The Lovers’ Chronicle 16 June – yes – birth of Giovanni Boccaccio – art by John Linnell – Bloomsday – photographs by Irving Penn -premiere of Psycho

Dear Zazie, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his muse.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  Will you say yes? Rhett

yes i said yes i will

yes

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

there is a nice pop song, ‘’Yes I Will’’
written by Gerry Goffin and Russ Titelman,
first recorded by the Hollies that fits here
’’Good choice. What about a song by Yes’’
i thought about that, either ‘’Roundabout’’
for the line, ‘’I’ll be there with you’’, or
’’Owner of a Lonely Heart’’, because we are not
‘’Right, neither lonely nor broken’’
now we have to git on with Bloomsday;
goin’ on two years now and we still yes feel and need and want yes more of each other wherever we are yes to have this meant to be and we said we will yes

© copyright 2023.2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

on a Thursday night hangin’ out in our apartment in Avondale yes a black and white movie plays silently on the television across from the couch where we sit yes you listenin’ to an audio book yes me writin’ poetry on my tablet yes both of us sippin’ on wine yes occasionally reachin’ out to touch or share an interestin’ thought yes then later in bed naked in each other’s arms yes me readin’ poetry to you yes then we kiss yes and say yes we will yes

© copyright 2022.2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

how we kissed the night we met and we thought yes this time and then we asked with our eyes the first time we made love yes and then we put our arms around each other yes and i drew you close so we could feel yes and our feelin’s comin’ alive and yes we said yes we will yes

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

once i started yes there was no turnin’ back and tellin’ you yes remains anyway whatever we do and then goin’ yes either it is what we want or need yes and what else were we given all those desires to know yes and we cannot help it if we still can yes it is a wonder after all we have endured yes

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

we were yes
that night ‘neath
the Carolina moon
yes how we hugged
and i so yes wanted
to kiss you and your eyes
yes and my eyes asked again
and had we yes everything
would have changed

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

the whole purpose self discovery that should always come first and then if you are lucky you find another on the same path when my own and your own were the same we were yes that night ‘neath the High Plains’ moon yes how we hugged and i so yes wanted to kiss you and your eyes yes and my eyes asked again and if you had said yes everything would have changed

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge

at last
no matter the way the wind blows
ravin’ no more against time or fate
my own hath come

no haste, no delay
no eager pace
standin’ on my terms
what is mine shall know

what matters alone
waitin’ with somethin’
near joy,
the comin’ years

stars comin’ on
a tide unto the plains
nothin’ can keep
my own from me

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Feels like; buckin’
destiny, my
entire life. Time
to embrace it?

© copyright 2015 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Today is the birthday of Giovanni Boccaccio (Certaldo, Republic of Florence 16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375 Certaldo); writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. he became so well known as a writer that he was sometimes simply known as “the Certaldese” and one of the most important figures in the European literary panorama of the fourteenth century. Some scholars (including Vittore Branca) define him as the greatest European prose writer of his time, a versatile writer who amalgamated different literary trends and genres, making them converge in original works, thanks to a creative activity exercised under the banner of experimentalism.

His most notable works are The Decameron, a collection of short stories, and On Famous Women. The Decameron became a determining element for the Italian literary tradition. Boccaccio wrote his imaginative literature mostly in Tuscan vernacular, as well as other works in Latin, and is particularly noted for his realistic dialogue which differed from that of his contemporaries, medieval writers who usually followed formulaic models for character and plot. The influence of Boccaccio’s works was not limited to the Italian cultural scene but extended to the rest of Europe, exerting influence on authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, a key figure in English literature, and the later writers Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega and classical theatre in Spain.

Boccaccio is considered one of the “Three Crowns” of Italian literature along with Dante Alighieri and Petrarch. He is remembered for being one of the precursors of humanism, of which he helped lay the foundations in the city of Florence, in conjunction with the activity of his friend and teacher Petrarch. He was the one who initiated Dante’s criticism and philology: Boccaccio devoted himself to copying codices of the Divine Comedy and was a promoter of Dante’s work and figure.

his Decameron was transposed to the big screen by the director and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Decameron (The Decameron)

The book is structured as a frame story containing 100 tales told by a group of seven young women and three young men; they shelter in a secluded villa just outside Florence in order to escape the Black Death, which was afflicting the city. The epidemic is likely what Boccaccio used for the basis of the book which was thought to be written between 1348–1353. The various tales of love in The Decameron range from the erotic to the tragic. Tales of wit, practical jokes, and life lessons also contribute to the mosaic. In addition to its literary value and widespread influence (for example on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales), it provides a document of life at the time. Written in the vernacular of the Florentine language, it is considered a masterpiece of early Italian prose.

De Mulieribus Claris or De Claris Mulieribus (Latin for “Concerning Famous Women”)

The book is a collection of biographies of historical and mythological women by the Florentine author Giovanni Boccaccio, composed in Latin prose in 1361–1362. It is the first collection devoted exclusively to biographies of women in post-ancient Western literature. At the same time as he was writing On Famous Women, Boccaccio also compiled a collection of biographies of famous men, De Casibus Virorum Illustrium (On the Fates of Famous Men).

Today is the birthday of John Linnell (Bloomsbury, London 16 June 1792 – 20 January 1882 Redhill, Surrey, England); landscape and portrait painter and engraver. Linnell was a naturalist and a rival to John Constable. He had a taste for Northern European art of the Renaissance, particularly Albrecht Dürer.  He also associated with William Blake, to whom he introduced Samuel Palmer and others of the Ancients.

In 1817 Linnell married Mary Ann Palmer in Scotland and they had nine children together including their first born, Hannah Linnell, who later married the landscape painter Samuel Palmer.

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Today is Bloomsday and a quite memorable day in the annals of romance and love.  As a hopeless romantic, I cannot pass up the chance to tell this story.

On 16 June 1904, James Joyce and Nora Barnacle went on their first date.  Nora, who was from Galway, worked as a chambermaid at Finn’s Hotel in Dublin; she met Joyce on the 10th of June, but their first date did not happen until almost a week later.  They took a walk together in Ringsend, and may or may not have indulged in pleasures of the flesh, but either way it was the start of a romance that would last the rest of Joyce’s life.  Joyce’s father remarked when learning of Nora’s last name, “She’ll stick with him.”  Joyce commemorated the date in his novel Ulysses (1922), a retelling of Homer’s Odyssey set in contemporary Dublin.  Bloomsday is celebrated around the world.  In celebration of Bloomsday and you my muse, here is Molly Bloom’s soliloquy:

the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know

“…I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

Today is the birthday of Irving Penn (Plainfield, New Jersey; June 16, 1917 – October 7, 2009 Manhattan); photographer known for his fashion photography, portraits, and still lifes. Penn’s career included work at Vogue magazine, and independent advertising work for clients including Issey Miyake and Clinique. His work has been exhibited internationally and continues to inform the art of photography.

Best known for his fashion photography, Penn’s repertoire also included portraits of creative greats; ethnographic photographs from around the world; Modernist still-life works of food, bones, bottles, metal, and found objects; and photographic travel essays.

Penn met Swedish fashion model Lisa Fonssagrives at a photo shoot in 1947. In 1950, the two married at Chelsea Register Office, and two years later Lisa gave birth to their son, Tom Penn, who would become a metal designer. Lisa died in 1992. Penn died aged 92.

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thanks for stoppin’ by y’all

Mac Tag

The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly – that is what each of us is here for. – Oscar Wilde

‘Tis a melancholy storm that crosses the dark reflections of your quiet soul. – Edgar Allan Poe

Poems are moment’s monuments. – Sylvia Plath