The Lovers’ Chronicle 6 February – silent – birth of Ugo Foscolo – art by Othon Friesz & Mary Beth Edelson

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  Who can still to rest, your pain, your silent dream?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

lucid dream…
the sensation of floatin’, i like this feelin’, there is a word for this, hypnopompia i think, i can steer these, oh no, is that Foscolo comin’ this way, would love to discuss his poems, but do not want to git caught up in any of his political intrigues; so lets change this, need some music, i know the perfect song;
“Hush now, don’t you cry
Wipe away the teardrop from your eye
You’re lying safe in bed
It was all a bad dream spinning in your head”
and now, the lovely redhead;
Hello my darling
perfect timin’ my dear, take us out
“will be watching over you
(I) am gonna help you see it through
(I) will protect you in the night
(I) am smiling next to you, in silent lucidity”

© copyright 2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

“Why so quiet”
it is my first best destiny
“But not your most entertaining”
perhaps, but you get enough of that
“When the full moon lights the way”
yes, and when the words flow
as if there is no turnin’ back
“And there can’t be”
right, the beauty, palpable
waitin’ for discovery

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Foscolo wrote about someone understandin’ the silence he felt, an important part of us, that you understand mine, born of nature and nurture, stoicism runs in the family, and experience has taught me that i observe much better if my lips are not movin’, one of the reasons this exists, i come here to break my silence

© copyright 2022.2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

and hope,
pulses strong

time enough
to paint over,
create what will come

unanswered prayers
only you could still to rest

finally shed
that closed in feelin’,
the fear of bein’ known
i was just never sure
if there was anyone inside
worth havin’

and there was not
until us

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

in honor of today’s theme
lets take a moment of silence…

wow that felt like a really long time
it is not your natural state
one of us has to keep things rollin’
i am reminded of the scene
in The English Patient when
Almásy tells Katharine about the time
he traveled with a guide to Faya
who did not speak for nine hours,
then he tells her, that was a good day
might be why we do not
git invited to parties
one of the many perks
ok i give, for now
ah now i can write in silence

© copyright 2020.2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

silence gleams cold
night wind moans
what life beyond
so the dream below

thoughts of unquestionin’ eyes
and promise, pulses yet
much to surprise

possibly time enough
to paint over,
create what will come

breath of unanswered orisons
beyond all, only you
can still to rest

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

never could shed
that closed in feelin’
a fear of bein’ known
i expect
i was just never sure
if there was anyone inside

certainly no one worthy
sure, that was it
or maybe it was that the right one
never came along to help still to rest
the constant search

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Perhaps it is,
That I never
Cared enough

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

A trip. You know
Not, for sure, where
To. You care not
Where this will take
You, for love of
Two is one and
We will always
be together

***

Of course you are
Right. I built these
Walls, I should tear
Them down. But I
Am too damn scared

© copyright 2015 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Silent Dream

Silent stars gleam so cold,
Night wind moans, leafless trees rattle
What life beyond this stream,
So sleeps the ice-clad dream below

So silent beats the pulse,
So shines thoughts of unquestioned eyes
Life, why yet so helpless
Loveliness, why seem so surprised

To laugh to leap again
A love to which life’s pulses fly
And hopes now all of light,
Like lustres in the veil of eyes

Bold action has vision,
Courage sounds from the cold-bound depths
Grant the age old wisdom,
Beauty could paint over the frost

Passion’s heat, promise lies
In the final act, hidden pride
Thus might shape forever,
A lost soul, innocence abides

Breath of unanswered prayers
Silent dream, grief, in vain or not
Beyond woe, beyond all,
Pain, only you can still to rest

© copyright 2013 mac tag/Cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

The Song of the Day is “Silent Dream” by Tron Syversen. We do not own the rights to his song.  No copyright infringement intended.  All rights reseved by the rightful owner.

Niccolò Ugo Foscolo

Today is the birthday of Ugo Foscolo (6 February 1778 in Zakynthos, Republic of Venice, now Greece – 10 September 1827 in Turnham Green, London); writer, revolutionary and poet.

He is remembered especially for his 1807 poetry book, Dei Sepolcri.

Verse  

From Dei Sepolcri, 1807

All’ombra de’ cipressi e dentro l’urne
confortate di pianto è forse il sonno
della morte men duro? Ove piú il Sole
per me alla terra non fecondi questa
bella d’erbe famiglia e d’animali,
e quando vaghe di lusinghe innanzi
a me non danzeran l’ore future,
né da te, dolce amico, udrò piú il verso
e la mesta armonia che lo governa,
né piú nel cor mi parlerà lo spirto
delle vergini Muse e dell’amore,
unico spirto a mia vita raminga,
qual fia ristoro a’ dí perduti un sasso
che distingua le mie dalle infinite
ossa che in terra e in mar semina morte?

Lines 1–15 English translation by Ugo Foscolo himself:
Beneath the cypress shade, or sculptured urn
By fond tears watered, is the sleep of death
Less heavy? — When for me the sun no more
Shall shine on earth, to bless with genial beams
This beauteous race of beings animate —
When bright with flattering hues the coming hours
No longer dance before me — and I hear
No more, regarded friend, thy dulcet verse,
Nor the sad gentle harmony it breathes —
When mute within my breast the inspiring voice
Of youthful poesy, and love, sole light
To this my wandering life — what guerdon then
For vanished years will be the marble reared
To mark my dust amid the countless throng
Wherewith the Spoiler strews the land and sea

In addition, he wrote a poem, “Alla Sera” (In the Evening or Nightfall) that served as inspiration for the Poem of the Day:

Nights Without You

Perhaps because you understood
The silence that I felt
I cherished when you came to me
And calmed me
Whether under summer clouds
And warm winds
Or when winter sent restless
And long shadows
You always came, desired by me
And the secret pathways of my heart
You gently held
You made me wander with my thoughts
On paths that kept me
From the eternal void

And at long last, the pain and anger
That roared within me slept
Now the nights are without you
And the torment does not sleep

© copyright 2012 mac tag/Cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

The Song of the Day is “Nights are Forever Without You” England Dan and John Ford Coley.

Othon Friesz

Today is the birthday of Othon Friesz (Achille-Émile Othon Friesz; Le Havre 6 February 1879 – 10 January 1949 Paris); artist of the Fauvist movement.

Othon Friesz is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.

Gallery

Femme à la Chaise Longue

• • Paysage à La Ciotat, 1907, oil on canvas, 59.9 x 72.9 cm
  • Le Travail à l’Automne, 1907–1908, oil on canvas, 200.5 x 250 cm, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo
  • Roofs and Cathedral in Rouen, 1908, oil on canvas. 119 x 95.5 cm. In the collection of the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg
  • Landscape with Figures, 1909, oil on canvas. 65 x 83 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York
  • Les remparts de Saint-Malo , 1935, oil on canvas, Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi
    • Jardin à Honfleur (1902), Toulouse, Fondation Bemberg
    • Rouen (1908), Saint-Pétersbourg, musée de l’Ermitage.
    • Paysage sur la terrasse (1909), Toulouse, Fondation Bemberg.
    • Annamites dans un camp d’aviation (1917), Paris, musée de l’Armée.
    • Les remparts de Saint-Malo (1935), Albi, Musée Toulouse-Lautrec

and today is the birthday of Mary Beth Edelson (born Mary Elizabeth Johnson; east Chicago, Indiana; February 6, 1933 – April 20, 2021); artist and pioneer of the feminist art movement, deemed one of the notable “first-generation feminist artists”. Edelson was a printmaker, book artist, collage artist, painter, photographer, performance artist, and author. Her works have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

Edelson resided in New York during the mid-1950s. She married a lawyer, Jerome M. Strauss, on June 5, 1959 and then lived as Mary Beth Strauss in Indianapolis. By 1961, she was president of the 1444 Gallery. They had a daughter, Lynn. In 1972, a custody battle over Lynn ensued and her ex-husband was granted primary custody. Her experience is told in Phyllis Chesler’s book, Mothers on Trial: The Battle for Children and Custody.

She married Alfred H. Edelson, the CEO of Rytex Stationery, in 1965 and became Mary Beth Edelson. He purchased Talbot Gallery as a wedding present for her.

In 1968, they left Indianapolis for Washington, D.C. and later divorced. By 1972, Edelson was living with artist Robert Stackhouse in her Washington, D.C., house. The couple moved to New York in 1976. They lived in Soho in a loft with a living area and two studios, one for each artist. Edelson and Stackhouse were together for 27 years.

In April 2024, three years after Mary Beth’s death, her son Nick Edelson was reported to have ordered the disposal of art and ephemera outside of her studio in SoHo without notifying her estate’s gallery. Part of the material was salvaged by passersby wishing to preserve some of the material.

Her collage, Some Living American Women Artists / Last Supper (1972), see below, appropriated Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, with the heads of notable women artists collaged over the heads of Christ and his apostles. Christ’s head is overlaid with that of Georgia O’Keeffe. The artists collaged over the apostles include Lynda Benglis, Louise Bourgeois, Elaine de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Nancy Graves, Lila Katzen, Lee Krasner,  Louise Nevelson, Yoko Ono, M. C. Richards, Alma Thomas, and June Wayne. As well, other women artists have their image shown in the border of the piece; in all eighty-two women artists are part of the whole image. This image, addressing the role of religious and art historical iconography in the subordination of women, became “one of the most iconic images of the feminist art movement.”

Gallery

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all

mac tag