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A Love Song
In The Modern Taste
Fluttering spread thy purple pinions,
Gentle Cupid, o’er my heart:
I a slave in thy dominions;
Nature must give way to art.
Mild Arcadians, ever blooming
Nightly nodding o’er your flocks,
See my weary days consuming
All beneath yon flowery rocks.
Thus the Cyprian goddess weeping
Mourn’d Adonis, darling youth;
Him the boar, in silence creeping,
Gored with unrelenting tooth.
Cynthia, tune harmonious numbers;
Fair Discretion, string the lyre;
Sooth my ever-waking slumbers:
Bright Apollo, lend thy choir.
Gloomy Pluto, king of terrors,
Arm’d in adamantine chains,
Lead me to the crystal mirrors,
Watering soft Elysian plains.
Mournful cypress, verdant willow,
Gilding my Aurelia’s brows,
Morpheus, hovering o’er my pillow,
Hear me pay my dying vows.
Melancholy smooth Meander,
Swiftly purling in a round,
On thy margin lovers wander,
With thy flowery chaplets crown’d.
Thus when Philomela drooping
Softly seeks her silent mate,
See the bird of Juno stooping;
Melody resigns to fate.
Jonathan Swift
(1667 – 1745)
A Love Song
In The Modern Taste
1733
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The Dreamer
Spirit of Song! whose whispers
Delight my pensive brain,
When will the perfect harmony
Ring through my feeble strain?
When will the rills of melody
Be widened to a stream!
When will the bright and gladsome Day
Succeed this morning dream?
“Mortal,” the spirit whispered,
“If thou wouldst truly win
The race thou art pursuing,
Heed well the voice within:
And it shall gently teach thee
To read thy heart, and know
No human strain is perfect,
However sweet it flow.
And if thou readest truly,
As surely shalt thou find
That truths, like rills, though diverse,
Are choicest in their kind.
The souls of Poet-Dreamers
Touch heaven on their way;
With the light of Song to guide them
It should be always Day.”
Charles Sangster
(1822 – 1893)
The Dreamer
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This is a meditation on the power of creative connection. Drawing on twenty years’ experience as a writer and performer, Kae Tempest explores how and why creativity – however we choose to practise it – can cultivate greater self-awareness and help us establish a deeper relationship between ourselves and the world. Honest, tender and written with piercing clarity, On Connection is a call to arms that speaks to a universal yet intimate truth.
On Connection will be the first work published under their new name and pronouns. Kate to Kae. She/Her to They/Them. Pronounced like the letter ‘K’. For more information visit kaetempest.co.uk.
Kae Tempest is an award-winning, Sunday Times-bestselling author, poet and recording artist. Tempest won the 2013 Ted Hughes Award, was nominated for a Costa Book Award and a BRIT Award, has been shortlisted for the Mercury Prize twice and was nominated for two Ivor Novello Awards. They were also named a Next Generation Poet by the Poetry Book Society, a decennial accolade. They released their fourth studio album, The Book of Traps and Lessons, in 2019, produced by Rick Rubin. Tempest grew up in South-East London, where they still live. @kaetempest
Letter from Kae/Kate Tempest to the readers:
I’ve been struggling to accept myself as I am for a long time. I have tried to be what I thought others wanted me to be so as not to risk rejection. This hiding from myself has led to all kinds of difficulties in my life. And this is a first step towards knowing and respecting myself better. I’ve loved Kate. But I am beginning a process and I hope you’ll come with me … [Kae is] an old English word that means jay bird. Jays are associated with communication, curiosity, adaptation to new situations and COURAGE which is the name of the game at the moment. It can also mean jackdaw which is the bird that symbolises death and rebirth. Ovid said the jackdaw brought the rain. Which I love. It has its roots in the Latin word for rejoice, be glad and take pleasure. And I hope to live more that way each day … This is a time of great reckoning. Privately, locally, globally. For me, the question is no longer ‘when will this change’ but ‘how far am I willing to go to meet the changes and bring them about in myself.’ I want to live with integrity. And this is a step towards that. Sending LOVE always.
Instagram 06-08-2020
On Connection
by Kae Tempest (Author)
Hardcover
144 pages
ISBN-10 : 0571354025
ISBN-13 : 978-0571354023
Product Dimensions : 11.1 x 1 x 17.8 cm
Publisher : Faber & Faber
Language: : English
Main Edition (2020)
Price £9.99
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Judas
By the just vengeance of incensed skies,
Poor Bishop Judas late repenting dies.
The Jews engaged him with a paltry bribe,
Amounting hardly to a crown a-tribe;
Which though his conscience forced him to restore,
(And parsons tell us, no man can do more,)
Yet, through despair, of God and man accurst,
He lost his bishopric, and hang’d or burst.
Those former ages differ’d much from this;
Judas betray’d his master with a kiss:
But some have kiss’d the gospel fifty times,
Whose perjury’s the least of all their crimes;
Some who can perjure through a two inch-board,
Yet keep their bishoprics, and ‘scape the cord:
Like hemp, which, by a skilful spinster drawn
To slender threads, may sometimes pass for lawn.
As ancient Judas by transgression fell,
And burst asunder ere he went to hell;
So could we see a set of new Iscariots
Come headlong tumbling from their mitred chariots;
Each modern Judas perish like the first,
Drop from the tree with all his bowels burst;
Who could forbear, that view’d each guilty face,
To cry, “Lo! Judas gone to his own place,
His habitation let all men forsake,
And let his bishopric another take!”
Jonathan Swift
(1667 – 1745)
Judas
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Legend of Old California
High on the summit,
Over the waters,
Fronting the sunset
Lingered the maid;
Below, through the flashing
Of blue billows dashing,
Glided the shallop
Storms had delayed I
Ere the white pebbles
On the keel grated,
Leaped the young boatman
Shoreward amain,
And in the blessing
Of love’s quick caressing,
Soon were forgotten
Peril and pain.
Bayard Taylor
(1825 – 1878)
Legend of Old California
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Following a run of New Year’s concerts at San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering.
Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland, with no design yet heeding signs, including a talking sign that looms above her, prodding and sparring like the Cheshire Cat.
In February, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing with it unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. In a stranger’s words, “Anything is possible: after all, it’s the year of the monkey.” For Patti Smith – inveterately curious, always exploring, tracking thoughts, writing the year evolves as one of reckoning with the changes in life’s gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America.
Smith melds the Western landscape with her own dreamscape. Taking us from Southern California to the Arizona desert; to a Kentucky farm as the amanuensis of a friend in crisis; to the hospital room of a valued mentor; and by turns to remembered and imagined places – this haunting memoir blends fact and fiction with poetic mastery.
The unexpected happens; grief and disillusionment. But as Patti Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the reader: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye, and above all, a rugged hope of a better world.
Riveting, elegant, often humorous, illustrated by Smith’s signature Polaroids, Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times.
Patti Smith, Author of : Year of the Monkey, Just Kids illustrated, M Train, Patti Smith Collected Lyrics, 1970–2015, Woolgathering, Just Kids. A writer, performer, and visual artist, Patti Smith has exhibited her drawings and photographs internationally, most recently Camera Solo at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum in Hartford. She has recorded thirteen albums, launched by the seminal Horses in 1975. Her many books include Witt, Babel, The Coral Sea, Auguries of Innocence and Just Kids, which won the National Book Award in 2010. Patti Smith lives in New York City.
Year of the Monkey
by: Patti Smith
The New York Times bestseller
Published: 01-09-2020
Format: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Extent: 224 p.
ISBN: 9781526614766
Imprint: Bloomsbury Publishing
Dimensions: 198 x 129 mm
RRP: £9.99
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Angriff
Tücher
Winken
Flattern
Knattern.
Winde klatschen.
Dein Lachen weht.
Greifen Fassen
Balgen Zwingen
Kuß
Umfangen
Sinken
Nichts.
August Stramm
(1874-1915)
Allmacht
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The Eagle Hunter
On the mighty summit, heaten
By the wintry sleet, I wander,
For I seek the monarch eagle
In his eyrie of the rock;
And I shout in fierce exulting,
When his gray wing on the darkness
Of the cloud above me flashes,
Wheeling downward to the shock!
Nearer, with his keen eye burning,
And his hungry beak extended —
With a shriek of anger swooping
Comes the storm-defying bird :
Yet as steady and unswerving,
Upward flies the fatal arrow,
And his death-cry on the sweeping
Of the sounding winds is heard!
From his wing I rob the plumage,
And it crowns me like a chieftain.
And his talons stud my girdle
Like the scales of olden mail;
Never wears the wild ranchero
Such a trophy on the vega,
Or the fiery-eyed Navajo,
In the Colorado’s vale!
Bayard Taylor
(1825 – 1878)
The Eagle Hunter
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Birds of Grace
O little birds of grace,
To-day ye sweetly sing,
Yea, make my heart your nesting-place,
And all your gladness bring.
When ye are in my heart,
How swiftly pass the days!
The fears and doubts of life depart,
And leave their room to praise.
My work I find as play,
And all day long rejoice;
But, if I linger on my way,
I hear this warning voice:
_With fervor work and pray,
And let not coldness come,
Or birds of grace will fly away
To seek a warmer home_.
Mrs. Sigourne
(Lydia Huntley Sigourney,
1791 – 1865)
Birds of Grace
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Lincoln
God placed on Lincoln’s brow
A sad, majestic crown;
All enmity is friendship now,
And martyrdom renown.
A mighty-hearted man,
He toiled at Freedom’s side,
And lived, as only heroes can,
The truth in which he died.
Like Moses, eyes so dim,
All signs he could not spell;
Yet he endured, as seeing Him
Who is invisible.
His life was under One
“Who made and loveth all;”
And when his mighty work was done,
How grand his coronal!
Mrs. Sigourne
(Lydia Huntley Sigourney,
1791 – 1865)
Lincoln
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Sonnet XLII
Lo! the YEAR’s FINAL DAY! – Nature performs
Its obsequies with darkness, wind, and rain;
But Man is jocund. – Hark! th’ exultant strain
From towers and steeples drowns the wintry storms!
No village spire but to the cots and farms,
Right merrily, its scant and tuneless peal
Rings round! – Ah! joy ungrateful! – mirth insane!
Wherefore the senseless triumph, ye, who feel
This annual portion of brief Life the while
Depart for ever? – Brought it no dear hours
Of health and night-rest? – none that saw the smile
On lips belov’d? – O! with as gentle powers
Will the next pass? – Ye pause! – yet careless hear
Strike these last Clocks, that knell th’ EXPIRING YEAR!
Dec. 31st, 1782.
Anna Seward
(1742-1809)
Lo! the YEAR’s FINAL DAY!
(Sonnet XLII)
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Ingratitude
Full on the wave the moonlight weeps,
To quiet its weary breast;
Cruelly cold the mad wave leaps,
With the moonshine on its crest;
Or with scowl, or growl, to the shore it creeps,
And sinks to its selfish rest.
Full on yon man-brute smiles the wife,
To gladden his turbid breast;
Savagely stern he seeks the life
Where he erewhile sought for zest;
With a curse, or worse, he ends the strife,
And sinks to his drunken rest.
Sea! has the moon no charms for thee
That can touch thy cruel breast?
Man! cannot woman’s charity
Give ease to thy soul oppressed?
Thou shalt flee, O sea! the moon’s witchery,
Till man has his final rest!
Charles Sangster
(1822 – 1893)
Ingratitude
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