The Lovers’ Chronicle 17 August – still risin’ – cozy with Cosi – death of Da Ponte – photography by Lida Moser – art by Larry Rivers

Dear Zazie,  Hope you are havin’ a good day.  Mac Tag says hey and thanks for the shout out in the note you left.  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his muse.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  Do you watch over someone?  Does someone watch over you?  Have your ever been cozy with cosi?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

as mentioned previously,
today’s theme was inspired
by Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises
and one of the best sunrise songs
has to be by the Eagles, written
by Don Henley and Glen Frey
’’It’s another tequila sunrise’’
‘’Really good vocal harmonies
on that with Frey singing lead
and Henley on backing vocals’’
you know tequila is one of my favorites
but i do not drink it for the courage
and i am not sure about growing wise
but i know i am not tellin’ lies
when i say for this i still rise

© copyright 2023.2024 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

as you know, if you have read this far, drawn to tales of sorrow, explains my attraction to the book that inspired today’s theme; back when i wrote and posted only sad poetry, i had fans, apparently plenty of people out there who can relate to Lady Brett and Jake, but now, look at what the sun is risin’ on

© copyright 2022.2023 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

an homage to one
of my favorite books
though not relevant to our story
wait, perhaps it does in this way;
we know each day begins with some
sadness somewhere, someone without,
as we were

but now we know the sun can shine
on two who are beginnin’ their day
together

© copyright 2021.2023 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

still risin’ early to check the sun
some things do not change
constants keep rollin’
work, writin’, workin’ out
watchin’ movies, eatin’ good,
cigars, and wine and cocktails
providin’ requisite lubrication

just lost sight of perspective
there for a little bit, somehow
thought there could be
a different endin’
for Jake and Lady Brett

© copyright 2020.2023 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

of course…
these memories
so complete,
in our own little world
enveloped in the sights
and sounds, the feel
of each other as we
sat so close and pleaded
with time to wait and let
us stay in that moment

i will not forget
how it felt,
us pressed together

shall we return

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

two eyes serve a moment
the doorway is starless still
the clock ticks
the page turns

wind comin’ through the window
keeps company all night long
till the bloomin’ orange sky
takes over at first light

not to be changed,
nor likely understood,
this life subdued

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

no accountin’
for where the mind wanders
for the random songs
or memories that appear
ever wonder where
they come from

today for example
why did i start thinkin’
about Jake and Lady Brett
not Hemingway’s birthday
nor death day, so why

s’pose i just needed
to take my inner Jake
out for a little walk
see if i can find
my Lady Brett

perhaps i needed
to make sure
the sun was still risin’

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Hey, guess what
Today was just
Like yesterday
And the day before that
And the day before that
And the day before that
Missin’ you

to the silence
and the broodin’,
burnin’ mystery

in the end;
when her awakenin’ came,
she learned that she had known,
all along

in the moonlit grove,
all courage summoned,
turnin’ suddenly,
she faced him and leaned
close, so that they touched
and their eyes met

The strength
and passion
and fire of her
were in her eyes

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

When one’s existence,
havin’ contracted
a need such as this
Seems impossible
that the need should be
broken without at
once breakin’ it all

Creature supreme, drunk on her ardent flesh
In a tumult like the deepest passion
Lost, to be without her quiverin’ curves

© copyright 2015 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Today marks the anniversary of the death of Lorenzo Da Ponte, Venetian opera librettist, in 1838.  He composed the libretto for Mozart’s opera Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti (Thus Do They All, or The School For Lovers).  Of course, I am overwhelmed with the memory of the night I gave you an opera.  A memory once so complete, now turned bittersweet.  The night I arranged for you and I to attend the dress rehearsal of Cosi.  We were in our own little world, enveloped in the sights and the sounds of the production and the feel of each other as we sat so close and I pleaded with time to wait and let us stay in that moment.  I will never forget the smell of you and the feel of you as we pressed together to whisper comments about the performance.  One of my favorite memories.

Of course…
Overwhelmed with the memory;
the night I gave you an opera
A memory so complete,
now turned bittersweet
We were cozy with Cosi,
in our own little world;
enveloped in the sights
and sounds, the feel
of each other as we
sat so close and pleaded
with time to wait and let
us stay in that moment
I will never forget
the smell of you and the
feel of you as we pressed
together to whisper
comments about the performance
One of my favorite memories of all

© copyright 2016 mac Tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

In tribute to that memory and you, here is the first song of the day:

Song of the day – Cecilia Bartoli – “Una donna a quindici anni“

Today is the birthday of Lida Moser (New York City; August 17, 1920 – August 11, 2014 Rockville, Maryland); photographer and author, with a career that spanned more than six decades, before retiring in her 90s. She was known for her photojournalism and street photography as a member of both the Photo League and the New York School. Her portfolio includes black and white commercial, portrait, landscape, experimental, abstract, and documentary photography, with her work continuing to have an impact.

The Photo League was an early center of American documentary photography in the post war years, with membership including many of the most significant photographers of the 20th century. In a retrospective at the Fraser Gallery in Washington DC, she was described as a pioneer in the field of photojournalism, and The New York Times noted that she “excelled at photojournalism at a time when women were a rarity in the field.” She has been also described, much to Moser’s annoyance, as the “grandmother of American photojournalism.”

Gallery

Today is the birthday of Larry Rivers (born Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg; Bronx, New York; 17 August 1923 – 14 August 2002 Southampton, New York); artist, musician, filmmaker, and occasional actor.  Considered by many scholars to be the “Godfather” and “Grandfather” of Pop art, he was one of the first artists to merge non-objective, non-narrative art with narrative and objective abstraction.

He was a pop artist of the New York School, reproducing everyday objects of American popular culture as art. He was one of eleven New York artists featured in the opening exhibition at the Terrain Gallery in 1955.

During the early 1960s Rivers lived in the Hotel Chelsea, notable for its artistic residents such as Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Arthur C. Clarke, Dylan Thomas, Sid Vicious and multiple people associated with Andy Warhol’s Factory and where he brought several of his French nouveau réalistes friends like Yves Klein who wrote there in April 1961 his Manifeste de l’hôtel Chelsea, Arman, Martial Raysse, Jean Tinguely, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Christo, Daniel Spoerri or Alain Jacquet, several of whom, like Rivers, left some pieces of art in the lobby of the hotel for payment of their rooms. In 1965, Rivers had his first comprehensive retrospective in five important American museums.

His final work for the exhibition was The History of the Russian Revolution, which was later on extended permanent display at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC. He spent 1967 in London collaborating with the American painter Howard Kanovitz.

In 1968, Rivers traveled to Africa for a second time with Pierre Dominique Gaisseau to finish their documentary Africa and I, which was a part of the groundbreaking NBC series Experiments in Television. During this trip they narrowly escaped execution as suspected mercenaries.

During the 1970s, Rivers worked closely with Diana Molinari and Michel Auder on many video tape projects, including the infamous Tits, and also worked in neon.

Rivers’s legs appeared in John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1971 film Up Your Legs Forever.

Gallery

Ted Hughes
in later life

Today is the birthday of Ted Hughes (Edward James Hughes; Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire; England 17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998 London); poet and children’s writer.  Perhaps one of the best poets of his generation, and one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers.  He served as Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.

Hughes was married to poet Sylvia Plath from 1956 until her suicide in 1963 at the age of 30.  His part in the relationship became controversial to some feminists and some American admirers of Plath.  His last poetic work, Birthday Letters (1998), explored their complex relationship. These poems make reference to Plath’s suicide, but none addresses directly the circumstances of her death.  A poem discovered in October 2010, Last letter, describes what happened during the three days before her death.

In the summer of 1962 Hughes began an affair with Assia Wevill.  Under a cloud of his affair, Hughes and Plath separated in the autumn of 1962.  On 25 March 1969, six years after Plath’s suicide by asphyxiation from a gas stove, Assia Wevill died by suicide in the same way.  Wevill also killed her child, Alexandra Tatiana Elise (nicknamed Shura), the four-year-old daughter of Hughes.  In August 1970 Hughes married Carol Orchard, a nurse, and they remained together until his death

“The inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded case, the voice of pain — and the physical body, so to speak, of poetry, is the treatment by which the poet tries to reconcile that pain with the world.”  Amen.

Verse

The Hawk in the Rain (1957)

• Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
  A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
  Two eyes serve a movement, that now
  And again now, and now, and now
  Sets neat prints into the snow.
  • “The Thought-Fox”, line 10
• With a sudden sharp hot stink of fox,
  It enters the dark hole of the head.
  The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
  The page is printed.
  • “The Thought-Fox”, line 21

• This house has been far out at sea all night,
  The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
  Winds stampeding the fields under the window
  Floundering black astride and blinding wet
• Till day rose; then under an orange sky
  The hills had new places, and wind wielded
  Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
  Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.
  • “Wind”
• The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.
  Over the cage floor the horizons come.
  • “The Jaguar”

Lupercal (1960)

• Pike, three inches long, perfect
  Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
  Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.
  • “Pike”, line 1
• The jaws’ hooked clamp and fangs
  Not to be changed at this date;
  A life subdued to its instrument.
  • “Pike”, line 13
• Stilled legendary depth:
  It was as deep as England. It held
  Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old
  That past nightfall I dared not cast.
  • “Pike”, line 33
• I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
  Inaction, no falsifying dream
  Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
  Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.
  • “Hawk Roosting”, line 1
• It took the whole of Creation
  To produce my foot, my each feather:
  Now I hold Creation in my foot.
  Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly –
  I kill where I please because it is all mine.
  There is no sophistry in my body:
  My manners are tearing off heads –
  The allotment of death.
  • “Hawk Roosting”, line 10
• Nothing has changed since I began.
  My eye has permitted no change.
  I am going to keep things like this.
  • “Hawk Roosting”, line 22
• The gash in its throat was shocking, but not pathetic.
  • “View of a Pig”
• The deeps are cold:
  In that darkness camaraderie does not hold:
  Nothing touches but, clutching, devours.
  • “Relic”

Wodwo (1967)

• The brassy wood-pigeons
  Bubble their colourful voices, and the sun
  Rises upon a world well-tried and old.
  • “Stealing Trout on a May Morning”
• No, the serpent did not
  Seduce Eve to the apple.
  All that’s simply
  Corruption of the facts.
• Adam ate the apple.
  Eve ate Adam.
  The serpent ate Eve.
  This is the dark intestine.
• The serpent, meanwhile,
  Sleeps his meal off in Paradise—
  Smiling to hear
  God’s querulous calling.
  • “Theology”

On this day in 1959;  Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, the much acclaimed and highly influential best selling jazz recording of all time, is released. If you do not have a copy of Kind of Blue, there is not much i can do for you.

Also, Ira Gershwin died on this day in 1983.  My favorite Gershwin song is “Someone to Watch over Me”.  So, here is the second song of the day:

Song of the day – Amy Winehouse – “Someone to Watch over Me” we do not own the rights to this song

I wanted to watch over you.

Mac Tag

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all

With my hands, I can play music, make tattoos, draw drawings, write, design – all with intentional Love. – Kat Von D

Every wound has a rhythm you can hum. – James Bertolino

Well, making a poem is like having a love affair with yourself. – John Hall Wheelock

Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.  – Voltaire