Fleurs du Mal Magazine
Soldaten
Alle haben diesen müden
seltsamen Zug in den bleichen Gesichtern:
In ihren Augen zittert ein schüchtern
taumelndes Ahnen von Heimat und Frieden . . .
Alle tragen sie an den müden
Füßen den Staub von zerwanderten Jahren:
Durch viele Länder sind sie gefahren
und haben noch nicht nach Hause gefunden . . .
Manchmal nur röten sich ihre Wangen,
wenn sie frohe Kunde erlauschen,
und sie sitzen zusammen und tauschen
flüsternde Reden von süßem Verlangen . . .
Ihre harten, zerrissenen Hände
faltet die Demut, und kindheitsverwehte
Worte fassen sie still im Gebete:
Herr, mach ein Ende! O Herr, gib ein Ende! . . .
Joseph Roth
(1894 – 1939)
Soldaten
Prager Tagblatt – 10.2.1918
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive Q-R, Archive Q-R, Joseph Roth
Award-winning poet Maya C. Popa suggests that our restless desires are inseparable from our mortality in this pressing and precise collection.
Rooting out profound meaning in language to wrench us from the moorings of the familiar and into the realm of the extraordinary, the volume asks, how do we articulate what’s by definition inarticulable? Where does sight end and imagination begin?
Lucid and musically rich, these poems sound an appeal to a dwindling natural world and summon moments from the lives of literary forbearers—John Milton’s visit to Galileo, a vase broken by Marcel Proust—to unveil fresh wonder in the unlikely meetings of the past. Popa dramatizes the difficulties of loving a world that is at once rich with beauty and full of opportunities for grief, and reveals that the natural arc of wonder, from astonishment to reflection, more deeply connects us with our humanity.
Maya C. Popa is the author of American Faith, recipient of the 2020 North American Book Prize. Her poems have appeared in the Nation, Poetry, and the Paris Review, among other publications. She lives in New York City.
Wound Is the Origin of Wonder
by Maya C. Popa
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (November 8, 2022)
Language: English
Hardcover: 96 pages
ISBN-10: 1324021365
ISBN-13: 978-1324021360
Price $26.95
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: #Editors Choice Archiv, - Book News, Archive O-P, Archive O-P
Orphée
. . . Je compose en esprit, sous les myrtes, Orphée
L’Admirable ! . . . le feu, des cirques purs descend ;
Il change le mont chauve en auguste trophée
D’où s’exhale d’un dieu l’acte retentissant.
Si le dieu chante, il rompt le site tout-puissant ;
Le soleil voit l’horreur du mouvement des pierres ;
Une plainte inouïe appelle éblouissants
Les hauts murs d’or harmonieux d’un sanctuaire.
Il chante, assis au bord du ciel splendide, Orphée !
Le roc marche, et trébuche; et chaque pierre fée
Se sent un poids nouveau qui vers l’azur délire !
D’un Temple à demi nu le soir baigne l’essor,
Et soi-même il s’assemble et s’ordonne dans l’or
À l’âme immense du grand hymne sur la lyre !
Paul Valéry
(1871-1945)
Orphée
Poème
Album de vers anciens
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive U-V, Archive U-V, Valéry, Paul
Heterdaad
Avondgrauwen glijdt over omfloerste bekentenissen
van lijdzame biechtelingen. Op de zolders hunner
zielen zullen spijt noch verwijten verstoffen. Er
klinken vermaningen aan de bedeesde teugels
van de nacht maar er zal, hoe traag ook kousen op
worden getrokken, tegen ochtend geen verweer zijn.
Bert Bevers
Heterdaad
uit de bundel in voorbereiding Bedekte termen
Bert Bevers is dichter en schrijver
Hij woont en werkt in Antwerpen (Be)
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive A-B, Archive A-B, Bevers, Bert
More in: Archive A-B, Archive A-B, Berquez, Vincent, Photography, Vincent Berquez
Always the coolest of doorway
It wasn’t necessarily the best of times
or the best of me, the best of wines
or the best of you, the warmest of nights,
the brightest of moon, the nicest of streets,
the trendiest of bars in the smart part of town.
We didn’t have the cleverest of talks,
sit at the best of tables, with the cleanest of napkins.
My pockets weren’t the fullest, as the moths attested.
I wasn’t at my wealthiest, or my smartest,
or wearing the shiniest shoes with the strongest of laces,
chewing with the whitest of teeth in the kindest of moods.
We certainly weren’t coy about our agenda that night.
It wasn’t as if I didn’t know you or I didn’t want you,
or I wouldn’t try or hadn’t had; I wanted what I wanted
and slowly the alcohol took hold and awoke the desiring,
and you could’ve imagined a better seduction,
as the night could’ve been the dullest ever
without wanting to or trying the making of love to you.
But wasn’t the moon the fullest, and weren’t we the closest,
didn’t we feel the passion and violence of the kissing, the biting,
struggling in a moment of an explosive erotic experience.
Didn’t we search for privacy in the dirty streets that night?
Weren’t we two bellyfuls of red wine in the emptying city,
swaggering and swollen, swaying in a London doorway,
hidden from the pace of hectic pedestrians.
Hadn’t we become the most romantic of couples
in our boozy, breathy pairing, as we locked tight together
and vanished completely in a haze of shaky memories that night.
Vincent Berquez
Always the coolest of doorway
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
Photo: VB – The artist and his son
More in: Archive A-B, Archive A-B, Art & Literature News, Berquez, Vincent, Vincent Berquez
Deaf Republic opens in an occupied country in a time of political unrest. When soldiers breaking up a protest kill a deaf boy, Petya, the gunshot becomes the last thing the citizens hear—all have gone deaf, and their dissent becomes coordinated by sign language.
The story follows the private lives of townspeople encircled by public violence: a newly married couple, Alfonso and Sonya, expecting a child; the brash Momma Galya, instigating the insurgency from her puppet theater; and Galya’s girls, heroically teaching signs by day and by night luring soldiers one by one to their deaths behind the curtain.
At once a love story, an elegy, and an urgent plea—Ilya Kaminsky’s long-awaited Deaf Republic confronts our time’s vicious atrocities and our collective silence in the face of them.
Ilya Kaminsky was born in the former Soviet Union and is now an American citizen. He is the author of a previous poetry collection, Dancing in Odessa, and coeditor of The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry. He has received a Whiting Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was named a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages.
Deaf Republic
Poems
by Ilya Kaminsky
Publisher: Graywolf 2019
Language: English
Paperback: 96 pages
ISBN-10 : 1555978312
ISBN-13 : 978-1555978310
Paperback $10.79
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: #Editors Choice Archiv, - Book Lovers, Archive K-L, Archive K-L
Schemerlamp
In een ver verleden onder deze schemerlamp
bedacht hij hoe zijn moeder samenspande
met de avondval. Uit radio beneden geluiden
die hij nauwelijks kon duiden. Van alle eeuwenoude
sprookjes in dat bed rook je de oorsprong.
Onder die lampenkap kwam haast vanzelf
een stil geloven. Door het heden schippert hopeloos
versnipperd vroeger, laverend als een oude schuit.
Hier kijk ik aan tegen een wand die alles weigert.
Bert Bevers
Schemerlamp
Eerder verschenen in Eigen terrein, Uitgeverij WEL, Bergen op Zoom, 2013
Bert Bevers is dichter en schrijver
Hij woont en werkt in Antwerpen (Be)
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive A-B, Archive A-B, Bevers, Bert
A fascinating blend of poetry and science, Ben-Oni’s poems are precisely crafted, like a surgeon sewing a complicated stitch, moving through the multiverses of family, religion and discovery itself.
The book culminates in an ancient Jewish Idea about “Efes,” which is Modern Hebrew for “zero” but also in mystical texts, means “nullification” and “concealment.”
Ultimately, Efes becomes a process of transformation for the speaker, revealing as well that the closer humanity gets to understanding this mysterious force, it inevitably changes the riddle– and us along with it.
Rosebud Ben-Oni
is the winner of the 2019 Alice James Award for If This Is the Age We End Discovery, forthcoming in 2021, and the author of turn around, BRXGHT XYXS (Get Fresh Books, 2019).
She is a recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and CantoMundo. Her work appears in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, POETS.org, The Poetry Review (UK), Tin House, Guernica, Black Warrior Review, Prairie Schooner, Electric Literature, TriQuarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Journal ,Hunger Mountain, The Adroit Journal, The Southeast Review, North American Review, Salamander, Poetry Northwest, among others.
Her poem “Poet Wrestling with Angels in the Dark” was commissioned by the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City, and published by The Kenyon Review Online. Rosebud Ben-Oni writes for The Kenyon Review blog. She is currently editing a special chemistry poetry portfolio for Pleiades, and is finishing a series called The Atomic Sonnets, in honor of the Periodic Table’s 150th Birthday. Find her at 7TrainLove.org
If This Is the Age We End Discovery
by Rosebud Ben-Oni
Publisher: Alice James Books (March 9, 2021)
Language: English
Poetry
Paperback: 100 pages
ISBN-10 : 1948579154
ISBN-13 : 978-1948579155
$14.89
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: #Editors Choice Archiv, - Book News, Archive A-B, Archive A-B, LITERARY MAGAZINES, Magazines
As If a Phantom Caress’d Me
As if a phantom caress’d me,
I thought I was not alone walking
here by the shore;
But the one I thought was with me as
now I walk by the shore,
the one I loved that caress’d me,
As I lean and look
through the glimmering light,
that one has utterly disappear’d.
And those appear that are hateful to me
and mock me.
Walt Whitman
(1819 – 1892)
Poem: As If a Phantom Caress’d Me
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive W-X, Archive W-X, Whitman, Walt
Gustave Roud, perhaps the most beloved poet of Swiss Romandy, is widely considered the founder of modern francophone Swiss literature, along with Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz.
Roud lived at his grandfather’s farm in Carrouge, Canton Vaud, for his entire life. In Air of Solitude, the first section of this two-part book, he stalks the structures and fields of his youth, composing memories out of his landscape.
The narrator appears homegrown, expressing nostalgia for what is already in front of him. Yet, like an outsider, he remains distinctly elsewhere, unable to participate in the workday rituals of the men around him—a stalking shadow of unfulfilled yearning for affection and belonging. Air of Solitude explores the rural bodies and lives of the Vaudois, returning again and again to the desired male laborer Aimé.
Between each section of Air of Solitude, Roud inserts short vignettes that provide fleeting and lyrical images that resemble allusions to half-forgotten memories. However, Roud leaves the relationship between the titled sections and the interludes ambiguous.
As the book concludes with Requiem, the remnants of narrative shatter, leaving behind only the spectral tatters of memory as Roud confronts the enigma of loss in peerless, jewel-studded elegiac prose. With these two tales, Roud revives the pastoral tradition and injects it with distinctly modernist anxiety and disillusionment.
‘Gustave Roud made all of French-speaking Switzerland dream poetically upon itself, the land that welcomed European Romanticism from Rousseau to Byron, from Lamartine to Shelley. His poetry could seem idyllic, sustained by an ethereal figure of constantly conflicted desires (more or less unspeakable, always displayed), and a moral, sacrificial figure inspired, above all, by Novalis and Hölderlin.’—Antonio Rodriguez, University of Lausanne
Gustave Roud (1897–1976) was a major Swiss poet and photographer whose neoromantic poetic prose influenced a generation of poets including Maurice Chappaz and Philippe Jaccottet. His works include Ecrits (1950) and Campagne perdue (1972). He also translated German writers including Rilke, Hölderlin and Novalis.
Gustave Roud
‘Air of Solitude’ Followed by ‘Requiem’
Translated by Alexander Dickow and Sean T. Reynolds
ISBN: 9780857426871
Pages: 172
Rights: UCP
Publication Year: 2020
Format: Hardback
Size: 5″ x 8″
Publisher: Seagull Books
£16.99
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: #Editors Choice Archiv, - Book News, Archive Q-R, Archive Q-R
Nervenschock
Seht her: In einem Zauberknäul gebannt
schlottert und taumelt er an schwanker Krücke,
bald hart am Pflasterrand und bald zurück
prallt klappernd sein Gebein an rauher Wand.
Und aller Augen sind ihm zugewandt:
der frechen Neugier und des Mitleids Blick – –
ein Kind, das spielt, hält mitten still im Glücke,
als blick’ es plötzlich in ein dunkles Land . . .
Oh, seht ihn an! In graues Tuch gewandet,
der Menscheit Heldentum in torkelndem Zick-Zack
zwei Kreuzchen scheppern und zwei Bänder
fliegen – – –
Im roten Meer von Blut und Siegen
ist des Jahrhunderts stolzes Schiff gestrandet –
und das ist Euer Wrack! . . .
Joseph Roth
(1894 – 1939)
Nervenschock
Prager Tagblatt – 6.10.1918
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive Q-R, Archive Q-R, Joseph Roth
Thank you for reading Fleurs du Mal - magazine for art & literature