DAILY PHOTO: Sümeg Winter Scene [Mother & Child Sculpture]
Image
1
Tag Archives: Art
DAILY PHOTO: Interesting Statues of Malacca
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
DAILY PHOTO: Grenade-Laden Father and Child Reunion
DAILY PHOTO: Street Art of Vientiane
DAILY PHOTO: Buddha Park, Vientiane
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
“On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” by John Keats [w/ Audio]
My spirit is too weak -- mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep
That I have not the cloudy winds to keep
Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain
Bring round the heart an undescribable feud;
So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,
That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old time--with a billowy main --
A sun--a shadow of a magnitude.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
DAILY PHOTO: A Few More Murals from Malacca
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
BOOKS: “Birds, Beasts, and A World Made New” by Guillaume Apollinaire & Velimir Khlebnikov [ed. / trans. Robert Chandler]
Birds, Beasts and a World Made New: Guillaume Apollinaire and Velimir Khlebnikov (1908-22) by Guillaume ApollinaireMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher Site – Pushkin Press
This poetry collection recalls a time and tells a story. Perhaps it’s not right to call it a poetry collection, not because it isn’t one, but because that’s not all it is. Most of the book consists of selections of poetry from Guillaume Apollinaire and Velimir Khlebnikov juxtaposed by themed grouping. But there is also backstory and biography included throughout as well as in the book’s final section.
One might wonder why anyone would construct a two-poet collection featuring a Frenchman and a Russian. Well, the two men did have a number of things in common, most disturbingly that they both died young in the early twentieth century. Apollinaire died at age 38 in 1918 and Khlebnikov died at 36 in 1922. The fact that these men’s writing careers so overlapped is one of the reasons the book works. They waded through a common zeitgeist. Another commonality that makes the collection relevant and intriguing is that both poets had a penchant for experimentalism in their work.
Seeing the work of these poet’s organized as the volume does, one recognizes both similarities and differences. This includes the fact that the tone of each poet’s work ranges widely from whimsical to the brutal morosity of poems on war and the suffering it entails.
I found this collection to offer a powerful reading experience and would recommend it highly to all poetry readers.
View all my reviews
Tiger Riding for Beginners 