess who?]

Walking the Old City

In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,

I walk from one epoch to another without a memory

to guide me...-by Mahmoud Darwish

[photograph via we heart it, unattributed from an unidentified tumblr acct. Let me know if it's yours; I'd love a dove hair ornament]

Week's End - Ode to Rome

John Keats died in Rome on 23 February 1821. I may not post next week but could not let the occasion pass without comment. As reported previously, I have embarrassed at least one relative in the Keats-Shelley House & at the Protestant cemetery. I feel less an idiot upon reading that no less a personage than Oscar Wilde prostrated himself for 25 minutes at the grave. (I'm making my way--at last--through Andrew Motion's biography of Keats.)

Giampaolo Macorig's beautiful photograph would have been Keats's view as he walked on the Pincio those last few months. The image of his signature is from the Keats-Shelley House & the organization's website is looking quite spiffy these days; do take a virtual visit. It's very much a destination for writers (& others) living in & visiting Rome. The story of the acquisition of the house is one of cooperation among Anglophones in Rome. (For once. Ahem.)

And finally, here is a sweet article I just saw in the Observer by a reporter who went to Rome with his girlfriend--in search of Romance (& Keats). It has a much happier ending than that of John & Fanny.

Update: Thursday, 25 Feb. (Read in whiny voice.) If we don't lose power (again!), I'll be back next week. Maybe Saturday.

Lucille Clifton

Come celebrate with me/That every day/Something has tried to kill me/And has failed. ~Lucille Clifton

Beyond upset. Just found out. Here's a link. Funeral arrangements are pending. (I'm still in exile but hope to be home later today.) Update: Here's a poem written for Lucille, by Grace Cavalieri.

[photograph via famouspoetsandpoems]

A Pity, We Were Such a Good Invention*

"We even flew a little."* Yehuda Amichai

Still not up & about much but I'm tiring of the cute lamb. Sorry little lamb. Trying to ignore all the pundits who are pre-judging the SOTUS tonight. Plus bizarro tea-baggers are acting up nearby. Ugh. Should have put up something about birds of prey. (Though the poem, which is not linked here due to copyright, is not about birds. You know what poets are like. So irritating.)

Please vote for Liberty London Girl in the Tenth Annual Weblog Awards. She's the only one I nominated who made the finals. I nominated many blogs on my list/links in the side-bar & am mightily peeved that Being Ruby (Australia), The Clever Pup, & automatism (both Canadian) did not make final nominations. Fume. Must seize power, somehow, for next year. [Update: also neglected, Cycle Chic from Copenhagen.]

These photographs are from The Real Israel on Blogger. It was discontinued some years ago with little to no explanation; there's another blog of the same title on Wordpress, but I don't see a connection yet. The photographer's name eludes but I am working to find it; there are several photographs of interest (to me). I'm not linking because I don't want (some) of the commenters to come over here. Anything to do with Israel/Palestine brings out, um, passion. And also, might I add, people attribute views to me which are not mine--at all. I'm no apologist for one side or the other. That's putting it mildly.

Ciao

[birds in Ramat Gan preserve, Israel]

Christmas Correspondence

And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart.
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
- W.H. Auden [Night Mail]

[by Roadside Projects on flickr, via Creative Inspiration]

Magic Casements

Poetry should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance. --John Keats

"Oh fer cryin' out loud, stop with the Keats." Well, no. I was rereading the odes last night, particularly Nightingale...& it's his birthday. What a good excuse to put in some stills from Jane Campion's Bright Star. (The blueandpurple is swoony.) Click on the Bright Star link...it's Jane Campion's interactive production site--storyboards, rehearsal video, production design images, & the like. I still search for photographs of the director's cat, Topper who plays, well, the Cat. (He's a brilliant scene stealer.)

From today's The Writer's Almanac:

It's the birthday of the poet John Keats, (books by this author) born in London (1795), who was just starting his career as a poet in 1818 when a series of brutally negative reviews of his first two books appeared. And then, that same year, Keats learned that his brother was dying of tuberculosis. Keats spent the last few months of 1818 taking care of his brother, who died a few weeks before Christmas. In the wake of his brother's death, Keats moved into a duplex with a friend, and in the other half of the duplex lived a beautiful 18-year-old girl named Fanny Brawne, who became the love of his life. He declared his love to her soon after they met, but he decided not to marry her until he'd secured his reputation as a great poet.

Week's End - To Autumn

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?/ Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,

--John Keats, complete poem...

Oh no, another Keats post? You bet. Thank you, Jane Campion, for your new film Bright Star. I heard high school students talking this afternoon & the word 'Keats' floated through the air between them. This wasn't in a school building.

Keats arrived in Rome (via Naples) 21 October 1820; the ship was quarantined & he did not arrive in Rome until 15 November. Though he did not write poetry in what were to be his last months, he wrote one letter, to his friend Charles Brown. It's heartbreaking, especially the last two lines. "...I can scarcely bid you good bye even in a letter. I always made an awkward bow."

The photographs are from the Keats-Shelley House near the Spanish Steps; the salon & Keats' bedroom. In these very rooms & at the Protestant Cemetery, I have disgraced myself several times with squeaky sniffs. Once, I embarrassed a younger sister & have not yet been forgiven. Ever after, I have visited alone.

A lovely weekend to all. (Sniff.)

Lungo Tevere by Giampaolo Macorig via flickr; Keats-Shelley House photographs by frattaglia via flickr; Protestant Cemetery, Keats' grave by Piero Montesacro via wikimedia commons.

Bird On The Wire

When I wrote don't-endanger-bloggers-in-Iran message to well-meaning FB/Twittering birdies, I did not mean/nor say 'cork it' when people have been arrested. I said 'be careful. It's so easy to feel brave & live vicariously from where most of us sit. You don't get medals of bravery for clicking 'pooh on [insert cause]' on FB, etc. Wow, nuance is a lost art. So in case any confusion...go to right sidebar, or to GG blog. Re: missing bloggers & assorted.

Like a bird on the wire,/
Like a drunk in a midnight choir/
I have tried in my way to be free.../-L. Cohen

Fume.

[Nina Leen photographs from LIFE archives; undated]

Bob in Black & White

Just felt like it. Visions of Johanna earlier & it's full of keys & locks & cages...(photo credit) New album late this month.

Week's End - It's Me, I'm Not Home*

*The title of a poem by good friend, Reetika Vazirani. From her last book, World Hotel, though there was at least one more manuscript. Probably will be writing over the weekend but also on a photo search. Have a wonderful weekend, wherever you find yourself.

(Photograph of orange vintage phone by Grant Hutchinson)