Antoine Monnier (1846-?) ~ Etchings for Eccentric Sonnets and Strange Poems, 1873

Born today... George William Russell Æ, April 10, 1867, Lurgan, Northern Ireland

''Yet of my night I give you the stars,

And of my sorrow here the sweetest gains...''

image: George William Russell, Mystical figures

Louis Cattiaux (1904-1953) ~ DIVINITE, Oil on Canvas, date unknown

Born today...Charles Pierre Baudelaire, poet, April 9, 1821, Paris, France

The Spiritual Dawn

When upon revellers the stained dawn breaks 

The fierce ideal comes with it; at that hour, 

Stirred by some terrible avenging power, 

An angel in the sated brute awakes. 

Above the stricken, suffering man there glow 

Far azure plains of unimagined bliss 

Which draw his dreaming spirit like the abyss. 

O pure, beloved Goddess, even so 

O'er the smoked wrecks of stupid scenes of shame 

Brighter and rosier thy sweet memory 

Hovers before my wide eyes hauntingly...

The Sun has dimmed and charred the candles' flame, 

And thus, my glorious all-conquering one, 

Thy shade is peer to the immortal Sun

~ Fleurs du mal / Flowers of Evil

image: Carlo Farneti (1892-1961) illustration for Les Fleurs du Mal 1935

Alexandre Graverol (1865-1949) ....Paul Verlaine at the Broussais Hospital ...watercolour and ink on wove paper 1895

Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978)...The Poetical Dreamer, 1937

I am putting up a useless fight with a man whose eyes are gentle and corrupt; from each embrace, however frenzied, he frees himself gently, smiling, just stretching out his arms a little....

from Dream by Giorgio de Chirico

George Russell (AE) (1867-1935)... The Sea Serpent, date unknow

Born today...Karin Boye,poet, October 26, 1900 Gothenburg, Sweden

THE WORLD'S HEART 

Say, where does the world's heart burn,

the world's heart of fire? 

It lives on coarse, heavy prehistoric coal:

black darkness, dense night, Chaos. 

Seek there! 

itself a struggle, glowing struggle -

For thus is the nature of fire: 

strong with its foe's struggle - 

has no other nature. 

And the victory? When the darkness has disappeared in flames?

and fire wants to conquer.

Is the victory death? 

Empty question and empty fear! 

The world's heart is fire,

 Lucifer

Lilith and Faun

Life and Death

Born today... Andrei Bely, 26 October 1880, Moscow Russia

Once upon a time there were no grasses, nor "Earths", nor flints, nor granites; it was - flamy; laminae of flying gas diffused through the Cosmos; the earth was gurgling like a fiery flower; it was developing, confluing from the Cosmic sphere; and these gestures of the fires later duplicated themselves: in the petals of flowers; because of this the cosmic light is - the colored flower of the fields; all flowers/colors are - memories about the fires of the limitless, cosmic sphere; all words are - memories of the sound of an ancient meaning.

Once upon a time there were no concepts in our sense: a conceptual crust surrounded the image of the word; once there was not even the image itself of the word; later the images surrounded the imageless root; previously there had been no root; all roots are - serpent skins; the living serpent is - the tongue; once that snake had been streams, the palate had been - the sail of rhythms, carried along; the cosmos, as it firmed up, became the cavity of the mouth; a stream of air - this dancer of the world is - our tongue.

Glossolalia~ A Poem about Sound 1922

Ithell Colquhoun.... Autumnal Equinox, oil on canvas 1949

Muin (Sept 2nd-30th)

I am the month of Muin, month of the vine

Exhilaration is mine through the garland of fruit

Draped from the right shoulder across the swell

Of a belly like Primavera's; yet mine of early

Fall is the realm. On the head too are grapes

And the vine-leaves wreathing my autumn-coloured hair

My robe the bluish mist of a sky pregnant

With the first heavy dews.

How calm I am! Yet is there perhaps hidden

AN anger that gives authority to my poise?

I drank from the horn-cup and swam into a trance

So deep that only attraction amethystine

Recalls me, after a voyage through gates of horn

I come now to bless and renew dreams that are true

-Ithell Colquhoun

Born Today ... Rosaleen Miriam "Roie" Norton, October 2, 1917, Dunedin, New Zealand

image: The Hag , watercolour

...My home is the house of winds,

With great songs of Space ringing wild in my ears

Whose shouting heart leaps to their tune.

I mock at the shapes, plodding thickly, through lamplight:

stupid and cruel - or kind -

They are alien, Other, I'm touched with uneasiness...

Fear of these human.... and glide away sidelong:

Yet joying in fear, in my stealthy aloofness,

To know they are They and I'm I.

Towers of old cities are spiralling over me, Night-conjured,

rising from Time

And I hear, through the seething of luminous silence -

Secretive, vibrant, the sound of the Solitude -

Calling of others like me

Quietly they come, flitting softly as secrets; light-footed,

velvety, swift...

With eyes gleaming green, lambent flame of the Opal.

Kindred... we signal our quick recognition.

I am I ... but I know we are we

Panther of silence; god of Night; Lord of the wild inhuman

stars:

You are my own; teeming soul of solitude.

Here is no loneliness, secret Master -

You, Dark Spirit are with me. RN

Georg Trakl (1887-1914)... Self Portrait & poem. .. 1913

Born, February 3, 1887 - Died, November 3, 1914

Painted Probably on 11.30.1913, Innsbruck in the studio of Max von Esterle

The Deep Song

From deep night I was released.

My soul is astonished in immortality,

My soul listens over space and time

To the melody of eternity!

Not day and lust, not night and suffering

Is the melody of eternity,

And since I listened to eternity,

I feel no more lust and suffering!

more HERE

Susanne Iles & Audre Lorde... Aido Hwedo

Aido Hwedo, West African Creation Dragon by Susanne Iles

Holy ghost woman

Stolen out of your name

Rainbow Serpent

whose faces have been forgotten

Mother loosen my tongue or adorn me

with a lighter burden

Aido Hwedo is coming.

from ''Call'' by Audre Lorde ~ February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992

Anne Sexton (1928- 1974)... self portrait & poem...

Self Portrait Undated

'You are the answer, '
I said, and entered,
lying down on the gates of the city.
Then the chains were fastened around me
and I lost my common gender and my final aspect.
Adam was on the left of me
and Eve was on the right of me,
both thoroughly inconsistent with the world of reason.
We wove our arms together
and rode under the sun.
I was not a woman anymore,
not one thing or the other.

O daughters of Jerusalem,
the king has brought me into his chamber.
I am black and I am beautiful.
I've been opened and undressed.
I have no arms or legs.
I'm all one skin like a fish.
I'm no more a woman
than Christ was a man. 

excerpt from ~ Consorting with Angels by Anne Sexton

Edmond Jabès ... poem...

From "Groundless,"

by Edmond Jabès (b. Cairo, 1912–d. Paris, 1991)

Translated by Keith Waldrop

I

No-man's-land, obsessed page

A dwelling-place is a long insomnia

in the hooded trails of a mine.

My days are days of roots,

love's yoke extolled.

The sky is always to cross and

foreground to be bed with new nights.

I form, in my weeds,

a wedge in the wall's opaque brightness.

The earth is steeped in

empty dreams of travel.

VI

Land beyond night, which the sun wrenches from

meditation, from the thorns of doubt.

Flowers parade their artful candor. The stems

emulate grand adventures in space.

Honey flows between stones

which this cement will join.

VII

Around the branches, the world mimes its hunger.

So many cries for a tree, fragrant god to

plant, to bend by a magic round. . .

My secrets are orchards.

There is no trick to the mystery.

* with thanks to Ruairi

Paul Holman... poem... 3

3

 She had been earthed

( had i earthed

her by my intrusion? )

eyes no longer turned

upon phenomena I

could not locate.

She considered me a 

plunderer, a facund man,

a madman: one who

scries alphabets

of daggers, of arrows.

Zigzagged tights in a

knot in her pocket,

the tip of each

hair luminous a fox-

fire or rotten wood,

she opened the violet

gate at her throat

to release the fractal

silhouette of Pan.

Published in a wonderful collection of esoteric poetry and essays > Datura by Scarlet Imprint 

previous POEMS

 

PAUL HOLMAN is the author of The Fabulist (1991) and The Memory of the Drift (2000). He was co-editor of Invisible Books in the 1990s.

Suniti Namjoshi ...poem excerpts

Theres sunshine in the garden

there are flowers in the hall

at your gate a lovesick beast

is breaking down the wall...

from poem ~ Courtship

Why did you make a hole in the sky,
Breaking the backdrop of placid blue days?
The black crow are flapping wildly in my head
While the blue air has closed about your absence.
from poem ~ In Three Tenses



Suniti Namjoshi

Secret Games.. the Prose and Art of J Karl Bogartte... part 1

The WONDERful prose of J K Bogartte...excerpts...

Secret Games is Book II in the ongoing series of prose poems exploring the sense of the marvelous mating of science and erotic metamorphosis as a form of landscape in which the real becomes imaginary, and forces itself into visible nature.....

In that place where life and death pass by unnoticed, the Messengers without their shadows light up the fabric of unauthorized expectations, like vague recollections of thoughts that were never yours, or another form of magic, or perfidious logic, when it multiplies your body out of the space that occupies your body, out of the circle of your ageless metamorphosis within a further space more paradoxical than the others, when you follow the births and funerals of a consciousness that resembles the sea, like a fire-propagating game of chance...

~~~

The Paradoxical Game of Night

La noche es la quema de agua...

~~~

The pure fruit of an emergency landing, is a last ditch effort, a glowing hunger strung up by its ankles from the rafters, and impersonating the sputtering compass when it loses all sense of direction, kneels and licks your precious feet... then dashes off, exhilarated and beside itself. There is humor in the word: “precious.” The fruit is a night-light for the children who walk in their sleep––and therefore, the night is a narcissistic diversion... an act of irony that makes for intimate conversation between total strangers, when hidden meanings are always appreciated... when no one is present.

Reality is the amorous disruption of the wedding night, its fables and narratives in the black glass of the zookeepers’ promiscuous twin, the leopard’s robe of ingenious escapes, and the promenade of wonders...

Love is subversion of the senses, the negative light of magnetic sensations that cover you with the black dust of wings in the continuous vessel that reproduces your presence, and overflows. A singular plurality out of which are coaxed the drops of poison, of light, or words, a language of dew in the early morning, the dangerous clairvoyance of the body that swims in the bright water of its own two-way mirror. The psychosomatic eggs of an open window. Black honey, a pure black stone with a faithless heart of fire. Illusive and impeccable intervention.

 When the laws of nature intercede on her behalf, footprints are sent scurrying in every direction, and when the coordinates mimic the exact measurements needed to trigger the alchemical vessels that seduce the weather, that whir and hum like simian lanterns held up to warn of impending dangers and invisible locks, she enters the forest from behind, where the spirits speak only Spanish and the nights are without equal. It is necessary to harness these wonders. The minerals of distraction, molecules of light.

Her flesh of poppies reflects the sun while her shadow impersonates the moon. The history of perversions is the gold of science. She is an endlessly bathing light.

Amethyst of exchanging blood that ravages equality in the mother tongue, when the moon is a cat’s cradle in the sea of consciousness, of civil war in the telepathy of rebellious spirits, lovers in the fields of lunacy...

She was conscious of the purity of revenge, and he, the color of Central Asia at noon, always knew the mirror of her arousal. Together they avoided detection. Together, they were distant treasures.....

from Soluble Language 

Art WORKS - photomorphoses

Maurice Scève (1501-c.1560)...Delie ...Emblems of Desire 1544

Delie object de plus hault vertu was first published in 1544 in Lyon by Sulpice Sabon for the bookseller, Antoine Constantin. The subsequent 1564 edition, published in Lyon by Nicolas Du Chemin, follows the first edition closely, but moves the initial huitain (“A SA DELIE”) to the very end of the volume and includes an index of figures and first lines. The woodcut figures present significant changes from one edition to the other. The Délie has a mathematical layout; many suggestions have been made about its significance and about the relationship between text and image inasmuch as this work has a visual and spatial component. The Délie is composed of one decasyllabic huitain (an epigram of eight lines of verse), 449 decasyllabic dizains (epigrams of ten lines of verse), fifty woodcut emblems (each with a motto and a figure, surrounded by an ornamental border) which appear at regular intervals.

Paris : Nicolas du Chemin, 1564.

Scève’s Délie is a syncretic work, which bears the mark of the poet’s erudition and high concept of poetry. The work conveys the thoughts and feelings of a lover suffering from unrequited love and striving for perfection. Throughout the Délie, love is an obsessive and complex experience in which the sacred and the profane are intertwined. The question of Délie’s identity has tantalized critics; some have assimilated her to the Lyonnese poet Pernette Du Guillet, whose posthumous Rymes sometimes echo Scève’s Délie. La Croix du Maine, in contrast, saw the name “Délie” as the anagram of “L’Idée” (Idea), and stressed the Neo-platonic aspects of the lover’s quest. Yet, Délie eludes any attempt to define her; her composite persona combines references to Petrarch’s Rime Sparse and Petrarchan poetry, the Bible and Christian literature, classical texts and iconography, mythology, French and Neo-Latin sources. The concise quality of the dizains, and their convoluted syntax contribute to the complexity of this fascinating work.

from the Gordon Collection at the University of Virginia

* * *

43

The less i see her, the more i hate her:

The more i hate her, the less anger i feel.

The more i adore her, the less it means:

The more i flee her, the more i wish her near.

Love with hate & pleasure with pain,

The two arrows fall on me in a single rain.

And the love i great which thereby gains

As hate sinks in & cries out for revenge:

Thus my vain desire makes me detest

The one my heart so infallibly requests.

* * *

163

For this kindness let me at least commend you,

Of which i note both occasion & site

Where, all atremble, you heard me undo

This mortal knot into which my heart was tied.

I saw you, like me, now grown tired

Of my travail, more out of compassion

Than any sense of this great passion

I still feel, though less so than at the start.

For as you extinguished my affliction,

You secured this burnt offering of my heart.

* * *

William Butler Yeats ...Magic and poetry...Happy St Patricks...

magick note book - yeats





georgie & jack yeats

In 1892, he wrote: "If I had not made magic my constant study I could not have written a single word of my Blake book, nor would The Countess Kathleen have ever come to exist. The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write."

I believe in the practice and philosophy of what we have agreed to call
magic, in what I must call the evocation of spirits, though I do not know what they are, in the power of creating magical illusions, in the visions of truth in the
depth of the mind when the eyes are closed; and I belive in three doctrines,
which have, as I think, been handed down from early times, and been the foundation of nearly all magical practices. These doctrine are:
1 - That the borders of our minds are ever shifting, and that many minds can flow into one another, as it were and create or reveal a single mind, a single energy.
2 - That the borders of our memories are shifting, and that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.
3 - That this great mind and great memory can be evoked by symbols.

1908

¤ A Crazed Girl ¤

That crazed girl improvising her music.

Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,

Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling She knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,
Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare
A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing
Heroically lost, heroically found.
No matter what disaster occurred
She stood in desperate music wound,
Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph
Where the bales and the baskets lay
No common intelligible sound
But sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea.'

William Butler Yeats