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Arms and the Boy
Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade
How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;
Blue with all malice, like a madman’s flash;
And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.
Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-leads,
Which long to nuzzle in the hearts of lads,
Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth
Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death.
For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.
There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple;
And God will grow no talons at his heels,
Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.
Wilfred Owen
(1893 – 1918)
Arms and the Boy (Poem)
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A Terre
(Being the philosophy of many Soldiers.)
Sit on the bed; I’m blind, and three parts shell.
Be careful; can’t shake hands now; never shall.
Both arms have mutinied against me,—brutes.
My fingers fidget like ten idle brats.
I tried to peg out soldierly,—no use!
One dies of war like any old disease.
This bandage feels like pennies on my eyes.
I have my medals?—Discs to make eyes close.
My glorious ribbons?—Ripped from my own back
In scarlet shreds. (That’s for your poetry book.)
A short life and a merry one, my buck!
We used to say we’d hate to live dead-old,—
Yet now … I’d willingly be puffy, bald,
And patriotic. Buffers catch from boys
At least the jokes hurled at them. I suppose
Little I’d ever teach a son, but hitting,
Shooting, war, hunting, all the arts of hurting.
Well, that’s what I learnt,—that, and making money.
Your fifty years ahead seem none too many?
Tell me how long I’ve got? God! For one year
To help myself to nothing more than air!
One Spring! Is one too good to spare, too long?
Spring wind would work its own way to my lung,
And grow me legs as quick as lilac-shoots.
My servant’s lamed, but listen how he shouts!
When I’m lugged out, he’ll still be good for that.
Here in this mummy-case, you know, I’ve thought
How well I might have swept his floors for ever.
I’d ask no night off when the bustle’s over,
Enjoying so the dirt. Who’s prejudiced
Against a grimed hand when his own’s quite dust,
Less live than specks that in the sun-shafts turn,
Less warm than dust that mixes with arms’ tan?
I’d love to be a sweep, now, black as Town,
Yes, or a muckman. Must I be his load?
O Life, Life, let me breathe,—a dug-out rat!
Not worse than ours the lives rats lead—
Nosing along at night down some safe rut,
They find a shell-proof home before they rot.
Dead men may envy living mites in cheese,
Or good germs even. Microbes have their joys,
And subdivide, and never come to death.
Certainly flowers have the easiest time on earth.
“I shall be one with nature, herb, and stone,”
Shelley would tell me. Shelley would be stunned:
The dullest Tommy hugs that fancy now.
“Pushing up daisies,” is their creed, you know.
To grain, then, go my fat, to buds my sap,
For all the usefulness there is in soap.
D’you think the Boche will ever stew man-soup?
Some day, no doubt, if …
Friend, be very sure
I shall be better off with plants that share
More peaceably the meadow and the shower.
Soft rains will touch me,— as they could touch once,
And nothing but the sun shall make me ware.
Your guns may crash around me. I’ll not hear;
Or, if I wince, I shall not know I wince.
Don’t take my soul’s poor comfort for your jest.
Soldiers may grow a soul when turned to fronds,
But here the thing’s best left at home with friends.
My soul’s a little grief, grappling your chest,
To climb your throat on sobs; easily chased
On other sighs and wiped by fresher winds.
Carry my crying spirit till it’s weaned
To do without what blood remained these wounds.
Wilfred Owen
(1893 – 1918)
A Terre (Poem)
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An indispensable anthology of brilliant hard-to-find writings by Poe on poetry, the imagination, humor, and the sublime which adds a new dimension to his stature as a speculative thinker and philosopher. Essays (in translation) by Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Valéry, & André Breton shed light on Poe’s relevance within European literary tradition.
These are the arcana of Edgar Allan Poe: writings on wit, humor, dreams, drunkenness, genius, madness, and apocalypse. Here is the mind of Poe at its most colorful, its most incisive, and its most exceptional.
Edgar Allan Poe’s dark, melodic poems and tales of terror and detection are known to readers everywhere, but few are familiar with his cogent literary criticism, or his speculative thinking in science, psychology or philosophy. This book is an attempt to present his lesser known, out of print, or hard to find writings in a single volume, with emphasis on the theoretical and esoteric. The second part, “The Friend View,” includes seminal essays by Poe’s famous admirers in France, clarifying his international literary importance.
America has never seen such a personage as Edgar Allan Poe. He is a figure who appears once an epoch, before passing into myth. American critics from Henry James to T. S. Eliot have disparaged and attempted to explain away his influence to no end, save to perpetuate his fame. Even the disdainful Eliot once conceded, “and yet one cannot be sure that one’s own writing has not been influence by Poe.”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), born in Boston, Massachusetts, was an American poet, writer, editor, and literary critic. He is well known for his haunting poetry and mysterious short stories. Regarded as being a central figure of Romanticism, he is also considered the inventor of detective fiction and the growing science fiction genre. Some of his most famous works include poems such as The Raven, Annabel Lee, and A Dream Within a Dream; tales such as The Cask of Amontillado, The Masque of Red Death, and The Tell-Tale Heart.
Title: The Unknown Poe
Subtitle: An Anthology of Fugitive Writings
Author: Edgar Allan Poe
Edited by Raymond Foye
Publisher: City Lights Publishers
Format: Paperback
124 pages
1980
ISBN-10 0872861104
ISBN-13 9780872861107
List Price $11.95
# American writers
Edgar Allan Poe
fleursdumal.nl magazine
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Dulce et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Wilfred Owen
(1893 – 1918)
Dulce et Decorum Est (Poem)
# Armistice of 11 November 1918 – 2018
fleursdumal.nl magazine
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Auteur de la Série Noire, Hervé Prudon est mort en 2017 d’un cancer annoncé. Les deux derniers mois de sa vie, il les a consacrés à écrire des poèmes qui témoignent avec lucidité de son dernier combat : revendication de la solitude, détachement, conscience de la mort qui vient, souci de celle qui reste seule. Ils dessinent au-delà de la mort la personnalité d’un homme radical, porteur d’une douleur existentielle qu’il cherchait à conjurer.
Écrits dans l’urgence, ces textes brefs et nerveux acquièrent un supplément de vigueur, de force et d’acuité. En dépit des circonstances, des traits d’humour viennent tempérer la sèche gravité du propos, loin de tout cynisme, de tout pathos. Ce court testament est à la fois une leçon de stoïcisme et un morceau de tendresse humaine à vif.
«Atteint d’un cancer diagnostiqué en août 2017, Hervé Prudon se savait condamné. Durant les deux derniers mois de sa vie, où il lui était devenu impossible d’écrire le roman qu’il avait ébauché, il remplira deux carnets de moleskine noirs d’une écriture tremblée. Une centaine de poèmes qui tous parlent de la mort à venir et frappent par leur lucidité et l’urgence dont ils sont un puissant témoignage. Ils dessinent en creux la personnalité d’un homme, porteur d’une douleur existentielle qu’il chercha toute sa vie à conjurer par la légèreté.» Sylvie Péju
Hervé Prudon, né le 27 décembre 1950 à Sannois (Seine-et-Oise) et mort le 15 octobre 2017 à Paris, est un écrivain, journaliste et scénariste français, spécialisé dans le roman policier et la littérature d’enfance et de jeunesse. Hervé Prudon laisse derrière lui une vingtaine de romans et des poèmes.
j’étais tremblé trempé de mon septembre
j’ânonnais dans ma tête en scaphandre
un dictionnaire de rimes à rien
mourir était mon programme court
écrire déjà était mort de fatigue et silence
c’était un premier pas vers ma longue absence
Hervé Prudon
Devant la mort
Littérature française – Poésie
ISBN-10 2072819849
Gencode : 9782072819841
Code distributeur : G02336
Collection Blanche, Gallimard
Parution : 11-10-2018
Langue : Français
128 pages
140 x 205 mm
Prix 14,50€
# new poetry
Hervé Prudon
fleursdumal.nl magazine
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Stephen Parkers Brecht-Biografie setzt neue Maßstäbe, jubeln die KritikerInnen einstimmig – auch wenn Brecht hier nicht gerade sympathisch daherkommt: Als Heuchler, der anderen den Kommunismus predigte, während er gerissen um seine Honorare feilschte und Grundstücke kaufte; Neidhammel, der andere Künstler schlecht machte und sich selbst lobte; politischen Opportunisten und “sexbesessenen Chauvinisten” lernt FR-Kritiker Wilhelm von Sternburg Brecht kennen, betont aber vor allem die Fairness, die der britische Germanist Stephen Parker dem Dichter in diesem nach der Struktur des klassischen Dramas aufgebauten Tausend-Seiten-Werk angedeihen lässt: An Brechts literarischem Genie hat Parker keine Zweifel.
In der taz verdankt Ambros Waibel dem Buch ganz neue Einsichten, etwa in Brechts Verhältnis zu seinen Eltern. Parkers umfangreiche Recherche und Empathie für Brechts komplexen Charakter hebt auch Norbert Meyer in der Presse hervor, “Parkers Brecht-Biografie erinnert an die Vermessung eines literarischen Gullivers mit tausend feinen Fäden”, meint Michaela Schmitz im DlF über das faktengesättigte Buch: Dass Parker im Gegensatz zu anderen Biografen Brecht nicht durch die “ideologische Brille” betrachtet, verbucht sie ebenfalls als Gewinn. In der Welt unterhält sich Richard Kämmerlings mit Parker über Brecht.
Zum 120. Geburtstag erscheint in deutscher Sprache die endgültige Darstellung von Bertolt Brechts Leben und Werk. Dieses Prädikat hat sich das Buch des englischen Germanisten und hervorragenden Brechtkenners Stephen Parker durch eine Reihe von Vorzügen erworben.
Hier wird zum ersten Mal das gesamte verfügbare Wissen über den Autor und dessen Arbeit dargeboten und zum Erzählen gebracht. Die lebendige und detailgenaue Darstellung eines aufgrund der politischen, persönlichen und literarischen Verhältnisse am Abgrund angesiedelten Lebens – nicht die chronologische Registratur – bilden das hervorstechendste Merkmal. Von außen kommend und mit einem unvoreingenommen neutralen Blick zeichnet Parker ein Bild der verschiedenen Lebensstationen und Schaffensperioden Brechts.
Kenntnisreich vollzieht er die damaligen wie heutigen parteiischen Tendenzen nach, so dass sie in ihrer historischen und literaturhistorischen Konstellation erkennbar werden. Engagement für die Sache und Liebe für das Werk Bertolts Brechts sind Stephen Parkers Antriebskräfte. Sein Enthusiasmus begleitet den Dichter von früh an durch alle Entwicklungen und bringt ihn uns in seiner ganzen Widersprüchlichkeit nahe.
Stephen Parker
Bertolt Brecht – Eine Biographie
Aus dem Englischen von Ulrich Fries und Irmgard Müller
Suhrkamp Verlag
Erschienen: 11.06.2018
Gebunden
1030 Seiten
ISBN: 978-3-518-42812-2
58,00 Euro
# new books
Bertolt Brecht Biographie
fleursdumal.nl magazine
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Heel 2017 schreef Cyrille Offermans aan wat je nog het beste zou kunnen omschrijven als een intellectueel journaal: een verzameling notities, beschouwingen, herinneringen, observaties en essayistische commentaren op gelezen boeken en gebeurtenissen in de wereld.
Dat de barre werkelijkheid voortdurend zijn plaats op de voorgrond opeist, zegt genoeg over onze tijd. Het boek (en dus het jaar) begint en eindigt met de doffe ellende in Syrië.
Daartussen presenteert zich een baaierd aan onderwerpen – van de Franse verkiezingen en de afnemende tekenvaardigheid van de schooljeugd tot en met uiteenzettingen over bibliomanie, de betekenis van carnaval, de eerste woordjes van een kleinkind of de ziekte van een vriendin.
Er is alles in de wereld. En er is alles in dit boek.
Cyrille Offermans (Geleen, 8 april 1945) is een Nederlandse schrijver, essayist en criticus. Hij publiceert met name in De Groene Amsterdammer, Vrij Nederland, De Standaard en Raster. Bij het laatste literair tijdschrift werkte hij tevens als redacteur. Hij publiceerde meer dan twintig boeken in uiteenlopende genres, vooral essayistiek in het grensgebied van literatuur, filosofie, cultuurgeschiedenis en politiek. Zijn werk werd diverse malen met prestigieuze prijzen bekroond.
Cyrille Offermans
Een iets beschuttere plek misschien
Dagboeknotities
Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers
Privé-domein – Paperback
Publicatiedatum: 25-09-2018
ISBN: 9789029525794
NUR: 321
€ 25,99
# new books
cyrille offermans
fleursdumal.nl magazine
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The Poetry Deal is the first full-length collection of individual poems in decades from legendary feminist Beat poet, Diane di Prima.
Framed by two passionate, and critical, prose statements assessing her adopted home city, The Poetry Deal is a collection of poems that provide a personal and political look at 40 years of Bay Area culture. Often elegiac in tone, the book captures the poet’s sense of loss as she chronicles the deaths of friends from the AIDS epidemic as well as the passing of illustrious countercultural colleagues like Philip Whalen, Pigpen from the Grateful Dead, and Kirby Doyle.
She also recalls and mourns out-of-town inspirations like Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Audre Lorde, and Ezra Pound. Yet even as she laments the state of her city today, she finds triumph and solace in her own relationships, the marriages of her friends, the endurance of City Lights, and other symbols of San Francisco’s heritage.
Born in Brooklyn in 1934, di Prima emerged as a member of the Beat Generation in New York in the late ’50s; in the early ’60s, she founded the important mimeo magazine, The Floating Bear, with her lover LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka). In the late ’60s, she moved to San Francisco, where she would publish her groundbreaking Revolutionary Letters (1971) with City Lights. Her other important books include Memoirs of a Beatnik, Pieces of a Dream, Recollections of My Life as a Woman, and Loba. She was named San Francisco Poet Laureate in 2009.
“The Poetry Deal is fresh flame from a revolutionary fire that continues to burn. Every woman of every age should carry it in a purse with their pepper spray. Diane is the ultimate weapon.”—Amber Tamblyn, author of Dark Sparkler
Title The Poetry Deal
Subtitle San Francisco Poet Laureate Series No. 5
Author Diane di Prima
Collection San Francisco Poet Laureates
Publisher City Lights Publishers
Publication 2014
Format Paperback
ISBN-10 1931404151
ISBN-13 9781931404150
pages 120
Price $11.95
# new books
Diane di Prima poet
fleursdumal.nl magazine
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The story of literature in sixteen acts—from Homer to Harry Potter, including The Tale of Genji, Don Quixote, The Communist Manifesto, and how they shaped world history
In this groundbreaking book, Martin Puchner leads us on a remarkable journey through time and around the globe to reveal the how stories and literature have created the world we have today. Through sixteen foundational texts selected from more than four thousand years of world literature, he shows us how writing has inspired the rise and fall of empires and nations, the spark of philosophical and political ideas, and the birth of religious beliefs.
We meet Murasaki, a lady from eleventh-century Japan who wrote the first novel, The Tale of Genji, and follow the adventures of Miguel de Cervantes as he battles pirates, both seafaring and literary. We watch Goethe discover world literature in Sicily, and follow the rise in influence of The Communist Manifesto. Puchner takes us to Troy, Pergamum, and China, speaks with Nobel laureates Derek Walcott in the Caribbean and Orhan Pamuk in Istanbul, and introduces us to the wordsmiths of the oral epic Sunjata in West Africa. This delightful narrative also chronicles the inventions—writing technologies, the printing press, the book itself—that have shaped people, commerce, and history. In a book that Elaine Scarry has praised as “unique and spellbinding,” Puchner shows how literature turned our planet into a written world.
Martin Puchner is the Byron and Anita Wien Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. His prize-winning books range from philosophy to the arts, and his bestselling six-volume Norton Anthology of World Literature and HarvardX MOOC (massive open online course) have brought four thousand years of literature to students across the globe. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Martin Puchner
The Written World
The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, and Civilization
Random House Trade Paperbacks
Paperback
Jul 24, 2018
464 Pages
$20.00
ISBN 9780812988277
new books
fleursdumal.nl magazine
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Er bestaat slechts één roman, en daar zijn wij tegelijkertijd zowel de verteller als het onderwerp van: de Geschiedenis.
Al de rest is een schaamteloze kopie. Deze wereldroman vertelt de Geschiedenis eeuw na eeuw en laat ons de avonturen en ontdekkingen van de mensheid herbeleven.
De Geschiedenis is zowel oermens, Romein als Napoleons minnares; ze begroet de boekdrukkunst, de Nieuwe Wereld en de moderne wetenschappen en voelt zich thuis in Jeruzalem, Byzantium, Venetië en New York.
Ik leef altijd is een meesterwerk vol ironie en blijmoedigheid, en een intellectuele autobiografie van de auteur.
Jean d’Ormesson (1925 – 2017) was een groot Frans schrijver, filosoof, journalist en lid van de Académie Française. Hij schreef meer dan 40 boeken, fictie en essays. Drie dagen voor zijn overlijden finaliseerde hij zijn laatste boek, Ik leef altijd. Bij publicatie werd het meteen nummer 1 in Frankrijk.
Jean D’Ormesson:
Ik leef altijd
Auteur: Jean D’Ormesson
Vertaling: Johan op de Beeck
Taal: Nederlands
Paperback
Verschijningsdatum
6 september 2018
1e druk
Afmetingen 21 x 13,6 x 2,8 cm
288 pagina’s
ISBN: 9789492626875
Uitg. Horizon
€ 21.99
# new books
fleursdumal.nl magazine
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Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein. Few can be said to have had as broad an impact on European art in the twentieth century as these two cultural giants.
Pablo Picasso, a pioneering visual artist, created a prolific and widely influential body of work.
Gertrude Stein, an intellectual tastemaker, hosted the leading salon for artists and writers between the wars in her Paris apartment, welcoming Henri Matisse, Ernest Hemingway, and Ezra Pound to weekly events at her home to discuss art and literature.
It comes as no surprise, then, that Picasso and Stein were fast friends and frequent confidantes. Through Picasso and Stein’s casual notes and reflective letters, this volume of correspondence between the two captures Paris both in the golden age of the early twentieth century and in one of its darkest hours, the Nazi occupation through mentions of dinner parties, lovers, work, and the crises of the two world wars. Illustrated with photographs and postcards, as well as drawings and paintings by Picasso, this collection captures an exhilarating period in European culture through the minds of two artistic greats.
Correspondence
Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein
Paper $27.50
ISBN: 9780857425850
Published September 2018
Cloth $29.95
ISBN: 9781905422913
Published November 2008
Distributed for Seagull Books
Edited by Laurence Madeline.
Translated by Lorna Scott Fox.
390 pages
Biography and Letters
Illustrations
new books
Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein
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Thriller with film rights sold to the creators of The Girl On the Train.
This one will keep you guessing.’ – Anita Shreve, author of The Stars are Fire When you read this book, you will make many assumptions. It’s about a jealous wife, obsessed with her replacement. It’s about a younger woman set to marry the man she loves.
The first wife seems like a disaster; her replacement is the perfect woman. You will assume you know the motives, the history, the anatomy of the relationships. You will be wrong. The Wife Between Us is the first collaboration between Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen.
Greer Hendricks spent over two decades as an editor. Prior to her tenure in book publishing, she worked at Allure Magazine and earned her Masters in Journalism from Columbia University. Her writing has been published in the New York Times and Publishers Weekly. Greer lives in Manhattan with her husband, two children, and very needy dog, Rocky. The Wife Between Us is her first novel.
Sarah Pekkanen is the internationally and USA Today bestselling author of several novels including Skipping a Beat. A former investigative journalist and feature writer, her work has been published in The Washington Post, USA Today, and many others. She is the mother of three sons and lives just outside Washington, D.C.
Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen
The Wife Between Us
Trade Paperback
Publ Date: July 26, 2018
Category: Fiction / Thriller
Publisher: Pan Books / Macmillan
Pages: 352
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1509842837
ISBN-13: 978-1509842834
new books
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