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Carlo Carra ( 11/2/1881 - 13/4/66) -Leaving the Theatre/ Notturno A Piazza Beccario di Milano/ Funeral of the AnarchistGalli

Leaving the Theatre

Notturno A Piazza Beccario di Milano

                     
                                               Horseman of The Apocalypse

Funeral of the Anarchist Galli

Art is an important part of life. Friday was the anniversary of the death of Carlo Carra, the Italian Futurist painter, who tried to imbue his panting with movement and life.
At their best his pictures literally glow on the canvas,, he stated off in life as an anarchist, though unfortunately by the end of his life he had drifted far away from this pulse and had swapped it for an ideology of coldness and reactionary political views, but his art I can't really disagree with, and it is this that lives on.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge ( 21/10/1772 -25/7/1834) - A Sunset

Sometimes you wake up, and theirs nothing one can do, but grin and bear it, let the mind drift, expand, relax, wait. This morning, I felt the flame of indecision, it must have been the grass, but among the tangle of tendrils and foliage, I asked why does our world have to be so splintered, behind us a riot of protection.
Changing the subject  Samuel  Taylor Coleridge  like the other romantics, worshiped nature,and recognised poetry's capacity to describe the beauty of the natural world. Nearly all of Coleridge's poems express a respect for and delight in natural beauty. Close observations, great attention to detail, and precise descriptions demonstrate Coleridge's respect and delight with the 'immortal' joy of nature. I will end my musings with a poem from him that deftly illustrates this.

 A Sunset

Upon the mountain''s edge all light  resting,
There a brief while the globe of splendour sits
And seems a creature of the earth, but soon
More changeful than the moon,
To wane fantastic his great orb submits,
A distant hill of fire,  till sinking slowly
Even to a star at length he lessens wholly.

Abrupt, as Spirits vanish, he is sunk!
A soul-like breeze possesses all the wood.
The boughs, the sprays have stood
As motionless as stands the ancient trunk!
But every leaf through all the forest flutters
And deep the cavern of the fountain mutters.

Sara Teasdale (8/8/1884 - 29/1/33) There Will Come Soft Rains

American, Poet...... her work was much influenced by the poetry of Chrisina Rossetti. She spent a lot pf her short life in ill health, and despite several men falling in love with her, she died after an overdose of sleeping pills.
The following poem is from her 1920 collection, 'Flame and Shadow'  which inspired and featured in a famous short story of the same name by the Science Fiction writer, Ray Bradbury. Bradbury published his story in the 'Martian Chronicles' in 1951,  with the title 'August 2026: There Will Be Soft Rains' written in an era, like today when many people were concerned about the devastaing effects of nuclear weapons, the story depicts a world in which human beings have been destroyed by nuclear force. A cationary tale that followed the recent bombings in Agust 1945, of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

There Will Come Soft Rains.

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground
And swallows calling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild-plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Russian animated film, from 1987
based on Ray Bradbury's story
-Budet Leskovy Dozhd
Director - Nazim Tylyakhozayev

Gray Tree , 1911 - Piet Mondrion

Mumia Abu-Jamal - first interview since escaping death row

Earlier post from me

http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/mumia-abu-jamal-another-nameless.html

Jubilee! Is somebody taking the Mickey??..

They're closing  our libraries, taking apart our N.H.S, taxing our elderly, causing fuel panic, giving bungs to the police, snooping on our e.mails and phone calls, attack the poor and generally stealing the future from our kids, and they expect us to throw a party for some old parasite. They really are taking the Mickey !!!
More wonderful stuff over here.
http://anarchistmedia.wordpress.com/

Thom Gunn (b.29/08/25 - 20/04/04 - Considering the Snail.

Thom Gunn, I like his stuff a lot, we share a birthday.
Borm in Britan, after moving to America, he became associated with San Francisco and the excesses of American bohemianism and all its primal urges. He wrote about violence and rebellion, love and decline, a life spent living on the edge, walking on the wild side. In his poems, as in his life he liked to take risks..... a life of studied abandon, he became known as a gay poet, who wrote in both traditional poetic forms and free verse, about the dispossessed, the marginalised where themes of love and lust interwined. Yet his themes also included the ordinary, the mundane,  and was particularly good when tackling the 'sniff of the real'. One of lifes bright things,  sadly departed, another one of those poets that I keep on returning to.
The following poem I find beautiful, delicate in its flow.
Enjoy.


Considering the Snail

The snail pushes through a green
night, for the grass is heavy
with water and meets over
the bright path he makes, where rain
has darkened the earth's dark. He
moves in a wood of desire,

pale antlers barely stirring
as he hunts, I cannot tell
what power is at work, drenched there
with purpose, knowing nothing.
What is a snail's fury? All
I think is that if later
I parted the blades above
the tunnel and saw the thin
trail of broken white across
litter, I would never have
umagined the slow passion
to that deliberate progress.

Reprinted from
Collected Poems
Faber and Faber 1993