A Certain Light
Anselm Kiefer - The Seasons (2010)
1. Summer in Barjac — The Renowned Orders of the Night
2. Snow Melt in the Odenwald (text beneath title reads: Goodbye, winter, parting hurts but your departure makes my heart cheer. Gladly I forget thee, may you always be far away. Goodbye, winter, parting hurts.)
3. Ygdrasil, Autumn in Auvergne
4. Wreck of Hope
(via arpeggia)
Simone de Beauvoir on feminism, 1975. (via)
Very simple love that believes in words,
since I cannot do what I want to do,
can neither hug nor kiss you,
my pleasure lies in my words
and when I can I speak to you of love.
So, sitting with a drink in front of me,
the place filled with people,
if your forehead quickly creases
in the heat of the moment I speak too loudly
and you never say don’t be so loud,
let them think whatever they want
I draw closer melting with languor
and your eyes are so sweetly veiled
I don’t reach for you, no, not even the softest touch
but in your body I feel I am swimming,
and the couch in the bar’s lounge
when we get up looks like an unmade bed.—Patrizia Cavalli, from “Ten Poems”
Art Credit Jacob Lawrence
Do you still know these early leaves, trans-
lucent, shining, spreading on their branches
like green flames?And the hair-raising stars flowing over the
ridge late at night …No one home in the house by itself on the
pine-hidden road,or the 4-story barn up the road, leaning on
its hill.The two horses who’ve opened the gate to their
field, old, wandering around on the lawn.The sky becoming ominous.
Which is more awful, a sentient or endlessly
presenceless sky?—Franz Wright, “North Country Entries”
Art Credit Ross Bleckner
One final fall of sun slips past the ridge
behind my shoulder, coats the upper limbs
of a creek-side sycamore in gold too rich
for February, then settles on a stream
dead still, the clumps of foam scattered across
the water hung like fruit on mirrored trees.
The light seems somehow brighter brought to rest,
entangled in the far bank’s canopy—
the earthbound branches leafless, mottled gray
and silver-white, the rough bark’s loosening curls
inverted in immaculate relief,
and shimmering at my fingertips, so close
I have to reach for it, the twice-bent gleam
that passes in the swirl my reaching makes.—Bob Watts, “The Light at Hinkson Creek”
Art Credit Oscar Bluemner
In honor of French film director Alain Resnais, who turns ninety-one today, his 1956 short film Toute la mémoire du monde.
Lydia Davis at the 2013 Man Booker International Prize readings.
“David took a long sip of his drink. He wanted to close his eyes as the cool burn ran down the back of his throat, but he was afraid of appearing too satisfied in front of Agnes while they were fighting. Instead he stole a glance at her. Her eyes were focused on the table. Her face had hardened. She looked exactly like her mother, he thought hatefully: a deadly, beautiful queen, the skin stretched smooth and thin and cold-looking over her forehead, the blue eyes unapproachably clear and deep, the fine, thin-boned jaw set precisely, the spine erect, the shoulders thrown back. Then her eyes flashed at him under the bright fluorescent lights, and he felt his stomach churn with fear.
“‘I wonder if I’ve ever seen you uglier,’ she said quietly.”
—Todd Dorman, from “The Flannigans”
Art Credit Drew Young
“Just as Picasso and Braque fragment their canvases in an attempt to capture the subject from many perspectives at once, Faulkner shifts his narrative voice from one character to another, surrounding the plot from all sides while interrupting its flow.”
Lindsay Gellman on William Faulkner and literary synthetic cubism.
Gustav Klimt -Dame mit Muff (1916)
(Source: scenicworld1, via lacontessa)
Jorge Luis Borges: The Mirror Man
