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In this haunting collection of poems we travel through zones of violence to reach the crystalline depths of words – –
Meena Alexander writes `So landscape becomes us, / Also an interior space bristling with light`. At the heart of this book is the poem cycle ‘Indian Ocean Blues’, a sustained meditation on the journey of the poet as a young child from India to Sudan..There are poems inspired by the drawings of children from war torn Darfur and others set in New York City in the present. These sensual lyrics of body, memory and place evoke the fragile, shifting nature of dwelling in our times.
Meena Alexander is an award-winning author and scholar whose previous volumes of poetry include Birthplace with Buried Stones, Quickly Changing River, Raw Silk, and Illiterate Heart (winner of the PEN Open Book Award), all published by TriQuarterly/Northwestern. Her poetry has been translated into several languages and set to music. She is also the author of an acclaimed autobiography, Fault Lines, as well as two novels; an academic study, Women in Romanticism; and a collection of essays, Poetics of Dislocation. Alexander is Distinguished Professor of English at the City University of New York and teaches at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center.
Atmospheric Embroidery
Poems by Meena Alexander
Trade Paper – $17.95
NorthwesternPress
ISBN 978-0-8101-3760-8
ISBN 978-0-8101-3761-5
Publication Date June 2018
Categories: Poetry
Page Count 112 pages
new poetry
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In volle werking
Die man daar, in volle werking, heeft nooit
iets anders geleerd dan te doen wat hij doet.
Wat hij moet. Dat zag hij goed, de bekijker.
Reeds jong vermoedde hij het: groot genoeg
is nooit je jeugd. De scheppingsdrift? Check.
De hitte van jong bloed? Check. Van wijken
geen weet. Hij wilde weg van louter wit en
zwart. Wenste naar de vervaarlijke geheimen
van zanglijstereiblauw en zonnebloemgeel.
Naar het ruw idioom van vergeten sermoenen.
Hij wist het vroeg reeds, en hij leefde ernaar:
het heeft geen zin om in dode akkers te spitten.
Bert Bevers
Gedicht: In volle werking
Geschreven bij Brief met schets aan Theo van Gogh van Vincent van Gogh, en verschenen in Omtrent Vincent, Uitgeverij Trajart, Chaam, april 2015
Bert Bevers is a poet and writer who lives and works in Antwerp (Be)
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive A-B, Archive A-B, Bevers, Bert
Selfie van Rogi Wieg
De tijd graaft mij in. Dit moet
een droombeeld zijn: Ik wandel
tussen rozen. Ik heb niet aan de dood
gedacht. Ik zie door glas hoe regen
neerdaalt. De avond hangt stil en ik
ben doorgelopen. Wij spreken niet
van doodgaan. Niets gaat verloren
in het ruisen, maar niemand wijst
de weg. Zo zal het einde zijn.
Wie weggaat komt ooit ergens aan.
Bert Bevers
Gedicht: Selfie van Rogi Wieg
Verschenen in In de kring van menselijke warmte – Hommage aan Rogi Wieg, samenstelling Peter de Rijk, Uitgeverij In De Knipscheer, Haarlem, 2017
Bert Bevers is a poet and writer who lives and works in Antwerp (Be)
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive A-B, Archive A-B, Bevers, Bert, Wieg, Rogi
Presentiment
With saintly grace and reverent tread,
She walked among the graves with me;
Her every foot-fall seemed to be
A benediction on the dead.
The guardian spirit of the place
She seemed, and I some ghost forlorn
Surprised in the untimely morn
She made with her resplendent face.
Moved by some waywardness of will,
Three paces from the path apart
She stepped and stood — my prescient heart
Was stricken with a passing chill.
The folk-lore of the years agone
Remembering, I smiled and thought:
“Who shudders suddenly at naught,
His grave is being trod upon.”
But now I know that it was more
Than idle fancy. O, my sweet,
I did not think so little feet
Could make a buried heart so sore!
Ambrose Bierce
(1842-1914)
poetry
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More in: Archive A-B, Archive A-B, Bierce, Ambrose
Het leven van Gerbrandt Adriaensz. Bredero (1585-1618) was kort maar ongekend vruchtbaar.
In nauwelijks acht jaar schreef hij honderden gedichten en liederen die tot de mooiste uit de Nederlandse literatuur behoren, en meer dan tien toneelstukken die nog altijd sprankelen van leven. Zijn kluchten, het blijspel Moortje en vooral de onweerstaanbare Spaanschen Brabander hebben door de eeuwen heen vele duizenden mensen onvergetelijke uren bezorgd.
Wie was Bredero? Het is een van de grote vragen van de Nederlandse literatuur. Over zijn leven is weinig bekend, zijn werk is heel concreet alledaags, maar tegelijkertijd ook raadselachtig.
Hoe hield hij zich overeind in het van energie en spanning bruisende Amsterdam? In De hartenjager ontrafelt René van Stipriaan de mythen en mysteries rond een van de meest getalenteerde en vrijmoedige auteurs uit het Nederlandse taalgebied: zijn afkomst, zijn vriendschappen en liefdes, zijn enorme productiviteit en zijn plotselinge dood. Weinig is wat het lijkt.
René van Stipriaan (1959) is auteur van Het volle leven en stelde Ooggetuigen van de Gouden Eeuw en, met Geert Mak, Ooggetuigen van de wereldgeschiedenis samen. In augustus verschijnt De hartenjager, over het leven en werk van Bredero.
Auteur: René van Stipriaan
De hartenjager.
Leven, werk en roem van Gerbrandt Adriaensz. Bredero
Non-Fictie – biografie
Taal: Nederlands
Uitgever: Em. Querido’s Uitgeverij BV, Amsterdam
Publicatiedatum: 21-08-2018
ISBN 9789021409528
NUR: 321
359 pagina’s
illustraties
Met literatuuropgave, register
Prijs: € 24,99
Hardcover
new books
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: #Biography Archives, - Book News, - Book Stories, Archive A-B, Archive S-T, Art & Literature News, Bredero, G.A.
In Mara Bergman’s first full collection, the poet travels from the tenements of New York City to the Sussex countryside, from childhood to motherhood, and beyond.
Through a wide range of subjects – steelworkers and young apprentices, photographs and photograms, dolls in a local museum’s hidden collection – she writes with a keen sense of time and place.
These are probing poems, seeking to discover; poems with a sense of urgency.
Here are poems about love, loss, friendship, family, fitting in and, ultimately, acceptance. They are infused with wonder and provide a fresh way of looking at the world.
Mara Bergman grew up in Wantagh, New York, and graduated from the State University of New York at Oneonta. During her third year, she studied at Goldsmiths College and later made her home in the UK. Mara’s poetry has been published widely here and abroad. Her collection The Tailor’s Three Sons and Other New York Poems won the Mslexia Poetry Pamphlet Competition and was published by Seren in 2015. In 2016, Crossing Into Tamil Nadu won a Templar Quarterly Pamphlet Competition. Her poems have been awarded prizes in the Troubadour and Kent & Sussex Poetry Society competitions, among others. Mara works in London as an editor and is also an award-winning author of more than twenty books for young children. She and her husband live in Tunbridge Wells and have three children.
The Disappearing Room
by Mara Bergman (Author)
Paperback
27 Jul 2018
92 pages
Publisher: Arc Publicationas
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1911469347
ISBN-13: 978-1911469346
Product Dimensions: 15 x 2.2 x 21 cm
£9.18
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Audio-file
A reading of Ufarassus the Gothic translation of the poem “Overvloed” by Bert Bevers.
Translation by HroÞiland Bairteins, Tom De Herdt and J.G. Quak and recorded by Eric Kingsepp.
# Link to Audio-file of a reading of Ufarassus (Overvloed) by Bert Bevers
BERT BEVERS
OVERVLOED
Tien vertalingen van één gedicht
FANTOM EBOOKS
Art Brut Digital Editions
Series Fantom Ebooks
www.fleursdumal.nl
FANTOM 1
Fantom Ebook 2017
ISBN: 978-90-76326-09-2
NUR 306
1ste PDF-uitgave FANTOM, Augustus 2017
audio-file poem by Bert Bevers
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: #Archive A-Z Sound Poetry, - Audiobooks, Archive A-B, AUDIO, CINEMA, RADIO & TV, Overvloed
A Death-scene
“O day! he cannot die
When thou so fair art shining!
O Sun, in such a glorious sky,
So tranquilly declining;
He cannot leave thee now,
While fresh west winds are blowing,
And all around his youthful brow
Thy cheerful light is glowing!
Edward, awake, awake–
The golden evening gleams
Warm and bright on Arden’s lake–
Arouse thee from thy dreams!
Beside thee, on my knee,
My dearest friend, I pray
That thou, to cross the eternal sea,
Wouldst yet one hour delay:
I hear its billows roar–
I see them foaming high;
But no glimpse of a further shore
Has blest my straining eye.
Believe not what they urge
Of Eden isles beyond;
Turn back, from that tempestuous surge,
To thy own native land.
It is not death, but pain
That struggles in thy breast–
Nay, rally, Edward, rouse again;
I cannot let thee rest!”
One long look, that sore reproved me
For the woe I could not bear–
One mute look of suffering moved me
To repent my useless prayer:
And, with sudden check, the heaving
Of distraction passed away;
Not a sign of further grieving
Stirred my soul that awful day.
Paled, at length, the sweet sun setting;
Sunk to peace the twilight breeze:
Summer dews fell softly, wetting
Glen, and glade, and silent trees.
Then his eyes began to weary,
Weighed beneath a mortal sleep;
And their orbs grew strangely dreary,
Clouded, even as they would weep.
But they wept not, but they changed not,
Never moved, and never closed;
Troubled still, and still they ranged not–
Wandered not, nor yet reposed!
So I knew that he was dying–
Stooped, and raised his languid head;
Felt no breath, and heard no sighing,
So I knew that he was dead.
Emily Brontë
(1818-1848)
poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive A-B, Brontë, Anne, Emily & Charlotte, In Memoriam
Poe’s cottage at Fordham
Here lived the soul enchanted
By melody of song;
Here dwelt the spirit haunted
By a demoniac throng;
Here sang the lips elated;
Here grief and death were sated;
Here loved and here unmated
Was he, so frail, so strong.
Here wintry winds and cheerless
The dying firelight blew,
While he whose song was peerless
Dreamed the drear midnight through,
And from dull embers chilling
Crept shadows darkly filling
The silent place, and thrilling
His fancy as they grew.
Here with brows bared to heaven,
In starry night he stood,
With the lost star of seven
Feeling sad brotherhood.
Here in the sobbing showers
Of dark autumnal hours
He heard suspected powers
Shriek through the stormy wood.
From visions of Apollo
And of Astarte’s bliss,
He gazed into the hollow
And hopeless vale of Dis,
And though earth were surrounded
By heaven, it still was mounded
With graves. His soul had sounded
The dolorous abyss.
Poor, mad, but not defiant,
He touched at heaven and hell.
Fate found a rare soul pliant
And wrung her changes well.
Alternately his lyre,
Stranded with strings of fire,
Led earth’s most happy choir,
Or flashed with Israfel.
No singer of old story
Luting accustomed lays,
No harper for new glory,
No mendicant for praise,
He struck high chords and splendid,
Wherein were finely blended
Tones that unfinished ended
With his unfinished days.
Here through this lonely portal,
Made sacred by his name,
Unheralded immortal
The mortal went and came.
And fate that then denied him,
And envy that decried him,
And malice that belied him,
Here cenotaphed his fame.
John Henry Boner
(1845-1903)
poetry
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More in: Archive A-B, Edgar Allan Poe, Poe, Edgar Allan
Requiescat
Strew on her roses, roses,
And never a spray of yew.
In quiet she reposes:
Ah! would that I did too.
Her mirth the world required:
She bathed it in smiles of glee.
But her heart was tired, tired,
And now they let her be.
Her life was turning, turning,
In mazes of heat and sound.
But for peace her soul was yearning,
And now peace laps her round.
Her cabin’d, ample Spirit,
It flutter’d and fail’d for breath.
To-night it doth inherit
The vasty hall of Death.
Matthew Arnold
(1822-1888)
poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: #More Poetry Archives, Archive A-B, Archive A-B, Galerie des Morts
Presentiment
“Sister, you’ve sat there all the day,
Come to the hearth awhile;
The wind so wildly sweeps away,
The clouds so darkly pile.
That open book has lain, unread,
For hours upon your knee;
You’ve never smiled nor turned your head;
What can you, sister, see?”
“Come hither, Jane, look down the field;
How dense a mist creeps on!
The path, the hedge, are both concealed,
Ev’n the white gate is gone
No landscape through the fog I trace,
No hill with pastures green;
All featureless is Nature’s face.
All masked in clouds her mien.
“Scarce is the rustle of a leaf
Heard in our garden now;
The year grows old, its days wax brief,
The tresses leave its brow.
The rain drives fast before the wind,
The sky is blank and grey;
O Jane, what sadness fills the mind
On such a dreary day!”
“You think too much, my sister dear;
You sit too long alone;
What though November days be drear?
Full soon will they be gone.
I’ve swept the hearth, and placed your chair,.
Come, Emma, sit by me;
Our own fireside is never drear,
Though late and wintry wane the year,
Though rough the night may be.”
“The peaceful glow of our fireside
Imparts no peace to me:
My thoughts would rather wander wide
Than rest, dear Jane, with thee.
I’m on a distant journey bound,
And if, about my heart,
Too closely kindred ties were bound,
‘Twould break when forced to part.
“‘Soon will November days be o’er:’
Well have you spoken, Jane:
My own forebodings tell me more–
For me, I know by presage sure,
They’ll ne’er return again.
Ere long, nor sun nor storm to me
Will bring or joy or gloom;
They reach not that Eternity
Which soon will be my home.”
Eight months are gone, the summer sun
Sets in a glorious sky;
A quiet field, all green and lone,
Receives its rosy dye.
Jane sits upon a shaded stile,
Alone she sits there now;
Her head rests on her hand the while,
And thought o’ercasts her brow.
She’s thinking of one winter’s day,
A few short months ago,
Then Emma’s bier was borne away
O’er wastes of frozen snow.
She’s thinking how that drifted snow
Dissolved in spring’s first gleam,
And how her sister’s memory now
Fades, even as fades a dream.
The snow will whiten earth again,
But Emma comes no more;
She left, ‘mid winter’s sleet and rain,
This world for Heaven’s far shore.
On Beulah’s hills she wanders now,
On Eden’s tranquil plain;
To her shall Jane hereafter go,
She ne’er shall come to Jane!
Charlotte Brontë
(1816-1855)
poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive A-B, Archive A-B, Brontë, Anne, Emily & Charlotte
My Last Duchess
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now : Frà Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will’t please you sit and look at her ? I said
‘Frà Pandolf’ by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there ; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’t was not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek : perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say ‘Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,’ or ‘Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat :’ such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart―how shall I say ?―too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed ; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ’t was all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace―all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,―good! but thanked
Somehow―I know not how―as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech―(which I have not)―to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, ‘Just this
Or that in you disgusts me ; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark’―and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
―E’en then would be some stooping ; and I choose
Never to stoop. Of sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her ; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew ; I gave commands ;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise ? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed ;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
Robert Browning (1812 – 1889)
My Last Duchess
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive A-B, Browning, Robert
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