The Lovers’ Chronicle 14 June – doubt – photography by Margaret Bourke-White – verse by René Char

Dear Zazie, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag. What have you done with your doubt? Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

is today opposite day
’’Not that I know of’’
well we are goin’ opposite
of the theme for a song
‘’You’re driving’’
from the fabulous Sarah Vaughan;
‘’Are you certain when you say you care?
Do you love me with some room to spare’’
’’This is overused, but she was one of the best’’
yes, and we needed a song that was either about
havin’ no doubt or one that spoke of certainties
’’Because we are’’
absolutely

© copyright 2023.2024  Mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

as intimate as possible with this one, danced around and with for years, most of a lifetime, lookin’ back, at times it would seem that certainty had been found only to have it fade, gradually or suddenly till i was right back to where i started, wonderin’ what i should be doin’ and with who, does the amount of time spent lost sharpen the feel of bein’ found, not sure but when purpose was discovered it was clear and with who, absolutely no doubt

© copyright 2022.2024  Mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

not so dramatic
as hushed darkness
nor selective self-delusion
though did spend years there

only a heartbeat away
do you believe, otherwise
magic or dreams, no not
destiny, too you know

but never came to pass
acceptin’ now as is
comin’ into focus

as doubt fades
in the rear view

© copyright 2021.2023  Mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

my devotion,
nothin’ obsesses

a nomadic spark
now at rest

loves refrain
spend it all
whatever it takes
the one that holds
will not know loss

must leave traces
of his passage,
the traces make us

only a heartbeat away
do you believe

must accept as is

was there ever

any doubt

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

oh sure
with the High Plains
fadin’ in the rear view
and a leap of faith
into the unknown

whatever awaits in ga,
at least i have you
along for the ride
to listen
for guidance
should we think about
takin’ any fancy chances

surely doubt anything
will come of that
except good verse

© copyright 2019.2023  Mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

believe
in this vision
no doubt

leavin’ traces
for only traces
engender dreams

it started with you,
or the promise
of you

a look and there arose
embers never to subside
and insatiable
curiosity

nothin’ haunts anymore,
save you

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Seein’ the aura
Leavin’ the horror,
sufferin’ and effort,
And the memory of which
overwhelms the languor,
The life and death

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Hushed darkness
Selective self-delusion
Only a heartbeat away
Do you believe. Wise magic
Never is a long time
Must accept as is

Half remembered, half awake
Comin’ into focus now

Was there ever

Any doubt

© copyright 2016 Mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

for Tamela

I really wanted to kiss her
I thought there would be
a better time and place
I was wrong

© copyright 2012 Mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Today is the birthday of Margaret Bourke-White (the Bronx; June 14, 1904 – August 27, 1971 Stamford, Connecticut); photographer and documentary photographer. Perhaps best known as the first foreign photographer permitted to take pictures of Soviet industry under the Soviets’ first five-year plan, as the first American female war photojournalist, and for taking the photograph (of the construction of Fort Peck Dam) that became the cover of the first issue of Life magazine. She died of Parkinson’s disease at age 67.

Photographs by Bourke-White are in the Brooklyn Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the New Mexico Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as well as in the collection of the Library of Congress. A 160-foot-long photomural she created for NBC in 1933, for the Rotunda in the broadcaster’s Rockefeller Center headquarters, was destroyed in the 1950s. In 2014, when the Rotunda and Grand Staircase leading up to it were rebuilt, the photomural was faithfully recreated in digital form on the 360-degree LED screens on the Rotunda’s walls. It forms one of the stops on the NBC Studio Tour.

In 1924, during her studies, she married Everett Chapman, but the couple divorced two years later. She added her mother’s surname, “Bourke”, to her name in 1927 and hyphenated it. 

Bourke-White met the bestselling novelist Erskine Caldwell in the mid-thirties. Caldwell specialized in writing about poor communities in the rural south, and he invited her to collaborate on a photojournalist expedition through the south, which produced the book You Have Seen Their Faces (1937). 

They collaborated on two more books North of the Danube (1939) a travelogue about Czechoslovakia under the specter of Nazi occupation and Say, Is This the U.S.A. (1941) about industrialization in the United States. She lived with Caldwell for several years before they married in 1939. They divorced in 1942.

Many of her manuscripts, memorabilia, photographs, and negatives are housed in Syracuse University’s Bird Library Special Collections section.

Gallery

And today is the birthday of René Char (L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, France 14 June 1907 – 19 February 1988 Paris); poet and member of the French Resistance.

Char was a friend and close associate of the writers Albert Camus, Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot, and of the artists Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Victor Brauner. He was to have been in the car involved in the accident that killed both Camus and Michel Gallimard, but there was not enough room, and returned instead that day by train to Paris.

The composer Pierre Boulez wrote three settings of Char’s poetry, Le Soleil des eaux, Le Visage nuptial, and Le Marteau sans maître. A late friendship developed also between Char and Martin Heidegger, who described Char’s poetry as “a tour de force into the ineffable” and was repeatedly his guest at Le Thor in the Vaucluse.

Le Météore du 13 août

Ma convoitise est infinie. Rien ne m’obsède que la vie.
Étincelle nomade qui meurt dans son incendie.
Aime riveraine. Dépense ta vérité. L’herbe qui cache l’or de ton amour ne connaîtra jamais le gel.

• Fureur et mystère (1948), René Char, éd. Gallimard, coll. Poésie, 1962, partie LE POEME PULVERISE (1945-1947), Le Météore du 13 août, p. 203

Un poète doit laisser des traces de son passage, non des preuves. Seules les traces font rêver.

“Le poème est l’amour réalisé du désir demeuré désir”

Les femmes sont amoureuses et les hommes sont solitaires. Ils se volent mutuellement la solitude et l’amour.

Chacune des lettres qui composent ton nom,ô Beauté, au tableau d’honneur des supplices,épouse la plane simplicité du soleil,s’inscrit dans la phrase géante qui barre le ciel,et s’associe à l’homme acharné à tromper son destin avec son contraire indomptable: l’espérance.

Merci, et la Mort s’étonne; – Merci; la Mort n’insiste pas; – Merci, c’est le jour qui s’en va; – Merci simplement à un homme – S’il tient en échec le glas

Tu es plaisir, avec chaque vague séparée de ses suivantes. Enfin toutes à la fois chargent. C’est la mer qui se fonde, qui s’invente. Tu es plaisir, corail de spasmes.

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all

Mac Tag