The Lovers’ Chronicle 29 March – words that stir – art by Adolfo Müller-Ury & Dora Carrington – birth of R. S. Thomas

Dear Zazie,

Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle. Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

dream shaken or stirred…
-Stepping up to the rooftop bar at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, the bartender asks; Qu'aimeriez-vous boire, monsieur 
un double Vesper martini stirred, not shaken, s’il vous plaît, for you my love
A French 75 please, says the wonderful redhead
how ‘bout that view of the Eiffel Tower 
 Spectacular, so you are going stirred tonight
i was just thinkin’ what words and martinis have in common, some like ‘em stirred, some like ‘em shaken
You do not have a preference
when it comes to both, the answer is, more please, especially with words, however the muse wants to serve ‘em up suits me fine
Any particular destination tonight
that is problematic, we could go to Wales and hang out with R. S. Thomas, his poetry will move you, but he was an Anglican priest and a Luddite, we would not want to git stuck listenin’ to him rail against modernity, we could go to England and visit the Bloomsbury Group, the relationship between Carrington and Strachey is touchin’, but it does not end well
Might be best to stay here, I could look at this view all night
yes, and the libations and words will keep flowin’
Words that stir
for the one whose presence in mine, matters most

© copyright 2024 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

this came from the letter
Carrington wrote
to Lytton Strachey
“Lovely and heart breaking
at the same time”
if those words do not move you
“Then you might need
to have your pulse checked”
right, and i thought, this is it
there can be no higher purpose
than to find words to stir someone
and i amazed that that became you

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

to understand fully, to endure and overcome, this journal, this verse…, the picture of struggle painted in depth, now grateful, hereafter the height of ambition; to read, to think, to write and study for you beloved, the recurrin’ ideal to write with clarity words that stir

© copyright 2022 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

there is naught else
to do on a Southern
cool early spring evenin’

nor higher purpose
for you, this verse,
this vision crafted
from feelin’s
rediscovered
with us

this is who i am, this is what i do
nothin’ else mattered till you,
and i welcome this new vision

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

you have to imagine
no greater certainty,
no greater purpose

verse by the fire pit light
so many words, a wave
overflowin’ the senses

a waitin’, not impatient
because it is worth it

search my mind,
strewn with memories,
big with the poems
soon to be born for you

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

you have to imagine
a waitin’ that spans a life

comfort in the echoes
because they are timeless

sometimes
windows happen
sometimes
they must be made

so the soi disant poet,
with his martini in the slow haze
of an old bar writin’, while the world
goes blithely by, flippant with prose

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

there is not else to do
on a high plains chilly
early spring mornin’

convenient that want
and need are aligned
with what is possible

it occurs that had
this been discovered,
say thirty years ago,
we would all be
better off

the trick now
is not to screw it up
with any other
wants or needs

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

to understand fully
to endure and overcome
journals, verse…
the picture of struggle
painted in depth

perhaps glad hereafter…
now the height of ambition
to read, to think, to write and study
leave for the bereaved, each moanin’
whatever disappointment there may be
thus it is; no point in tryin’

stark and spare, as unforgivin’
as a barren landscape
the recurrin’ ideal…
that of simplicity
to write with clarity

words that stir

© copyright Mac tag 2016 all rights reserved

Go ahead. Say
it. Lie to me.
It is alright,
I had rather
live a lie than
live with the truth
as it is now.

© copyright Mac tag 2015 all rights reserved

Today is the birthday of Adolfo Müller-Ury (Airolo, Switzerland; March 29, 1862 – July 6, 1947 Manhattan); portrait painter and impressionistic painter of roses and still life.

In 1937 he painted a portrait of Ellen Dunlap Hopkins, founder of the New York School of Applied Design for Women which he presented to the School in 1938 (Private collection, Brooklyn).

In 1940, he painted the then famous radio soprano Jessica Dragonette (Georgian Court College, New Jersey) and several times thereafter, his last portrait in 1946 depicting her bust-length in a gold fez. In 1941 he produced a portrait of her sister Rosalinda (always called Nadea) Loftus looking over her shoulder.

Gallery

Today is the birthday of Dora Carrington (Dora de Houghton Carrington; Hereford, England, 29 March 1893 – 11 March 1932 Newbury, Berkshire,  England), known generally as Carrington; painter and decorative artist, remembered in part for her association with members of the Bloomsbury Group, especially the writer Lytton Strachey. From her time as an art student, she was known simply by her surname as she considered Dora to be “vulgar and sentimental”.  She was not well known as a painter during her lifetime, as she rarely exhibited and did not sign her work. She worked for a while at the Omega Workshops, and for the Hogarth Press, designing woodcuts.

For many years, Carrington’s art was neglected by the public, and her main notoriety was her relationship with Strachey. On the day that she agreed to marry Ralph Partridge she wrote to Strachey, who was in Italy, what has been described as “one of the most moving love letters in the English language”.  She wrote,

“I cried last night Lytton, whilst he slept by my side sleeping happily—I cried to think of a savage cynical fate which had made it impossible for my love ever to be used by you…”.

Strachey wrote back that “you do know very well that I love you as something more than a friend, you angelic creature, whose goodness to me has made me happy for years, and whose presence in my life has been and always will be, one of the most important things in my life …”.

On his deathbed Strachey said, “I always wanted to marry Carrington and I never did”. His biographer calls that sentiment “not true; but he could not have said anything more deeply consoling”.  Upon his death, Strachey left Carrington £10,000 (the equivalent of £240,000 in 1994).

Carrington died by suicide, two months after Strachey’s death, using a gun borrowed from her friend, Hon. Bryan Guinness (later 2nd Baron Moyne). Her body was cremated and the cremated remains buried under the laurels in the garden of Ham Spray House.

Emma Thompson portrays Carrington in the 1995 British biographical film Carrington, written and directed by Christopher Hampton based on the book Lytton Strachey by Michael Holroyd.

Gallery

And today is the birthday of R. S. Thomas (Ronald Stuart Thomas; Cardiff 29 March 1913 – 25 September 2000 Pentrefelin, Wales); poet and Anglican priest who was noted for his Welsh nationalism, intense spirituality, and deep dislike of the anglicisation of Wales.

 John Betjeman, introducing Song at the Year’s Turning (1955), the first collection of Thomas’s poetry from a major publisher, predicted that Thomas would be remembered long after he himself was forgotten. M. Wynn Thomas said: “He was the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn of Wales because he was such a troubler of the Welsh conscience. He was one of the major English language and European poets of the 20th century.”

Thomas and Mildred “Elsi” Eldridge, an English artist, were married in 1940 and remained together until her death in 1991. Their son, (Andreas) Gwydion, was born on 29 August 1945 and died on 15 September 2016. The Thomas family lived on a tiny income and lacked the comforts of modern life, largely through their own choice. One of the few household amenities the family ever owned, a vacuum cleaner, was rejected because Thomas decided it was too noisy. Thomas married a second time, Elizabeth Vernon.

Quotes

You have to imagine
a waiting that is not impatient
because it is timeless.

• “The Echoes Return Slow” in The Echoes Return Slow (1988)

“Sunlight‘s a thing that needs a window
Before it enters a dark room.
Windows don’t happen.”
So two old poets,
Hunched at their beer in the low haze
Of an inn parlour, while the talk ran
Noisily by them, glib with prose.

• “Poetry For Supper”

He arose, pacing the floor
Strewn with books, his mind big with the poem
Soon to be born, his nerves tense to endure
The long torture of delayed birth.

• “A Person From Porlock”

I have been all men known to history,
Wondering at the world and at time passing;
I have seen evil, and the light blessing
Innocent love under a spring sky.

• “Taliesin 1952”

I have known exile and a wild passion
Of longing changing to a cold ache.
King, beggar and fool, I have been all by turns,
Knowing the body’s sweetness, the mind’s treason;
Taliesin still, I show you a new world, risen,
Stubborn with beauty, out of the heart’s need.

• “Taliesin 1952”

It is too late to start
For destinations not of the heart.
I must stay here with my hurt.

• “Here”

The darkness
is the deepening shadow
of your presence; the silence a
process in the metabolism
of the being of love.

• “Alive”, p. 51

What was the shell doing,
on the shore? An ear endlessly
drinking?
What? Sound? Silence?
Which came first?
Listen.

• “Questions”

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all

mac tag