Friday, July 23, 2010

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

A Season in Hell...Arthur Rimbaud & Robert Mapplethorpe

....

A Rimbaud

A SEASON IN HELL [Une Saison en Enfer] (1873)

SECOND DELIRIUM: THE ALCHEMY OF THE WORD

I only find within my bones

A taste for eating earth and stones.

When I feed, I feed on air,

Rocks and coals and iron ore.

My hunger, turn. Hunger, feed:

A field of bran.

Gather as you can the bright

Poison weed.

Eat the rocks a beggar breaks,

The stones of ancient churches' walls,

Pebbles, children of the flood,

Loaves left lying in the mud.

* * *

Beneath the bush a wolf will howl,

Spitting bright feathers

From his feast of fowl:

Like him, I devour myself.

Waiting to be gathered

Fruits and grasses spend their hours;

The spider spinning in the hedge

Eats only flowers.

Let me sleep! Let me boil

On the altars of Solomon;

Let me soak the rusty soil

And flow into Kendron.

It is recovered.

What? - Eternity.

In the whirling light

Of the sun in the sea.

O my eternal soul,

Hold fast to desire

In spite of the night

And the day on fire.

You must set yourself free

From the striving of Man

And the applause of the World

You must fly as you can...

- No hope forever

No orietur.

Science and patience,

The torment is sure.

The fire within you,

Soft silken embers,

Is our whole duty

But no one remembers.

It is recovered.

What? Eternity.

In the whirling light

Of the sun in the sea.

from LIMITED EDITIONS CLUB- A. RIMBAUD & R. Maplethorpe A Season in Hell. 1986

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Indian gouache...Angel on a composite horse

Monday, July 19, 2010

Abdellatif Laâbi... poetry

Abdellatif Laâbi: from Fragments of a Forgotten Genesis

Translation from French by Gordon Hadfield & Nancy Hadfield

FRAGMENT 1

In the beginning was the cry

and already discord

Which tore

the marriage of fire

Confused

violation

sordid struggles of separation

and staggering blows of solitude

Sky drew back from fire

water drew back from sky

earth drew back from water

idea drew back from clay

and the form surged

cut in two

One half was retained

the other thrown in the abyss

No one thought of good

or evil

Who could have done otherwise?

It was necessary to pile

embers against embers

to awaken this unshakeable

fire in the eyes

The prey softens and submits

offers its hairy neck

to the belly’s

voracious germination

Everything devours everything

each cunningly takes its turn

the gluttonous sounds of swallowing

Vast was the destruction

The tadpole

in its stagnant pool

could not fathom

If only he had an antenna

with a small lens attached to the end

he could have …

But what would that accomplish?

Destruction

sole witness to destruction

With this indictment the water returns

cloaking the unsavory spectacle

Amplifying the disorder

These purposeless waves

For a lapse in eternity

there was nothing but waves

A wineskin

its contents shaken

as if something begrudged its roots

With somber jaws

the waves cut to the quick

stifling these stammers

mixing and remixing

For which fleeting idea did they seek revenge?

The waves mixed primal decline

excess of matter

meagerness of memory

This upheaval spawns Hybrid

arch menace

cauldron of pure insanity

Hybrid frolicked

proliferated

color is invented

by a simple rustle of light

free from its form

the gaze rises from the offal

mouths adorned

by either a retractable vulva

or an edible penis

Organs mirthfully

exchanged

One even hears snatches

of clear music

Being sculpts Being

Limbless life

examines itself

Like a vital flowering

with a sprig of intelligence

and immediate love

There were only dreaming leaps

in the dance of origins

Body of all bodies

Hybrid

the possible denying the impossible

progress from the horizon to the whole

genesis in love with genesis

But a darkening

from flashes of rage

and a flood of meteorites

What endures great trials

will last

Then the waves ebbed

abandoning the earth

that overturned cauldron

with its bloodless population

Why this confusion?

from the wonderful collection at >

POEMS AND POETICS

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Unica Zürn... Portrait of Hans Bellmer 1965

The staging of gesture, in a processus of transformation and metamorphosis, the patient weaving of memories, through "chinks in line": Unica Zurn has probably succeeded in her project of BEING. All the while waiting for her "magical encounter" - with the white-hair man, with Death?

" When i was a child i dreamt/ about the marriage with a white-hair man paralysed./ tied to a wheel chair forever.../ Behind us, eternal./ blossomed the Jasmine/ And this is the meaning of my legend/ of life together.../ Since my chilhood wedding, in a white dress-/ I feel that I gradually become white.../ To swim into the White, to perceive finally/ the White Image?"

from an essay by Barbara Safarova "The magical encounter between writing and image"