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“Laborare est Orare”
To labor is to pray,
As some dear saint has said,
And with this truth for many a day
Have I been comforted.
The Lord has made me bold
When I have labored most,
And with his gifts so manifold,
Has given the Holy Ghost
When I have idle been
Until the sun went down,
Mine eyes, so dim, have never seen
His bright, prophetic crown.
O, praise the Lord for work
Which maketh time so fleet,
In which accusers never lurk,
Whose end is very sweet.
Mrs. Sigourne
(Lydia Huntley Sigourney,
1791 – 1865)
“Laborare est Orare”
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More in: Archive S-T, Archive S-T, CLASSIC POETRY
True Love
Her love is like the hardy flower
That blooms amid the Alpine snows;
Deep-rooted in an icy bower,
No blast can chill its sweet repose;
But fresh as is the tropic rose,
Drenched in mellowest sunny beams,
It has as sweet delicious dreams
As any flower that grows.
And though an avalanche came down
And robbed it of the light of day,
That which withstood the tempest’s frown
In grief would never pine away.
Hope might withhold her feeblest ray,
Within her bosom’s snowy tomb
Love still would wear its everbloom,
The gayest of the gay.
Charles Sangster
(1822 – 1893)
True Love
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More in: Archive S-T, Archive S-T, CLASSIC POETRY
Na een aantal dichtbundels verscheen onlangs bij Uitgeverij IJzer (Utrecht) de debuutroman, van Nick J. Swarth: ‘1980 – De plasserparadox’.
Het jaar is 1980, het decor een troosteloze provinciestad, waarin werkeloosheid, armoe en woningnood hoogtij vieren. Het failliet van de textielnijverheid komt met industriële ruïnes en kaalslag in het hart van de stad. Dit bleke toneel biedt in zijn grimmigheid een ideale voedingsbodem voor de jeugdige dadendrang van de no-future generatie.
In ‘1980 – De plasserparadox’ schetst de tijdgeest in verbeten, zelden geziene grauwtinten de staat van de stad X-Burg (Tilburg). Emiel de B. dook onder in de nacht. Dr. Pink bedrijft graffiti. Ratel valt op zijn beste vriend. Liefde en politieke daadkracht binden Chloë en Loumi. Yani is een kiene travestiet.
In caleidoscopische scenes toont de roman de strapatsen van een generatie die in het kielzog van de emancipatie pal staat voor haar geaardheid. Het is de tijd van activisme, kraken en nieuwe muziek, waarin het persoonlijke politiek is en de hoop op een betere wereld groot. Maar dat is gerekend buiten de stad.
Over de auteur: Nick J. Swarth is als maker actief in diverse disciplines, maar het uitgangspunt is altijd tekst. ‘Shabby Art That Falls Apart’ is de verzamelnaam voor het beeldend werk, dat bestaat uit tekeningen en assemblages.
Swarth is ook de stem van het noise rock trio Betonfraktion, dat drie platen uitbracht. In 2016 verscheen ‘I Changed My Sex’.
Van 2005-2007 was Swarth stadsdichter van Tilburg. Poëzie in het publieke domein krijgt vorm in het project ‘On-site poetry’ (i.s.m. Sander Neijnens).
Meest recente publicaties: ‘Mijn onsterfelijke lever’ (gedichten); ‘¡Mondo Manga!’ (gedichten); “Horror Vacui | een docudrama in 14 staties’, verslag van een schandaal verwekkend kunstproject (i.s.m. Jeroen de Leijer).
Uitgeverij IJzer Utrecht
Nick J. Swarth:
‘1980 – De plasserparadox’
Paperback
Formaat: 15 x 23 cm
Omvang: 432 pagina’s
ISBN: 978 90 8684 220 9
Prijs: € 25,-
Bestellen kan ook rechtstreeks bij de uitgeverij:
https://www.uitgeverij-ijzer.nl/boeken/288-1980-de-plasserparadox
Uitgeverij IJzer
Lessinglaan 97
3533 AV Utrecht
Telefoon: 030 – 2521798
e-mail: info@uitgeverij-ijzer.nl
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More in: - Book News, - Bookstores, Archive S-T, Archive S-T, Art & Literature News, Betonfraction, Nick J. Swarth, Swarth, Nick J.
Brexit blues
Voor hetere vuren hadden ze gestaan, met
geloken blikken vol mist op verre zeevaart.
Ze dachten grage menners wel te herkennen,
en hun beduimelde beloften ras te doorzien.
Nu wachten de weglopers ginds achter breed
water bang af wat komt, in hun andere uren.
Bert Bevers
gedicht
Brexit blues
(ongepubliceerd)
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Three and One are One
In the year 1861 Barr Lassiter, a young man of twenty-two, lived with his parents and an elder sister near Carthage, Tennessee. The family were in somewhat humble circumstances, subsisting by cultivation of a small and not very fertile plantation. Owning no slaves, they were not rated among “the best people” of their neighborhood; but they were honest persons of good education, fairly well mannered and as respectable as any family could be if uncredentialed by personal dominion over the sons and daughters of Ham.
The elder Lassiter had that severity of manner that so frequently affirms an uncompromising devotion to duty, and conceals a warm and affectionate disposition. He was of the iron of which martyrs are made, but in the heart of the matrix had lurked a nobler metal, fusible at a milder heat, yet never coloring nor softening the hard exterior. By both heredity and environment something of the man’s inflexible character had touched the other members of the family; the Lassiter home, though not devoid of domestic affection, was a veritable citadel of duty, and duty—ah, duty is as cruel as death!
When the war came on it found in the family, as in so many others in that State, a divided sentiment; the young man was loyal to the Union, the others savagely hostile. This unhappy division begot an insupportable domestic bitterness, and when the offending son and brother left home with the avowed purpose of joining the Federal army not a hand was laid in his, not a word of farewell was spoken, not a good wish followed him out into the world whither he went to meet with such spirit as he might whatever fate awaited him.
Making his way to Nashville, already occupied by the Army of General Buell, he enlisted in the first organization that he found, a Kentucky regiment of cavalry, and in due time passed through all the stages of military evolution from raw recruit to experienced trooper. A right good trooper he was, too, although in his oral narrative from which this tale is made there was no mention of that; the fact was learned from his surviving comrades. For Barr Lassiter has answered “Here” to the sergeant whose name is Death.
Two years after he had joined it his regiment passed through the region whence he had come. The country thereabout had suffered severely from the ravages of war, having been occupied alternately (and simultaneously) by the belligerent forces, and a sanguinary struggle had occured in the immediate vicinity of the Lassiter homestead. But of this the young trooper was not aware.
Finding himself in camp near his home, he felt a natural longing to see his parents and sister, hoping that in them, as in him, the unnatural animosities of the period had been softened by time and separation. Obtaining a leave of absence, he set foot in the late summer afternoon, and soon after the rising of the full moon was walking up the gravel path leading to the dwelling in which he had been born.
Soldiers in war age rapidly, and in youth two years are a long time. Barr Lassiter felt himself an old man, and had almost expected to find the place a ruin and a desolation. Nothing, apparently, was changed. At the sight of each dear and familiar object he was profoundly affected. His heart beat audibly, his emotion nearly suffocated him; an ache was in his throat. Unconsciously he quickened his pace until he almost ran, his long shadow making grotesque efforts to keep its place beside him.
The house was unlighted, the door open. As he approached and paused to recover control of himself his father came out and stood bare-headed in the moonlight.
“Father!” cried the young man, springing forward with outstretched hand—“Father!”
The elder man looked him sternly in the face, stood a moment motionless and without a word withdrew into the house. Bitterly disappointed, humiliated, inexpressibly hurt and altogether unnerved, the soldier dropped upon a rustic seat in deep dejection, supporting his head upon his trembling hand. But he would not have it so: he was too good a soldier to accept repulse as defeat. He rose and entered the house, passing directly to the “sitting-room.”
It was dimly lighted by an uncurtained east window. On a low stool by the hearthside, the only article of furniture in the place, sat his mother, staring into a fireplace strewn with blackened embers and cold ashes. He spoke to her—tenderly, interrogatively, and with hesitation, but she neither answered, nor moved, nor seemed in any way surprised. True, there had been time for her husband to apprise her of their guilty son’s return. He moved nearer and was about to lay his hand upon her arm, when his sister entered from an adjoining room, looked him full in the face, passed him without a sign of recognition and left the room by a door that was partly behind him. He had turned his head to watch her, but when she was gone his eyes again sought his mother. She too had left the place.
Barr Lassiter strode to the door by which he had entered. The moonlight on the lawn was tremulous, as if the sward were a rippling sea. The trees and their black shadows shook as in a breeze. Blended with its borders, the gravel walk seemed unsteady and insecure to step on. This young soldier knew the optical illusions produced by tears. He felt them on his cheek, and saw them sparkle on the breast of his trooper’s jacket. He left the house and made his way back to camp.
The next day, with no very definite intention, with no dominant feeling that he could rightly have named, he again sought the spot. Within a half-mile of it he met Bushrod Albro, a former playfellow and schoolmate, who greeted him warmly.
“I am going to visit my home,” said the soldier.The other looked at him rather sharply, but said nothing.
“I know,” continued Lassister, “that my folks have not changed, but—”
There have been changes,” Albro interrupted—“everything changes. I’ll go with you if you don’t mind. We can talk as we go.”
But Albro did not talk.
Instead of a house they found only fire-blackened foundations of stone, enclosing an area of compact ashes pitted by rains.
Lassiter’s astonishment was extreme.
“I could not find the right way to tell you,” said Albro. “In the fight a year ago your house was burned by a Federal shell.”
“And my family—where are they?”
“In Heaven, I hope. All were killed by the shell.”
Ambrose Bierce
(1842 – 1913/1914 ?)
Three and One are One
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Sommermorgen
Auf Bergeshöhen schneebedeckt,
Auf grünen Hügeln weitgestreckt
Erglänzt die Morgensonne;
Die tauerfrischten Zweige hebt
Der junge Buchenwald und bebt
Und bebt in Daseinswonne.
Es stürzt in ungestümer Lust
Herab aus dunkler Felsenbrust
Der Gießbach mit Getose,
Und blühend Leben weckt sein Hauch
Im stolzen Baum, im niedren Strauch,
In jedem zarten Moose.
Und drüben wo die Wiese liegt,
Im Blütenschmuck, da schwirrt und fliegt
Der Mücken Schwarm und Immen.
Wie sich’s im hohen Grase regt
Und froh geschäftig sich bewegt,
Und summt mit feinen Stimmen.
Es steigt die junge Lerche frei
Empor gleich einem Jubelschrei
Im Wirbel ihrer Lieder.
Im nahen Holz der Kuckuck ruft,
Die Amsel segelt durch die Luft
Auf goldenem Gefieder.
O Welt voll Glanz und Sonnenschein,
O rastlos Werden, holdes Sein,
O höchsten Reichtums Fülle!
Und dennoch, ach – vergänglich nur
Und todgeweiht, und die Natur
Ist Schmerz in Schönheitshülle.
Marie Ebner-Eschenbach
(1830 – 1916)
Sommermorgen
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More in: Archive E-F, Archive E-F, CLASSIC POETRY
Het Feest der Poëzie brengt een afwisselende voorstelling met werk van en muziek uit het werk van de grootste Nederlandse romanschrijver.
Voordrachtskunstenaar Simon Mulder brengt bekend en minder bekend werk van Louis Couperus, zoals fragmenten uit de schokkend decadente roman ´De berg van licht´, en de vertederende korte verhalen ‘Het spoorwegongeluk’ en ‘Het verbeelde leven’.
Daarnaast vertelt hij enkele anekdotes over de grote schrijver die koekjes kocht (maar hoe?), na een optreden niet aan het voor hem georganiseerde erediner kon beginnen, en hoe en waarom hij door een Amerikaanse toeriste aangetroffen werd in een parfumerie.
Pianist Daan van de Velde en Simon Mulder besluiten de voorstelling met iets unieks: een declamatorium (stuk voor piano en voordracht) op Couperus’ beroemde korte thriller ‘De binocle’.
Data en praktische informatie:
2 voorstellingen, aanvang 20 en 21.30 uur
Locatie: Theatercafé Mascini, Zeedijk 24, 1012 AZ Amsterdam
Datum: zaterdagavond 28 november 2020
Duur: ca. 60 minuten
Entree: 12.- euro
Kaartverkoop: https://cafemascini.nl
Meer informatie over het Feest der Poëzie: www.feestderpoezie.nl
fleursdumal.nl magazine
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Sisina
Imaginez Diane en galant équipage,
Parcourant les forêts ou battant les halliers,
Cheveux et gorge au vent, s’enivrant de tapage,
Superbe et défiant les meilleurs cavaliers!
Avez-vous vu Théroigne, amante du carnage,
Excitant à l’assaut un peuple sans souliers,
La joue et l’oeil en feu, jouant son personnage,
Et montant, sabre au poing, les royaux escaliers?
Telle la Sisina! Mais la douce guerrière
À l’âme charitable autant que meurtrière;
Son courage, affolé de poudre et de tambours,
Devant les suppliants sait mettre bas les armes,
Et son coeur, ravagé par la flamme, a toujours,
Pour qui s’en montre digne, un réservoir de larmes.
Charles Baudelaire
(1821-1867)
Sisina
(poème)
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No writer is as emblematic of the American twentieth century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture. No writer negotiated as many worlds; no serious writer had as many glamorous lovers.
Sontag tells these stories and examines the work upon which her reputation was based. It explores the agonizing insecurity behind the formidable public face: the broken relationships, the struggles with her sexuality, that animated—and undermined—her writing.
And it shows her attempts to respond to the cruelties and absurdities of a country that had lost its way, and her conviction that fidelity to high culture was an activism of its own.
Utilizing hundreds of interviews conducted from Maui to Stockholm and from London to Sarajevo—and featuring nearly one hundred images—Sontag is the first book based on the writer’s restricted archives, and on access to many people who have never before spoken about Sontag, including Annie Leibovitz.
It is a definitive portrait—a great American novel in the form of a biography.
About Benjamin Moser: Benjamin Moser was born in Houston. He is the author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book of 2009. For his work bringing Clarice Lispector to international prominence, he received Brazil’s first State Prize for Cultural Diplomacy. He has published translations from French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch. He is a former books columnist for Harper’s Magazine and The New York Times Book Review and has written for The New Yorker, Conde Nast Traveler, and The New York Review of Books.
Sontag: Her Life and Work
by Bejamin Moser
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
for Biography
Publisher : Ecco
Illustrated edition
Language: : English
Sep 17, 2019
Hardcover
832 pages
ISBN-10 : 0062896393
ISBN-13 : 978-0062896391
$36.82
# new books
Susan Sontag
Biography
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Grenzen der Liebe
Alles kann Liebe:
zürnen und zagen,
leiden und wagen,
demütig werben,
töten, verderben,
alles kann Liebe.
Alles kann Liebe:
lachend entbehren,
weinend gewähren,
heißes Verlangen
nähren in bangen,
in einsamen Tagen –
alles kann Liebe –
nur nicht entsagen!
Marie Ebner-Eschenbach
(1830 – 1916)
Grenzen der Liebe
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These never-before-published poems by Johnny Cash make the perfect gifts for music lovers and fans alike.
Ed
ited and introduced by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon with a foreword by John Carter Cash, this poetry collection is illustrated with facsimile reproductions of Cash’s own handwritten pages. Now an album with music by Rosanne Cash, Brad Paisley, Willie Nelson, Kacey Musgraves, Elvis Costello, and more.
Since his first recordings in 1955, Johnny Cash has been an icon in the music world. In this collection of poems and song lyrics that have never been published before, we see the world through his eyes and view his reflection on his own interior reality, his frailties and his strengths alike.
In his hallmark voice, he pens verses about love, pain, freedom, and mortality, and expresses insights on culture, his family, his fame, even Christmas. Forever Words confirms Johnny Cash as a brilliant and singular American literary figure. His music is a part of our collective history, and here the depth of his artistry and talent become even more evident.
Forever Words
The Unknown Poems
By Johnny Cash
Category: Poetry | Music
Published by Blue Rider Press
Nov 15, 2016
144 Pages
ISBN 9780399575136
Hardcover $25.00
Nov 12, 2019
ISBN 9780399575150
Paperback
$18.00
# more poetry
Johnny Cash
Forever Words
The Unknown Poems
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On the Beach at Night
On the beach at night,
Stands a child with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.
Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.
From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.
Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,
With these kisses let me remove your tears,
The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,
They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition,
Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,
They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again,
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,
The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.
Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?
Something there is,
(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter
Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.
Walt Whitman
(1819–1892)
On the Beach at Night
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