Art, Books, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb, WW2

Falling Wall

I began this post in 2017. The original focus was Louis MacNeice’s’s poem “Brother Fire”. MacNeice was a fire-watcher during the London Blitz which meant that he spent nights on rooftops watching for, and reporting, fires caused by incendiary bombs. The poem expresses a human kinship with the destructive power of fire:  O delicate walker, babbler, dialectician Fire, O enemy…

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Art, My Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

For When It Snows Part Two

Rain is no respecter of persons the snow doesn’t give a soft white damn Whom it touches -e.e. cummings, Viva, 27 51 Kinds of Snow 1. Zen-blissed Buddha snow silent, soft, fat flakes. 2. Born-again snow that melts into the baltering mountain torrent to baptize the redeemed of the river plains. 3.Episcopal surplice snow, of choirs and choristers. 4. Modest Methodist…

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Art, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The Old Year

The Old Year The Old Year’s gone away To nothingness and night: We cannot find him all the day Nor hear him in the night: He left no footstep, mark or place In either shade or sun: The last year he’d a neighbour’s face, In this he’s known by none. All nothing everywhere: Mists we on mornings see Have more…

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Art, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

For When it Snows Part One

No snow where I am at the moment but here’s a poem to enjoy now and also tuck away to use on snowy days.  And on the topic of words for snow and Eskimos it’s good to read about The Great Eskimo Words for Snow Hoax that’s been perpetrated on several generations of the educated. I was fed it in…

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Art, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Posing Modernity

Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today is moving to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris but you can see it now in NYC. It’s at the Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University until February 10th 2019. Just go up – or down – on the 1,2 or 3 train to 125th Street and you’re there. It’s free, worth…

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Art, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Saul Steinberg and Philip Guston Together

I mostly associate the artist Saul Steinberg with the work he did for The New Yorker and the last time I saw an exhibit of his it was the traveling retrospective that came to the Frances Lehman Loeb Gallery at Vassar College in 2007-8. It was a full-scale survey of his work and quite amazing. And the last time I…

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Art, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Lament in December

Lament In December December’s come and all is dead; Weep, woods, for summer far has sped And leaves rot in the valley bed. Grey-blue and gaunt the oak-boughs spread Mourn through a mist their leafage shed. December, season of the dead! Brown-golden, scarlet, orange-red Autumn’s bright hues are faded, fled. December, season of the dead! Robert Graves For Robert Graves…

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Art, Poetry, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Communist, Nationalist, Fascist, Poet and Glasgow 1960

“I have too many books but I only have my shelf to blame.” The pun came via Twitter. As does my very limited knowledge of celebrity news. Thanks to Twitter trends I know that this week Kanye and Drake have had some long-standing feud about something or other and now it has taken a turn for the better for some…

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Art, My Poetry, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

An Invitation

What use is poetry? …. We have poetry  So we do not die of history. – Meena Alexander I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places. – John Ashbery    An Invitation to Poetry Come on in. Jump! You can do it. It belongs to you too. Paddle, splash about, swim, dive,…

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Art, Books, RattleBag and Rhubarb, WW1

Alive Day and A Diary Without Dates

Tammy Duckworth is a Senator from Illinois and fourteen years ago she was a captain with the Illinois National Guard serving in Iraq.    On November 12th 2004 she was piloting a Black Hawk helicopter when a rocket-propelled grenade tore through the cockpit. Duckworth’s right leg was gone in an instant, shredded in a flash of heat and a spray…

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Art, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The Night City

If you’ve ever been young and full of dreams …. If you ever headed to the big city with your imagination teeming with the prospect of joining the generations of those who came before you and left their mark … this is a poem for you. Think Paris, New York, London – any great and storied city that has been…

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Art, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb, WW1

Suvla Bay, Gallipoli 1915

It seemed to them that they were to go on living like that, and writing like that, for ever and ever. Then suddenly, like a chasm in a smooth road, the war came. – Virginia Woolf from The Leaning Tower, A paper read to the Workers’ Educational Association, Brighton, May 1940. Writing and speaking in 1940 – as another war…

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Art, Poetry, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The United States Welcomes You

We’re happier when we chat to strangers, but our instinct is to ignore them https://t.co/ExmL3GSCWw via @researchdigest — Tina Seelig (@tseelig) July 19, 2018 A tweet from Tina Seelig led to this interesting piece of research:  It’s become a truism that humans are “social animals”. And yet, you’ve probably noticed – people on public transport or in waiting rooms seem…

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Art, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The Need to Make

Not bird not badger not beaver not bee Many creatures must make, but only one must seek within itself what to make from Lament For the Makers Frank Bidart Choosing what to make, with what, where, with whom and why makes us human. What to make? Where? And With What? But then there are so many choices: