The Lovers’ Chronicle 6 August – with you – birth of Barbara Strozzi – Burns’ Penance – verse by Lord Tennyson – art by Andy Warhol

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.  Are you a shadow of your own self?  Do you own your own self?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

so many good without you songs
i could make a list
“Oh yes quite a few”
and i have written many
without you poems
“Pre-me”
absolutely
i am sure we could find
some “with” songs,
but i bet there are more “withouts”,
because sadness outsells happiness
when i was postin’ nothin’
but sad poems, i had fans
“And now”
damn the fans
i want with you

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

after many years of writin’ without you, a welcome change, discovered that the words keep comin’, start and they appear, in ways never understood before, not to be questioned, not to reason why, just grateful, from first light through the day, whether little things or adventures, over drinks and good food, sittin’ quietly, listenin’, readin’, writin’, watchin’, the Eagles sang about a peaceful easy feelin’, that near about describes how it is with you 

© copyright 2022.2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

for you, a full woman
who inspires this verse

wrote everyday
poems, stories, songs
tryin’ to right myself

took a long time
but i finally did
and i came to realize
what was missin’

and then there you were
when i least expected

so i set aside solitude
to take my place

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

oh sorry, i lied last year;
yes, there is a method,
but it does include madness,
of a degree; are we not all mad,
each with our own particular version,
mine includes; inordinate fixation
on words, bein’ emotionally stunted,
beyond stubborn independence,
epic stoicism, and a fascination
with the dead,
but enough about me,
what’s up with you

© copyright 2020.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

oh, there is a method
and it is not madness

i believe
there is no higher purpose,
none more deservin’

in the curves, the eyes
the smile, from within
the somethin’ that cannot
be found anywhere else

it is my “raison”
and nothin’ else
it fulfills every need,
there are no other

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

“My legs are sore
from my workout.
It will be a miracle
if I can walk tomorrow!”

no, the miracle will occur
when we are together again…

……………………………………….

hot in the sun
cooler in the shade
windy of course
windmill squeaks
as it pumps
nothin’ to do
but wait
and write

boot hills clunkin’
on the wooden floor
are you comin’
tell me where
you want to go
together
it shall be so

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

“Well, I don’t like rules,
but if we’re going to do this
there has to be one rule.”
ok
“We never say I love you.”

and then, you were here
you talked on and on
about where you had been,
what you had done,
what you had read
i sat listenin’, absorbin’

you pause suddenly
“Here I am going on and on
and you’ve hardly said a word!”
i did not want to spoil it

we walk down to Galatoire’s
we fill ourselves on wine,
Oysters en Brochette,
Duck and Andouille Gumbo,
Shrimp Etouffee,
and Bread Pudding

we walk back to our room
and make love and talk
until first light
we watch the sunrise
spent of every need

with you
there was never
another way to be

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

“Oh yeah, how bad?”
Well, the law is
not lookin’ for
me. But I left
behind a wide
trail of heartbreak

As good as it gits
That taste on my lips
What I would not give
To have that again

I am what’s changin’ secretly in you
I am the only outlet for your fears
Penitence, doubts, debauched desires

These are the flaws within divided pride
But in the heavy night, ensconced in stone
Uncover the truth behind her shadow

© copyright 2015 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

For ambiance purposes; while I am writin’ this (6 August 2016) we have thunderstorms here, so imagine thunder rumblin’ and rain and hail comin’ down.  This next poem was inspired by the fine singer and songwriter, Terri Hendrix.   I highly recommend any and all of her CD’s.  I was readin’ one of her tweets on Twitter (@terrihendrix) when the idea for this poem came to me.  In addition to writin’ and performin’, Hendrix conducts songwritin’ workshops and has established a nonprofit community arts center in San Marcos, Texas, OYOU (“Own Your Own Universe“).  OYOU offers educational and therapeutic arts programs for everyone including those who face neurological challenges or physical disabilities.  The name came from a line in her song “Wallet”.  I actually had the privilege of meetin’ her about half a lifetime ago.  So I took all of that and put it in a saddle bag, shook it up, and out came this poem.

First, you gotta know yourself, then you gotta accept yourself, then you gotta……

Own Your Own Self

Knew you back when:

We met in San Marcos
We had breakfast
once on the square

You, a full woman who
wrote some fine songs

Me, full of pretendin’
Tryin’ to right myself

From time to time
I’d see you at Gruene Hall
We’d drink a cold beer and
we’d talk and I’d wonder
about what if
But I was too busy
waltzin’ and romancin’,
it turns out, the wrong girl

I knew somethin’
was missin’ in my life
But I did not know what
I tried to write some songs
But while the words would come
the melodies would not
There was something missin’
Something just not quite right

One day, of a sudden,
it all finally changed
I discovered I was
forcin’ my words,
forcin’ myself,
to be something
they could not be,
that I could never be

So I did what
had to be done;
I packed my gear
and my fears and
I walked away
from the wrong girl,
from everything,
and moved out West

Surrounded by
big skies and solitude,
all day long, I read and I wrote
and I wrote and I read
I kept comin’ back to
one thing you used to say;
‘No matter what,
own your own self’

Well, first I had
to know myself
And in time I came to
In the cool, star strewn nights
Then I had to learn to accept
myself and all my faults
And in time I did, here
in the clear mountain air

So, I own my own self,
now after all these many years
and all these many miles
I’m still out West
Where I belong
I miss the high Hill Country rain,
the barbeque, the live music,
and two-steppin’ in Gruene

But I am still dancin’
It’s just that now
I dance with my
words and regrets
I just hope that
remains enough
How else, in the long run,
does a poet’s heart break

© copyright 2013 Cowboy Coleridge mac tag All rights reserved

The Song of the Day is “Lluvia de Estrellas” by Terri Hendrix.  We do not own the rights to this song.  All rights reserved by the rightful owner.  No copyright infringement intended.

Today is the birthday of Barbara Strozzi (also called Barbara Valle; baptised 6 August 1619; Venice – 11 November 1677 Padua); singer and composer. Her Baroque compositions were published in her lifetime.

It is conceivable that Strozzi may have been a courtesan, although she may have merely been the target of jealous slander by her male contemporaries. She appears to have led a quiet, if not slightly unusual life; there is evidence that at least three of her four children were fathered by the same man, Giovanni Paolo Vidman (also spelled Widmann). He was a patron of the arts and supporter of early opera. After Vidman’s death it is likely that Strozzi supported herself by means of her investments and by her compositions.

Strozzi died in Padua in 1677 aged 58. She is believed to have been buried at Eremitani. When she died without leaving a will, her son Giulio Pietro claimed her inheritance in full.

On this day in 1786, Scotland’s beloved poet and bard Robert Burns, perhaps best remembered for romantic classics like “Auld Lang Syne” and “A Red, Red Rose,” stood before his church a third and final time as public penance for “antenuptial fornication” with Jean Armour.

Pregnant with fraternal twins she would name after herself and Robert, Armour had been moved to stay with relatives in another town when her parents learned of her condition.  Her father, hoping there was still time to snag a suitor with better prospects than the penniless Burns, destroyed a document the poet had given Armour promising marriage.  But it was all for naught when the local church caught wind of the scandal.  Armour officially acknowledged her pregnancy and named Burns as the father.

Burns declared all this a “desertion” on her part, and stood before the church the required three times to receive a certificate declaring him a single man.  Burns may have had motives beyond feeling jilted; letters he sent friends that summer suggested he had already found a new paramour and may have impregnated her too.  And, there was at least one other illegitimate child to provide for: “Dear bought Bess,” as Burns called her, a daughter born to a servant girl shortly before he had taken up with Armour.  When the publication of his first book seemed likely, Burns, fearing the Armours would make a claim on his future earnings, turned his estate over to his brother to ensure Bess would be taken care of.

Burns left for Edinburgh and found success – with both poetry and women – in the months that followed the birth of the twins.  He returned to town less than a year from the day he had been declared a single man, and Armour’s parents, impressed by his new wealth, received him with open arms.  So did their daughter Jean, and she became pregnant with a second set of twins.

By and by; despite claims that he would never again extend her the offer, despite calling her “ungrateful” and “foolish,” despite comparing her to a “farthing taper” next to the “meridian sun” of another woman he was busy wooing – Burns married Armour.  She bore his philandering with patience and apparent good cheer, just as she continued to bear him children – the ninth was born on the day of Robert Burns’ funeral in 1796.  “Our Robbie should have had twa [two] wives,” she is said to have exclaimed upon taking in one of his illegitimate daughters to raise.

For all his affairs, Burns was also dealt with rather leniently by the church, which had the custom of making men in his circumstances sit on a “creepie-chair,” or a low stool reserved for public humiliation.  When Burns reported for penance on this day 225 years ago, he was allowed to stand in his usual pew.

The Right Honourable The Lord Tennyson FRS
1869 Carbon print by Julia Margaret Cameron

Today is the birthday of Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS (Somersby, Lincolnshire, England 6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892 Lurgashall, Sussex, England); Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victoria’s reign and one of the most popular British poets.  Tennyson excelled at penning short lyrics, such as “Break, Break, Break”, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, “Tears, Idle Tears”, and “Crossing the Bar”.  Much of his verse was based on classical mythological themes, such as Ulysses.  In Memoriam A.H.H. was written to commemorate his friend Arthur Hallam, a fellow poet and student at Trinity College, Cambridge, after he died of a stroke at the age of 22.  Tennyson also wrote some notable blank verse including Idylls of the King, “Ulysses”, and “Tithonus”.  A number of phrases from Tennyson’s work have become common phrases in the English language, including; “Nature, red in tooth and claw” (In Memoriam A.H.H.), “‘Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all”, “Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die”, “My strength is as the strength of ten, / Because my heart is pure”, “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”, “Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers”, and “The old order changeth, yielding place to new”.

Tennyson met Emily Sarah Sellwood when she was either nine or sixteen. Alfred fell in love with her at the marriage of his brother, Charles, to her sister, Louisa, in May 1836. He later wrote a sonnet about how he felt at the wedding of their siblings, where Emily was the bridesmaid:

Love lighted down between them full of glee,

And over his left shoulder laughed at thee,
‘O happy bridesmaid, make a happy bride.’
And all at once a pleasant truth I learn’d,
For while the tender service made thee weep,
I loved thee for the tear thou could’st not hide,
And prest thy hand, and knew the press return’d,
And thought, ‘My life is sick of single sleep:

O happy bridesmaid, make a happy bride!’

In 1837, they were engaged. It was called off in 1840, because of her father’s wariness of Tennyson’s ability to support a family on a poet’s income. Tennyson’s career was more successful in the 1840s and they were married on 13 June 1850.

Verse

• Of love that never found his earthly close,
  What sequel? Streaming eyes and breaking hearts?
  Or all the same as if he had not been?
  Not so. Shall Error in the round of time
  Still father Truth? O shall the braggart shout
  For some blind glimpse of freedom work itself
  Thro’ madness, hated by the wise, to law
  System and empire? Sin itself be found
  The cloudy porch oft opening on the Sun?
  And only he, this wonder, dead, become
  Mere highway dust? or year by year alone
  Sit brooding in the ruins of a life,
  Nightmare of youth, the spectre of himself!
  If this were thus, if this, indeed, were all,
  Better the narrow brain, the stony heart,
  The staring eye glazed o’er with sapless days,
  The long mechanic pacings to and fro,
  The set gray life, and apathetic end.
  But am I not the nobler thro’ thy love?
  O three times less unworthy! likewise thou
  Art more thro’ Love, and greater than thy years.
  • “Love and Duty”, l. 1- 21 (1842).
• The slow sweet hours that bring us all things good,
  The slow sad hours that bring us all things ill,
  And all good things from evil, brought the night
  In which we sat together and alone,
  And to the want, that hollow’d all the heart,
  Gave utterance by the yearning of an eye,
  That burn’d upon its object thro’ such tears
  As flow but once a life. The trance gave way
  To those caresses, when a hundred times
  In that last kiss, which never was the last,
  Farewell, like endless welcome, lived and died.
  • “Love and Duty” l. 57 – 67 (1842).
• Love lieth deep; Love dwells not in lip-depths.
  • The Lover’s Tale (1879), line 466.
• Where love could walk with banish’d Hope no more.
  • The Lover’s Tale (1879), line 813.

• Love’s arms were wreathed about the neck of Hope,
  And Hope kiss’d Love, and Love drew in her breath
  In that close kiss and drank her whisper’d tales.
  They said that Love would die when Hope was gone.
  And Love mourn’d long, and sorrow’d after Hope;
  At last she sought out Memory, and they trod
  The same old paths where Love had walked with Hope,
  And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears.
  • The Lover’s Tale (1879), line 815.

The Poet (1830)

• The poet in a golden clime was born,
  With golden stars above;
  Dower’d with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
  The love of love.
  He saw thro’ life and death, thro’ good and ill,
  He saw thro’ his own soul.
  The marvel of the everlasting will,
  An open scroll,
  Before him lay; with echoing feet he threaded
  The secretest walks of fame:
  The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed
  And wing’d with flame,
  Like Indian reeds blown from his silver tongue…
• So many minds did gird their orbs with beams,
  Tho’ one did fling the fire;
  Heaven flow’d upon the soul in many dreams
  Of high desire.

• Thus truth was multiplied on truth, the world
  Like one great garden show’d,
  And thro’ the wreaths of floating dark up-curl’d,
  Rare sunrise flow’d.
• And Freedom rear’d in that august sunrise
  Her beautiful bold brow,
  When rites and forms before his burning eyes
  Melted like snow.
• There was no blood upon her maiden robes
  Sunn’d by those orient skies;
  But round about the circles of the globes
  Of her keen
  And in her raiment’s hem was traced in flame
  WISDOM, a name to shake
  All evil dreams of power — a sacred name.
  And when she spake,
  Her words did gather thunder as they ran,
  And as the lightning to the thunder
  Which follows it, riving the spirit of man,
  Making earth wonder,
  So was their meaning to her words. No sword
  Of wrath her right arm whirl’d,
  But one poor poet’s scroll, and with his word
  She shook the world.

And today is the birthday Andy Warhol (Andrew Warhola Jr.; Pittsburgh; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987 Manhattan); visual artist, film director, producer, and leading figure in the pop art movement. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture. Some of his best-known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental films Empire (1964) and Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67).

Due to Warhol’s own admission that he was asexual, it has been assumed that his relationships were platonic. Warhol superstar Jay Johnson said, “He enjoyed the idea that he was considered a voyeur and that he was considered asexual. That was his mystique.” The Factory photographer and Warhol’s lover Billy Name stated that he was “the essence of sexuality. It permeated everything. Andy exuded it, along with his great artistic creativity … It brought a joy to the whole art world in New York.” “But his personality was so vulnerable that it became a defense to put up the blank front,” said Name. Warhol’s other lovers included aspiring filmmaker Danny Williams and artist John Giorno. Paramount Pictures executive Jon Gould was one of his last companions. His longest-lasting relationship was with Jed Johnson, who had nursed him back to health after he was shot then became his collaborator and later achieved fame as an interior designer. Warhol and Johnson “functioned as husband and husband, sharing a bed and a domestic life” for 12 years.

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