I Know You Are But What Am I

Listen to an awesome podcast about the unconventional poetry and love life of Edna St. Vincent Milla by Off the Shelf's Poetry Foundation "Poetry's Adventurous Valentine"  here. Read Three Sonnets here.


Four Sonnets (1922) By Edna St. Vincent Millay 1892–1950:

I.

Love, though for this you riddle me with darts,

And drag me at your chariot till I die, —

Oh, heavy prince! Oh, panderer of hearts! —

Yet hear me tell how in their throats they lie

Who shout you mighty: thick about my hair,

Day in, day out, your ominous arrows purr,

Who still am free, unto no querulous care

A fool, and in no temple worshiper!

I, that have bared me to your quiver's fire,

Lifted my face into its puny rain,

Do wreathe you Impotent to Evoke Desire

As you are Powerless to Elicit Pain!

(Now will the god, for blasphemy so brave,

Punish me, surely, with the shaft I crave!)

II

I think I should have loved you presently,

And given in earnest words I flung in jest;

And lifted honest eyes for you to see,

And caught your hand against my cheek and breast;

And all my pretty follies flung aside

That won you to me, and beneath your gaze,

Naked of reticence and shorn of pride,

Spread like a chart my little wicked ways.

I, that had been to you, had you remained,

But one more waking from a recurrent dream,

Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained,

And walk your memory's halls, austere, supreme,

A ghost in marble of a girl you knew

Who would have loved you in a day or two.

III

Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!

Faithless am I save to love's self alone.

Were you not lovely I would leave you now:

After the feet of beauty fly my own.

Were you not still my hunger's rarest food,

And water ever to my wildest thirst,

I would desert you — think not but I would! —

And seek another as I sought you first.

But you are mobile as the veering air,

And all your charms more changeful than the tide,

Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:

I have but to continue at your side.

So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,

I am most faithless when I most am true.

IV

I shall forget you presently, my dear,

So make the most of this, your little day,

Your little month, your little half a year,

Ere I forget, or die, or move away,

And we are done forever; by and by

I shall forget you, as I said, but now,

If you entreat me with your loveliest lie

I will protest you with my favorite vow.

I would indeed that love were longer-lived,

And vows were not so brittle as they are,

But so it is, and nature has contrived

To struggle on without a break thus far, —

Whether or not we find what we are seeking

Is idle, biologically speaking.

Textered oil paintings of ships at sea by polish Polish artist Justyna Kopania.

Dan Stiles, artist and illustrator, read an interview here. Below are a few of his illustrations: 

SSwee Sewee Play it Right

Nightlife

Natsumi Hayashi, a sweet-looking Japanese girl who does a series of levitating self portraits. She scoots about town and sets up a SLR and self timer,  often times literally jumping into place, with the idea of make it look less forced and just natural. When asked by  My Modern Met about others' reactions' to her jumping around Tokyo she relys with a funny story, "One day, when I was jumping at a famous sightseeing spot in western Tokyo, workers at a souvenir shop were frightened by how I was jumping. They were whispering things like 'Is the girl mentally ill' and 'Do we need to call the police?' "So I stopped jumping and apologized to them by saying, 'I am taking jumping photos for my wedding party's slide show.' Their faces turned bright red, and they said things like 'Oh dear!' and 'Congratulations!' and even 'Keep jumping!" "Then, I took one of the best levitation shots of the entire series."

"We are all surrounded by social stress as we are bound by the forces of earth's gravity," Natsumi says when asked why she took on the series. "So, I hope that people feel something like an instant release from their stressful days by seeing my levitation photos."

 Photographs by Natsumi Hayashi:

Because I Cannot Take Photographs

I've had a hard time taking photographs.  Here are bookmarked pages I've scanned and would like to share with you. Grab some ideas! There are also links for the photographers and magazine and additional reading.

     American Photo, March/April 2011, scan

Steve McCurry, one of the most influential contemporary photographers of our time in article, "The Last Roll" by Jacky Crager in American Photo Magazine, detailing McCurry's journey with the last roll of Kodachrome on his final assignment.

     Dwell Magazine, June 2006, scan

Aneta Grzeszykowska and Jan Smaga duo Polish photographers take bird's eye view photographs of Warsaw apartments.

     Anthropology December 2010 issue, scan. 

Anthropology catalog photographers can often employ elaborately staged, dream-like worlds. Recently found its even a coined word in photography circles that defines a certain type of stylized shooting techniques.

     Ad layout, Departures Magazine, September 2011 issue, scan.

Ermendgildo Zegna, tailored suites ad layout. Checkout ZegnArt Projects, combining various, international projects in the field of contemporary visual arts in collaboration with curators, cultural institutions and organizations.

     Dwell, September 2005 in "Living in Oblivion," scan

David Maisel, aerial landscape photographer's new work called Oblivion, documentation of the city of Los Angeles.

     Departures Magazine, September 2011, scan.

Rodney Smith photographer in "A Night to Remember," a fashion portfolio shoot at The American Museum of Natural History in New York City, Departures Magazine.

      American Photo, March/April 2011, scan.

Dan Winters, recognized for his unusual celebrity portraiture, shoots Kodak and expresses in article, "A Winter's Tale by Michael Kaplan:

"For all of Winter's studding work, those who hire him have to be willing to do things the Winters way. He does extremely tight edits, for example, to the point that art directors pretty much receive the number of images they need and not many more. It's a rule that went into effect long before he achieved his current degree of success. "I rarely deliver options when I deliver film, "he says. "There is the paradigm of the picture editor and he staff leaning over a light table. But I'm not a machine. My job is to edit the world and edit what I experience. So why should I give them so many shot to choose from? People would tell me that they  need to see the shoot. I never do that. I never show contact sheets. When it says, 'photo by Dan Winters,' that is my credit and I live and die by it. i give the one that works. I watch the arc of the shoot and know when I've gotten to the photo that works - and I don't need someone to look at everything in order to figure out when it started to work."

Raymond Carver's "This Morning"

An excerpt from Raymond Carver's poem "This Morning" as read aloud by Alessio Morglia and illustrated and animated by Alessandro Ferraro in this short video.

"What I've trampled on in order to stay alive.
But for a minute or two I did forget
myself and everything else. I know I did.
For when I turned back i didn't know
where I was. Until some birds rose up
from the gnarled trees. And flew
in the direction I needed to be going."

This is not my work.

I read AGNI's issue 74's "Bondage and the Pizza Man" by Susan Braunstein. The following is a favored excerpt and worth a buy. 

 Braunstein's introduces James Shea's poem "Haiku" in The Paris Review Daily as well as Jacqelyn Davis's on Bookslut, web-based literary quarterly featuring reviews and daily columns."Haiku" is a long poem made solely from poem titles; here are a few lines: 

                                                  that Jerks Around Like a Hamster in a Bag. Bashō
                                                  wrote a haiku for his students that he claimed
                                                  was his death poem. The night before
                                                  he said that for the last 20 years every poem
                                                  he had written had been his death poem. Upon
                                                  No Longer Recalling My Thoughts When I Was a Boy
                                                 Within My Father’s Stare. At Being Exhausted

Chris O. Cook, author of To Lose and Pretend takes on James Shea's book, Star in the Eye with a dash of what the f? When I read Karyna McGlynn (one of my favorite poets) gave a Cook's book a positive quote review, I read some samples and acquired a favorite few lines from "Velveteen Intestine:"

                                             When Edna Millay was 24 she cut herself with a stage

                                             knife somehow over the heart in Synge's Deirdre of the Sorrows,

                                             then later became like a story someone tells about how

                                             there used to be a rosebush in some certain place.

The following is one of Karyna McGlynn's poems published by Octopus Magazine titled 

[to step off the el’s chlamydeous tongue]

and tell your rapist I would like a roast nectarine

spilled from the rucksack at the mouth of an oak

where every girl is naked & black in the gaslight

or to compare his close prick to a leaking faucet

or the face of a fingered nickel, or if in the full

center of the puget sound could he please just

put the plank out & let you step off the ferry’s

clean side unimpeded to say I am nothing but

sonar in february’s rimy trench or come tusk

to tusk with the elephant iced to the bottom

of the sea or the platform you step off in boston

for the perianth light of this violent thing you

say you don’t want to lick beneath his jackboot

Later at the thrift store today,  I bought Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson. 

Harold decides to go for a walk in the moon light and draw his life as it is happening around him with a big purple crayon. I stared at the following two layouts for a long time.

The sun was going down while I bought this book. When I approached my car, the trees off to the left, with whom I'd ignored the collective awe and horror before, became louder with several snagged plastic bags on their branches frantic about like unsettled dresses, like a coin operated laundry room with its corner bugs so feverish, its fluorescent lighting so green scum haunting, keeping you from seeing this fast. 

Abby Try Again Film Photography print just came in the mail!

One of my favorites right now, Abby Powell from Abby Try Again uses strictly film cameras, and to my understanding mostly medium formats. I recently purchased a loved print from her print shop and also here.  This print you see below came in the mail today. It sat nestled between slices of card stock  It was perched on my front door stoop and it said hello love, take me inside.

                                              A free gift, postcard cookie print was included.

                                          It looks quaint nestled next to my jar of yummy toys.

                                         Just when the fun was over, a little 2x3 taped the back.