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Modern Love: XXIX
Am I failing? For no longer can I cast
A glory round about this head of gold.
Glory she wears, but springing from the mould;
Not like the consecration of the Past!
Is my soul beggared? Something more than earth
I cry for still: I cannot be at peace
In having Love upon a mortal lease.
I cannot take the woman at her worth!
Where is the ancient wealth wherewith I clothed
Our human nakedness, and could endow
With spiritual splendour a white brow
That else had grinned at me the fact I loathed?
A kiss is but a kiss now! and no wave
Of a great flood that whirls me to the sea.
But, as you will! we’ll sit contentedly,
And eat our pot of honey on the grave.
George Meredith
(1828-1909)
Modern Love: XXIX
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Si tu veux nous nous aimerons
Si tu veux nous nous aimerons
Avec tes lèvres sans le dire
Cette rose ne l’interromps
Qu’à verser un silence pire
Jamais de chants ne lancent prompts
Le scintillement du sourire
Si tu veux nous nous aimerons
Avec tes lèvres sans le dire
Muet muet entre les ronds
Sylphe dans la pourpre d’empire
Un baiser flambant se déchire
Jusqu’aux pointes des ailerons
Si tu veux nous nous aimerons.
Stéphane Mallarmé
(1842 – 1898)
Si tu veux nous nous aimerons
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Celebrated NPR music critic Ann Powers explores the life and career of Joni Mitchell in a lyrical style as fascinating and ethereal as the songs of the artist herself.
“What you are about to read is not a standard account of the life and work of Joni Mitchell. Instead, it’s a tale of long journeying through a life that changed popular music: of a homesick wanderer forging ahead on routes of her own invention, and of me on her trail, heading toward the ringing of her voice.” (From the introduction)
For decades, Joni Mitchell’s life and music have enraptured listeners. One of the most celebrated artists of her generation, Mitchell has inspired countless musicians—from peers like James Taylor, to inheritors like Prince and Brandi Carlile—and authors, who have dissected her music and her life in their writing.
At the same time, Mitchell has always been a force beckoning us still closer, as—with the other arm—she pushes us away.
Given this, music critic Ann Powers wondered if there was another way to draw insights from the life of this singular musician who never stops moving, never stops experimenting.
In Traveling, Powers seeks to understand Mitchell through her myriad journeys. Through extensive interviews with Mitchell’s peers and deep archival research, she takes readers to rural Canada, mapping the singer’s childhood battle with polio.
She charts the course of Mitchell’s musical evolution, ranging from early folk to jazz fusion to experimentation with pop synthetics. She follows the winding road of Mitchell’s collaborations with other greats, and the loves that emerged along the way, all the way through to the remarkable return of Mitchell to music-making after the 2015 aneurysm that nearly took her life.
Along this journey, Powers’ wide-ranging musings on the artist’s life and career reconsider the biographer’s role and the way it twines against the reality of a fan. In doing so,
Traveling illustrates the shifting nature of biography, and the ultimate contradiction of celebrity: that an icon cannot truly, completely be known to a fan.
Kaleidoscopic in scope, and intimate in its detail, Traveling is a fresh and fascinating addition to the Joni Mitchell canon, written by a biographer in full command of her gifts who asks as much of herself as of her subject.
Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell
by Ann Powers (Author)
Publisher: Dey Street Books
Language: English
June 11, 2024.
Hardcover: 448 pages
ISBN-10:0062463721
ISBN-13:978-0062463722
Hardcover
$35.00
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In der Sistina
In der Sistine dämmerhohem Raum,
Das Bibelbuch in seiner nerv’gen Hand,
Sitzt Michelangelo in wachem Traum,
Umhellt von einer kleinen Ampel Brand.
Laut spricht hinein er in die Mitternacht,
Als lauscht’ ein Gast ihm gegenüber hier,
Bald wie mit einer allgewalt’gen Macht,
Bald wieder wie mit seinesgleichen schier:
»Umfaßt, umgrenzt hab ich dich, ewig Sein,
Mit meinen großen Linien fünfmal dort!
Ich hüllte dich in lichte Mäntel ein
Und gab dir Leib, wie dieses Bibelwort.
Mit wehnden Haaren stürmst du feurigwild
Von Sonnen immer neuen Sonnen zu,
Für deinen Menschen bist in meinem Bild
Entgegenschwebend und barmherzig du!
So schuf ich dich mit meiner nicht’gen Kraft:
Damit ich nicht der größre Künstler sei,
Schaff mich – ich bin ein Knecht der Leidenschaft –
Nach deinem Bilde schaff mich rein und frei!
Den ersten Menschen formtest du aus Ton,
Ich werde schon von härterm Stoffe sein,
Da, Meister, brauchst du deinen Hammer schon,
Bildhauer Gott, schlag zu! Ich bin der Stein.«
Conrad Ferdinand Meyer
(1825 – 1898)
In der Sistina
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Les oies sauvages
Tout est muet, l’oiseau ne jette plus ses cris.
La morne plaine est blanche au loin sous le ciel gris.
Seuls, les grands corbeaux noirs, qui vont cherchant leurs proies,
Fouillent du bec la neige et tachent sa pâleur.
Voilà qu’à l’horizon s’élève une clameur ;
Elle approche, elle vient, c’est la tribu des oies.
Ainsi qu’un trait lancé, toutes, le cou tendu,
Allant toujours plus vite, en leur vol éperdu,
Passent, fouettant le vent de leur aile sifflante.
Le guide qui conduit ces pèlerins des airs
Delà les océans, les bois et les déserts,
Comme pour exciter leur allure trop lente,
De moment en moment jette son cri perçant.
Comme un double ruban la caravane ondoie,
Bruit étrangement, et par le ciel déploie
Son grand triangle ailé qui va s’élargissant.
Mais leurs frères captifs répandus dans la plaine,
Engourdis par le froid, cheminent gravement.
Un enfant en haillons en sifflant les promène,
Comme de lourds vaisseaux balancés lentement.
Ils entendent le cri de la tribu qui passe,
Ils érigent leur tête ; et regardant s’enfuir
Les libres voyageurs au travers de l’espace,
Les captifs tout à coup se lèvent pour partir.
Ils agitent en vain leurs ailes impuissantes,
Et, dressés sur leurs pieds, sentent confusément,
A cet appel errant se lever grandissantes
La liberté première au fond du coeur dormant,
La fièvre de l’espace et des tièdes rivages.
Dans les champs pleins de neige ils courent effarés,
Et jetant par le ciel des cris désespérés
Ils répondent longtemps à leurs frères sauvages.
Guy de Maupassant
(1850 – 1893)
Les oies sauvages
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To Winter
Stay, season of calm love and soulful snows!
There is a subtle sweetness in the sun,
The ripples on the stream’s breast gaily run,
The wind more boisterously by me blows,
And each succeeding day now longer grows.
The birds a gladder music have begun,
The squirrel, full of mischief and of fun,
From maples’ topmost branch the brown twig throws.
I read these pregnant signs, know what they mean:
I know that thou art making ready to go.
Oh stay! I fled a land where fields are green
Always, and palms wave gently to and fro,
And winds are balmy, blue brooks ever sheen,
To ease my heart of its impassioned woe.
Claude McKay
(1889 – 1948)
To Winter
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L’hiver
C’est l’hiver sans parfum ni chants.
Dans le pré, les brins de verdure
Percent de leurs jets fléchissants
La neige étincelante et dure.
Quelques buissons gardent encor
Des feuilles jaunes et cassantes
Que le vent âpre et rude mord
Comme font les chèvres grimpantes.
Et les arbres silencieux
Que toute cette neige isole
Ont cessé de se faire entre eux
Leurs confidences bénévoles.
– Bois feuillus qui, pendant l’été,
Au chaud des feuilles cotonneuses
Avez connu les voluptés
Et les cris des huppes chanteuses,
Vous qui, dans la douce saison,
Respiriez la senteur des gommes,
Vous frissonnez à l’horizon
Avec des gestes qu’ont les hommes.
Vous êtes las, vous êtes nus,
Plus rien dans l’air ne vous protège,
Et vos coeurs tendres ou chenus
Se désespèrent sur la neige.
– Et près de vous, frère orgueilleux,
Le sapin où le soleil brille
Balance les fruits écailleux
Qui luisent entre ses aiguilles.
Anna de Noailles
(1876 – 1933)
L’hiver
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Joyce Mansour (1928–1986), a Syrian Jewish exile from Egypt, was born in England.
She became a well known female poet, author of 16 books of poetry, as well as a number of important prose and theatre pieces.
Mansour was 25 years old when she published her first book in Paris in 1953.
Her fierce, macabre, erotically charged works caught the eye of André Breton, who welcomed her into his Surrealist group and became her lifelong friend and ally.
Despite her success in surrealist circles, her books received scant attention from the literary establishment, which is hardly surprising since Mansour’s favorite topics happened to be two of society’s greatest fears: death and unfettered female desire.
She lived in Paris, France until her death in 1986 at the age of 58.
Now, over half a century later, Mansour’s time has come. Emerald Wounds collects her most important work, spanning the entire arc of her career, from the gothic, minimalist fragments of her first published work to the serpentine power of her poems of the 1980s.
In fresh new translations, Mansour’s voice surges forth uncensored and raw, communicating the frustrations, anger, and sadness of an intelligent, worldly woman who defies the constraints and oppression of a male-dominated society. Mansour is a poet the world needs today.
“You know very well, Joyce, that you are for me –and very objectively too– the greatest poet of our time. Surrealist poetry, that’s you.” –André Breton
“A woman created the sun
Inside her
And her hands were beautiful
The earth plunged beneath her feet
Assailing her with the fertile breath
Of volcanoes “
Emerald Wounds: Selected Poems
by Joyce Mansour (Author)
Garrett Caples (Editor)
Emilie Moorhouse (Translator)
Published by City Lights
ISBN: 9780872869011
July 25, 2023
217 pages
Paperback
26,99 euro
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In her first book of poems since the scintillating More Anon: Selected Poems, Maureen N. McLane offers a bravura, trenchant sounding out of inner and outer weathers.
What You Want is a book of core landscapes, mindscapes, and shifting moods. Meditative, lyrical, alert to seasons and pressures on our shared life, McLane registers and shapes an ambient unease.
Whether skying with John Constable or walking on wintry paths in our precarious republic, the poet channels what Wordsworth called “moods of my own mind” while she scans for our common horizon.
Here are poems filled with gulls and harbors, blinking red lights and empty lobster traps, beach roses and rumored sharks, eels and crows, wind turbines and superhighways.
From Sappho to the Luminist painter Fitz Henry Lane, from constellations to microplastics, What You Want is a book alive to the cosmos as well as to our moment, with its many vexations and intermittent illuminations.
In poems of powerful command and delicate invitation, moving from swift notations to sustained sequences, this collection sees McLane testing what (if anything) might “outlast the coming heat.”
And meanwhile, “There’s no end / to beauty and shit.”
Maureen N. McLane is a poet, memoirist, critic, and educator. She has published eight books of poetry, including This Blue, Finalist for the National Book Award, and Some Say, Finalist for the Audre Lorde/Publishing Triangle Award and for The Believer Award in Poetry. She is also the author of an experimental hybrid of memoir and criticism, My Poets, a New York Times Notable Book. Other works include two monographs on British romantic poetics and numerous essays on romantic-era and contemporary literature and culture. Her poems have been translated into Italian, French, Greek, Spanish, and Czech and have recently appeared in the London Review of Books, Poesia, The New York Review of Books, and The Yale Review. Her essays have appeared in the LRB, The New York Times Book Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is the Henry James Professor of English and American Letters at New York University. Her latest book is What You Want: poems, just out from Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Penguin UK.
What You Want.
Poem
by Maureen N. McLane
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2 mei 2023)
Language: English
128 pages
ISBN-10 0374607257
ISBN-13 978-0374607258
Hardcover
$27.00
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From “one of the essential voices in American poetry” (New York Times) comes a rich new collection of expansive, light-footed, and cheerfully foreboding poems oddly in tune with our strange and evolving present.
The first new collection since Evolution from the prolific poet, activist, and writer Eileen Myles, a “Working Life” unerringly captures the measure of life. Whether alone or in relationship, on city sidewalks or in the country, their lyrics always engage with permanence and mortality, danger and safety, fear and wonder.
a “Working Life” is a book transfixed by the everyday: the “sweet accumulation” of birds outside a window, a cup of coffee and a slice of pizza, a lover’s foot on the bed.
These poems arise in the close quarters of air travel, the flashing of a landscape through a train window, or simply in a truck tooling around town, or on foot with a dog in all the places that held us during the pandemic lock-downs.
Myles’s lines unabashedly sing the happy contradictions of love and sex, spill over with warnings about the not-so future world threatened by climate change and capitalism, and also find transcendent wonder in the landscapes and animals around us, and in the solitary and collective act of caring for one another and our world.
With intelligence, heart, and singular vision, a “Working Life” shows Eileen Myles working at a thrilling new pitch of their poetic and philosophical powers.
Eileen Myles (they/them) came to New York from Boston in 1974 to be a poet. Their books include Pathetic Literature, For Now (an essay/talk about writing), Evolution, Afterglow (a dog memoir), I Must Be Living Twice: new and selected poems, and Chelsea Girls. The Trip, their super-8 puppet road film can be seen on YouTube. Eileen has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and was recently elected a member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters. They live in New York and Marfa, TX.
a “Working Life”
Author: Eileen Myles
Poetry
Language: English
Publisher: Grove Press
Publication Date: 2023-04-18
Format Hardcover
ISBN 9780802161895
ISBN-10: 0802161898
Pages: 288
List Price: $26.00
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Les treize histoires et sept poèmes qui composent ce livre se répondent et se complètent:
Au fil des récits, des fables, des fragments de vie, des poésies, il s’agit toujours de dévoiler un mystère, un secret, la part souterraine…
Les mots s’insinuent comme il faut pour toucher ce qu’il y a à toucher, et dire ce qu’il y a à en dire. Avec finesse et intensité.
Et c’est un plaisir de plonger dans ces textes – débordants d’imagination, de fantaisie, basculant souvent de l’observation la plus juste à une imprévisible drôlerie.
Sophie Marceau: actrice, réalisatrice et scénariste, elle publie avec La Souterraine son deuxième livre après Menteuse (Stock, 1996).
Sophie Marceau (Auteur)
La Souterraine
Cinéma, littérature et poésie
Editeur Seghers
Paru le 4 mai 2023
Format: broché
EAN 9782232146831
ISBN 2232146839
SKU 5292114
Nombre de pages 160
Format 14cm x 19cm
€ 17,00
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In the poem-essays that comprise A Duration, writing is a physical act where writing and lived experience support one another in bodies—animal, plant, mineral, and word bodies—that are injured and heal, that die and continue in new forms, playing new roles.
Here, in his fifth book, Richard Meier transmutes years of daily practices of attention—be it to a line spoken by Lear’s Fool, a train to Kingston, or “red inside green stem below eight white petals in a spiral with space between them attached to the yellow center”—into mesmerizing trajectories through an always unfolding present.
In the collapse of the border between writing and the body, A Duration, “play[s] both hearts with a heartbeat and kinship of place, time, mundanity in the continuous onrushing imagined joy.”
Richard Meier’s second book of poetry, Shelley Gave Jane a Guitar, was published by Wave Books in 2006. His first book, Terrain Vague, was selected by Tomaž Šalamun for the Verse Prize and published by Verse Press in 2001. His book In the Pure Block of the Whole Imaginary was published by Omnidawn in 2012. He is writer-in-residence at Carthage College and lives in Chicago, IL and Madison, WI.
Richard Meier
A Duration
Publication: 6 June 2023
Publisher: Wave Books
Language: Engish
Paperback: 120 pages
ISBN-10:1950268780
ISBN-13:978-1950268788
Regular price $18.00
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