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An Old Man’s Thought of School
[The following poem was recited personally by the author
Saturday afternoon, October 31, at the inauguration
of the fine new Cooper Public School, Camden, New Jersey]
An old man’s thought of school;
An old man, gathering youthful memories and
blooms that youth itself cannot,
Now only do I know you!
O fair auroral skies! O morning dew upon the
grass!
And these I see—these sparkling eyes,
These stores of mystic meaning—these young lives,
Building, equipping, like a fleet of ships—immortal
ships!
Soon to sail out over the measureless seas,
On the Soul’s voyage.
Only a lot of boys and girls?
Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes?
Only a public school?
Ah! more—infinitely more;
(As George Fox rais’d his warning cry, “Is it this
pile of brick and mortar—these dead floors,
windows, rails—you call the church?
Why this is not the church at all—the church is
living, ever living souls.”)
And you, America,
Cast you the real reckoning for your present?
The lights and shadows of your future—good or evil?
This Union multiform, with all its dazzling hopes
and terrible fears?
Look deeper, nearer, earlier far—provide ahead—
counsel in time;
Not to your verdicts of election days—not to your
voters look,
To girlhood, boyhood look—the teacher and the
school.
Walt Whitman
(1819 – 1892)
Poem: An Old Man’s Thought of School
Published in THE DAILY GRAPHIC, NEW YORK, Tuesday, November 3, 1874
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The extraordinary true story of the Stasi’s poetry club: Stasiland
East Germany’s secret police were convinced that writers were embedding messages in their work.
This reveals how soldiers had monthly meetings to learn how to write lyrical verse, weaponising poetry in the struggle against the class enemy.
A literary detective story with spies who were moulded into poets; poets who spied on fellow writers.
Philip Oltermann grew up in Schleswig-Holstein and studied English and German literature at Oxford University and University College London.
As a journalist he has written for Granta, the LRB and the Guardian, for whom he is the Berlin Bureau Chief.
The Stasi Poetry Circle (Hardback)
Philip Oltermann
Publ: Faber & Faber
Date Published 17.02.2022
ISBN: 9780571331192
Hardcover
Price £14.99
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Avondgeluiden
Er moeten witte hoeven achter de zoom staan
van de blauwe velden langs de maan
‘s avonds hoort gij aan de verre steenwegen
paardehoeven
dan hoort gij alles stille waan
van verre maanfonteinen zijpelt plots water
– gij hoort plots het zijpelen
van avondlik water –
de paarden drinken haastig
en hinniken
dan hoort men weer hun draven stalwaarts
.
Paul van Ostaijen
(1896 – 1928)
Avondgeluiden
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A Poet to his Beloved
I bring you with reverent hands
The books of my numberless dreams,
White woman that passion has worn
As the tide wears the dove-grey sands,
And with heart more old than the horn
That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:
White woman with numberless dreams,
I bring you my passionate rhyme.
William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)
A Poet to his Beloved
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When poet Amy Key was growing up, she looked forward to a life shaped by romance, fuelled by desire, longing and the conventional markers of success that come when you share a life with another person.
But that didn’t happen for her. Now in her forties, she sets out to explore the realities of a life lived in the absence of romantic love.
Using Joni Mitchell‘s seminal album Blue – an album that shaped Key’s expectations of love – as her guide, she examines the unexpected life she has created for herself.
Building a home, travelling alone, choosing whether to be a mother, recognising her own milestones, learning the limits of self-care and the expansive potential of self-friendship, Key uncovers the many forms of connection and care that often go unnoticed.
With profound candour and intimacy, Arrangements in Blue explores the painful feelings we are usually too ashamed to discuss: loneliness, envy, grief and failure.
The result is a singular work – a beautifully-written and essential book about building a life on your own terms, which inspires us to live and love more honestly.
Arrangements in Blue
by Amy Key
Poetry
English
Vintage Publishing
(Ww Norton & Co)
6 April 2023
ISBN: 9781787333895
Hardback
224 pages
Price: 27,99 euro
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Clive Branson (1907–1944) was born in Ahmednagar, India, the son of a major in the Indian army.
He studied at the Slade School of Art and exhibited at the Royal Academy when he was just 23. Five of his paintings are today in the Tate. His daughter is the painter Rosa Branson.
In 1932 Branson joined the Communist Party. He taught for the National Council of Labour Colleges, spoke at weekly open-air meetings on Clapham Common and with his wife Noreen managed a Party bookshop. He took a leading role in driving Mosley’s British Union of Fascists out of Battersea, was responsible for the formation of a local Aid Spain Committee and fought with the International Brigades in Spain.
Taken prisoner at Calaceite, he spent eight months in Franco’s prison camps. After he was repatriated, Branson toured Britain raising money and support for the Spanish Republic. During the Blitz he painted Battersea street-scenes for the Artists International Association. Conscripted in 1941, he served as a tank commander in the Royal Armoured Corps. He was killed in action in Burma, aged just 36.
The Selected Poems of Clive Branson brings together, for the first time, the best of his surviving poetry. Passionate and committed, it’s a first-hand account of the most violent years of the twentieth-century – Britain in the Slump, Spain during the civil-war, Fascist prisons, the London Blitz, the cultural shock of India and its poverty, the war against Japan – recorded with a painterly eye and a communist faith in the power of the people.
Richard Knott (Editor) is a writer and poet. He has written extensively on aspects of modern history, including the experience of war artists (The Sketchbook War); war correspondents (The Trio); and most recently the surveillance of writers and artists by the Security Services over three decades: (The Secret War Against the Arts). He has also published two collections of poetry.
On Being Questioned After Capture: Alcaniz
I stood before my questioner who asked
‘Why leave home?
Why have you come?
Why?’ He must have guessed
‘Because he is a Communist.’
I thought of all the answers I could give
whether death is correct or whether to save
life for a rainy day
and told a lie to cheat his bullet with a word
to use a bullet afterward
On him the bigger lie – a conscript
‘volunteer’ to rape Spain where she slept
to save his own skin
he had come when he sought ‘The Leader’ on his hands and
knees
To crush a thousand years in half an hour
To make Guernica
a wilderness.
I could wait and so could lie
for adjournment to another court
meanwhile to live on my bended knee
to make occasion for another start.
I could imitate the victor, cringe
till I and the world beyond
take our revenge.
1939
Clive Branson
(1907–1944)
Selected Poems of Clive Branson
Edited by Richard Knott
Paperback
Release date: 01 May, 2023
Publisher: Smokestack Books
Language: English
122 pages
ISBN-10:1739173007
ISBN-13:978-1739173005
Price: £8.99
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November 2026. De Franse presidentsverkiezingen komen er weer aan, de zittende president kan na zijn tweede termijn niet worden herkozen, dus het hele veld ligt open en radicaal rechts maakt een goede kans.
Dan verschijnt er op internet een onmogelijk realistische nepvideo waarin een van de voornaamste kandidaten wordt geëxecuteerd. De verantwoordelijkheid voor het onderzoek komt terecht bij topambtenaar Paul Raison, en over hem gaat dit boek: over zijn pogingen om een grote terroristische dreiging te pareren, maar vooral ook over zijn privéleven, zijn relatie met zijn vrouw, zijn familie.
Michel Houellebecq (1958) is Frankrijks onbetwiste sterschrijver van dit moment. Hij publiceerde essays en poëzie voordat hij zich in 1994 met de roman De wereld als markt en strijd, die bekroond werd met diverse prijzen, opwierp als belofte van de Franse letteren. Die status bevestigde hij met Elementaire deeltjes (Prix Novembre en Impact Dublin Literary Award), dat hem terecht de faam van groot schrijver bezorgde, en Platform. In 2011, 2015 en 2019 verschenen zijn grote romans De kaart en het gebied, Onderworpen en Serotonine. In juni 2022 verscheen een nieuwe editie van zijn essays onder de titel Nader tot de ontreddering. Zijn veelvuldig bekroonde en wereldwijd vertaalde werk is in het Nederlands vertaald door Martin de Haan.
Vernietigen
Michel Houellebecq
Roman
Vertaling: Martin de Haan
Nederlands
Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers
Hardcover
2023
608 pagina’s
EAN 9789029545884
€29,99
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To a Lost Love
I cannot look upon thy grave,
Though there the rose is sweet:
Better to hear the long wave wash
These wastes about my feet!
Shall I take comfort? Dost thou live
A spirit, though afar,
With a deep hush about thee, like
The stillness round a star?
Oh, thou art cold! In that high sphere
Thou art a thing apart,
Losing in saner happiness
This madness of the heart.
And yet, at times, thou still shalt feel
A passing breath, a pain;
Disturb’d, as though a door in heaven
Had oped and closed again.
And thou shalt shiver, while the hymns,
The solemn hymns, shall cease;
A moment half remember me:
Then turn away to peace.
But oh, for evermore thy look,
Thy laugh, thy charm, thy tone,
Thy sweet and wayward earthliness,
Dear trivial things, are gone!
Therefore I look not on thy grave,
Though there the rose is sweet;
But rather hear the loud wave wash
These wastes about my feet.
Stephen Phillips
(1864 – 1915)
To a Lost Love
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Like a long, funny letter from an old friend, an album of drawings by the legendary singer and activist for social justice, Joan Baez.
Since retiring from active performing, Baez has focused her formidable talents on painting and drawing. This collection of drawings shows another side of Baez: lovingly loose and charming sketches on reoccurring themes such as politics, relationships, women, animals, and family.
Each section, organized thematically, includes an introductory piece by the artist. Baez approaches her line drawings as exercises in freedom: she begins drawing upside down—often using her non-dominant hand—without any preconceived notion of where the lines might lead her.
Beginning with her seminal debut album in 1960, Baez has been a musical force of nature of incalculable influence whose earliest recordings fed a host of traditional ballads into the rock vernacular.
In 1963, she introduced Bob Dylan to the world, beginning a tradition of mutual mentoring that continued across her many recordings.
As a lifetime advocate for non-violent social change, she marched on the front line of the civil rights movement with Martin Luther King Jr., shined a spotlight on the Free Speech Movement, took to the fields with Cesar Chavez, organized resistance to the Vietnam War, and inspired Vaclav Havel in his fight for a Czech Republic.
Joan Baez is a dynamic force of nature. Her commitment to music and social activism has earned global recognition, ranging from induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, to the Ambassador of Conscience Award, Amnesty International’s highest honor. Retired from active performing since 2019, she has devoted much of her time to the “Mischief Makers” series of paintings, portraits that immortalize risk-taking visionaries she has known, who have brought about social change through history, from Dr. Martin Luther King and Bob Dylan to the Dalai Lama and Patti Smith.
Am I Pretty When I Fly?:
An Album of Upside Down Drawings
by Joan Baez
Publisher: David R. Godine
Published: 2023
Language: English
Hardcover
120 pages
ISBN-10: 567927548
ISBN-13: 978-1567927542
$40.50
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Ain new lied herr Ulrichs von Hutten
1
Ich habs gewagt mit sinnen
und trag des noch kain rew,
mag ich nit dran gewinnen,
noch muoß man spüren trew;
dar mit ich main nit aim allain,
wenn man es wolt erkennen:
dem land zuo guot, wie wol man tuot
ain pfaffenfeind mich nennen.
2
Da laß ich ieden liegen
und reden was er wil;
hett warhait ich geschwigen,
mir wären hulder vil:
nun hab ichs gsagt, bin drum verjagt,
das klag ich allen frummen,
wie wol noch ich nit weiter fliech,
villeicht werd wider kummen.
3
Umb gnad wil ich nit bitten,
die weil ich bin on schuld;
ich hett das recht gelitten,
so hindert ungeduld,
daß man mich nit nach altem sit
zuo ghör hat kummen laßen;
villeicht wils got und zwingt sie not
zuo handlen diser maßen.
4
Nun ist oft diser gleichen
geschehen auch hie vor,
daß ainer von den reichen
ain guotes spil verlor,
oft großer flam von fünklin kam,
wer waiß ob ichs werd rechen!
stat schon im lauf, so setz ich drauf:
muoß gan oder brechen!
5
Dar neben mich zuo trösten
mit guotem gwißen hab,
daß kainer von den bösten
mir eer mag brechen ab
noch sagen daß uf ainig maß
ich anders sei gegangen,
dann eren nach, hab dise sach
in guotem angefangen.
6
Wil nun ir selbs nit raten
dis frumme nation,
irs schadens sich ergatten,
als ich vermanet han,
so ist mir laid; hie mit ich schaid,
wil mengen baß die karten,
bin unverzagt, ich habs gewagt
und wil des ends erwarten.
7
Ob dann mir nach tuot denken
der curtisanen list:
ain herz last sich nit krenken,
das rechter mainung ist;
ich waiß noch vil, wöln auch ins spil
und soltens drüber sterben:
auf, landsknecht guot und reuters muot,
last Hutten nit verderben!
Ulrich von Hutten
Ritter und Dichter
(* 21.04.1488, † 29.08.1523)
Ain new lied herr Ulrichs von Hutten
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When Helen lived
We have cried in our despair
That men desert,
For some trivial affair
Or noisy, insolent sport,
Beauty that we have won
From bitterest hours;
Yet we, had we walked within
Those topless towers
Where Helen walked with her boy,
Had given but as the rest
Of the men and women of Troy,
A word and a jest.
William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)
When Helen lived
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The poems in Mirabilia test the relationship between art and politics.
They are ekphrastic poems complicated by historical narrative; or, they are political poems, inspired by artworks. The title poem is a tribute to the pangolin, the world’s most-trafficked mammal – implicated, some say, in the evolution of coronavirus.
Written in Fibonacci syllabics, it is also a reflection on Marianne Moore’s poem ‘The Pangolin’, with its sense of nature’s perpetuity – lost in the years since her poem was written. The final sequence ‘Great World Atlas’ tracks the destructive extent of nuclear testing across the world in the 1960s. It was written for Izabela Pluta’s artist’s book Figures of Slippage and Oscillation.
The sequence ‘Tongue’ reflects on da Vinci’s 1478 painting The Benois Madonna, including the circumstances of its creation in the Pazzi conspiracy and the life of Fioretta del Cittadino – perhaps the painting’s model – who gave birth to the child of the murdered man.
Her child was taken; she was written out of the record. In other poems too, Gorton reflects on the experience of the female muse, wife, or mother.
Shortlisted: NSW Premier’s Literary Awards – Poetry 2023
Lisa Gorton has a PhD on the poetry of John Donne from the University of Oxford. She is a poet and novelist, essayist and reviewer. Her first poetry collection Press Release won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry; her second, Hotel Hyperion was awarded the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal; and her third, Empirical, was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s and NSW Premier’s Literary Awards for Poetry. Her novel The Life of Houses was the co-winner of the 2016 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction. She is the author of Cloudland, a novel for children.
Mirabilia
Poetry
by Lisa Gorton
Publisher: Giramondo Publishing (1 August 2022)
Language: English
Paperback: 96 pages
ISBN-10: 1922725307
ISBN-13: 978-1922725301
Dimensions: 20 x 14 x 1.5 cm
Price: aus. $ 25.00
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