Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

Monday, April 9, 2018

Édouard Chimot (1880 – 1959) ~ illustration for Les Fleurs du mal, 1941






Odilon Redon (1840-1916) ~ Pilgrim of the Sublunary World from Dreams, lithograph, 1891



On the satin back of the avalanche soft, 
She falls into lingering swoons, as she dies, 
While she lifteth her eyes to white visions aloft, 

Which like efflorescence float up to the skies. 

Charles Baudelaire, Tristesses de la lune from Fleurs du Mal




Monday, June 5, 2017

Alastair (Baron Hans Henning Voigt) (1887-1969) ... illustration for Red Skeletons, selected poems of Harry Crosby 1927







Temple De La Douleur - Poem by Harry Crosby


My soul has suffered breaking on the wheel,
Flogging with lead, and felt the twinging ache
Of barbéd hooks and jagged points of steel,
Peine forte et dure, slow burning at the stake,
Blinding and branding, stripping on the rack,
The canque and kourbash and the torquéd screw,
The boot and branks, red scourging on the back,
The gallows and the gibbet. All for you.



These tortures are as nothing to the pain
That I have suffered when you gaze at me
With cold disdainful eyes. You do not deign
To smile or talk or even set me free-
Yet once you let me hold your perfumed hand
And danced with me a stately saraband.



Friday, February 10, 2017

Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923)... Ophelia, white marble 1880




Element 

They all swim in this
water

Fish
with big eyes
and sad mouths
swim around me
sad
without hands
holding hands

fish
in the water
in which I
drown


by Hilde Domin (1909 - 2006


Monday, October 26, 2015

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



Andrei Bely ... “Overview of Blok’s poetry”, 1923.





Andrei Bely ~ “Overview of Blok’s poetry”. Illustration to “Lectures about Blok”, 1923. Pencil, coloured pencil and watercolour on paper.





Wednesday, September 23, 2015

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