The Lovers’ Chronicle 23 August – losses – verse by William Ernest Henley – art by Eugene Lanceray & Hannah Frank – photographs by Regina Relang

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  On an enchanted evenin’ in a starlit garden, have you seen a stranger, or heard someone laughin’ or found your true love?  Rhett

The Lover’s Chronicle

Dear Muse,

heavy topic today
“From your drama days”
hey maybe i could start
a show, the drama files
“Ha, uh no”
hey who said, when bad things happen
you better find the humor in it quick
or you will really be in trouble
“Hmm, not sure but humor
is a defense mechanism”
used it many times myself
well whatever comes at us
the only mechanism we will need
is in each other

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

they come along, if you are fortunate to be around long enough, what you do with them is everything, shout to the night at the unfairness, curl up and let ’em eat you alive, fight back and wear your anger as a crown, turn off your feelin’s and become numb, or, accept ’em as part of the bargain you had no choice in makin’, they will shape you, so lets make the most of each one

© copyright 2022.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

with gratitude we can say
we have not had any yet
they are comin’ unless
a benevolent alien
comes along and cures
our collective madness

so when they do
we will face them
as we have faced
the wonders
we have known
together

© copyright 2021.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

for Gay

a choice
to live life
or to observe
while it passes by

come take my hand

read what you wrote
and i was moved
in a way i had thought
no longer possible

i too wanted to stay
in that moment
and felt all else
fade away

an enchanted evenin’
that will not close
till i see you again

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

a yearly reminder
is it true sorrow makes
the sweetness better

not sure anymore
some woe is so senseless
how does one carry on

no choice, in my opinion
lean into what life serves up
for the poet or artist
the loss will focus
the vision
make it burn brighter

can you feel it

© copyright 2019.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

out of the night
i thank whatever
for my unconquerable soul

in the clutch of circumstance
and after the bludgeonin’
from choices gone awry,
and countin’ up the losses,
remain unbowed
and doin’ just fine,
thank you

but damn,
some of the losses
come around once in awhile
and i struggle to hang on

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

for Mona

just heard…
a childhood friend,
a free-spirited beauty
used to go to her house
and explore nascent urges
with her and her sister

gone too soon
goddamnit
it is never fair
but of course fairness,
has nothin’ to do with it
and never will
hurtin’ for her

her parents worked
for us at my uncle’s ranch
when i was growin’ up

we would ride horses
and skinny dip
in the spring fed
water tanks
and talk of dreams

some that came true
and some that never did

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

“Is it easier to live with a dispassionate heart? Is a dispassionate soul aware of its vacuousness; would it even care if it was?”

I know this;
the heart that shuts out
romantic passion
can write some
dang fine sad verse

“The passionate heart is known to wander outside the body; it seeks the open spaces, where it can breathe and swell and bleed shamelessly.”

“The passionate mind is known to lie to the heart for the sake of sanity; it knows the heart becomes toxic if held too long within the chest.”

“The passionate soul does its best to anchor the heart and mind on the same plane of existence, however abstract. I have felt it weeping.”

“And how the three manifest as flesh: sensual conduit ripening,
hunter-gatherer to passion’s need,
the body thriving & aching at their hands.”

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Not the apostle
of vice, but clearly
an echo of vast
sorrow wherever
I bear its voice in
poems and promises

Pure streams of infinite life
Joyfully at her langourous curves,
Strong, dedicated to her rapture

Still there, by the bed,
the book, Camille. We
read it over and
again. That and the
smell of her perfume
are all that remain

© copyright 2015 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

William Ernest L. Henley

Today is the birthday of William Ernest Henley (Gloucester, England; 23 August 1849 – 11 July 1903 Woking, Surrey, England); poet, critic and editor of the late-Victorian era in England.  A fixture in London literary circles, the one-legged Henley might have been the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s character Long John Silver (Treasure Island, 1883), while his young daughter Margaret Henley inspired J. M. Barrie’s choice of the name Wendy for the heroine of his play Peter Pan (1904).

Henley married Hannah (Anna) Johnson Boyle (1855–1925) on 22 January 1878. In the 1891 Scotland Census, William and Anna are recorded as living with their two-year-old daughter, Margaret Emma Henley (b. 1888), in Edinburgh.

Margaret was a sickly child, and became immortalised by Barrie in his children’s classic, Peter Pan. Unable to speak clearly, young Margaret had called her friend Barrie her “fwendy-wendy”, resulting in the use of the name “Wendy” for a feminine character in the book. Margaret did not survive long enough to read the book; she died in 1894 at the age of five and was buried at the country estate of her father’s friend, Harry Cockayne Cust, in Cockayne Hatley, Bedfordshire. In a letter of sympathy, the childless Stevenson wrote to Henley: ‘There is one thing I always envied you, and that I envy you still ’.

After Stevenson received a letter from Henley labelled “Private and Confidential” and dated 9 March 1888, in which the latter accused Stevenson’s new wife Fanny of plagiarising his cousin Katharine de Mattos’ writing in the story “The Nixie”, the two men ended their friendship, though a correspondence of sorts did resume later after mutual friends intervened.

“Invictus”

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul

Another of his poems:

Some Starlit Garden Grey With Dew

Some starlit garden grey with dew,
Some chamber flushed with wine and fire,
What matters where, so I and you
Are worthy our desire?

Behind, a past that scolds and jeers
For ungirt loins and lamps unlit;
In front, the unmanageable years,
The trap upon the Pit;

Think on the shame of dreams for deeds,
The scandal of unnatural strife,
The slur upon immortal needs,
The treason done to life:

Arise! no more a living lie,
And with me quicken and control
Some memory that shall magnify
The universal Soul.

Today is the birthday of Eugène Lanceray (Yevgeny Yevgenyevich Lanceray; Pavlovsk, Russia; 23 August 1875 – 13 September 1946 Moscow), also spelled Eugene Lansere; graphic artist, painter, sculptor, mosaicist, and illustrator, associated stylistically with Mir iskusstva (the World of Art).

Lanceray was the only prominent member of Mir iskusstva to remain in Russia after the Revolution of 1917. Being a representative of traditional painting (not avant-garde movement) and the bourgeoisie, he was not in great demand with the new Soviet government for a long time. Even his sister found the revolutionary milieu alien to her art and, in 1924, she fled to Paris.

Lanceray himself did not like the new Soviet regime that he had to exist in after 1917. It referred to his own understanding of the historical way of Russia and the massive oppressions towards his relatives and close friends (some of them immigrated and some of them were killed). In February 1932 he left a note in his diaries: ‘There is incredible impoverishment. Of course, this is the government’s goal to bring everyone and everything to poverty, since it is easier to manage the poor and the hungry’.

Lanceray left Saint Petersburg in 1917, and spent three years living in Dagestan, where he became infatuated with Oriental themes. His interest increased during journeys made in the early 1920s to Japan and Ankara, Turkey.  In 1920, he moved to Tiflis, Georgia.  During his stay in Georgia, he lectured at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts (1922–1934) and illustrated the Caucasian novellas of Leo Tolstoy.  Amongst his students was Apollon Kutateladze.

Lanceray left Georgia in 1934, settling in Moscow, where he became engaged in the decoration of the Moscow Kazansky railway station and the Hotel Moskva.  During the same period, Lanceray also worked as a theatrical designer.

Three years before his death, he was honored with the Stalin Prize, and in 1945 he was awarded the title of the People’s Artist of the RSFSR.

Gallery

Today is the birthday of Regina Relang (Regina Lang; Stuttgart 23 August 1906–1989 Munich); fashion photographer and photojournalist active in the 1950s and 1960s. She documented the latest designs of prominent fashion houses.

Relang began working for Vogue in 1938, publishing photographs in the French, American, and British editions. Her work was also regularly used in Die Dame, Madame (magazine), Harper’s Bazaar, Film und Frau, and Constanze. Over the course of her career, she photographed the women’s fashion of Christian Dior, Pierre Cardin, and Yves Saint-Laurent and reported on haute couture shows from Paris and Rome. Her photographs are known for their elegance, glamour, and use of lifelike settings that contrast with the designs being showcased. Models photographed by Relang include Jean Patchett, Linda Morand, Ina Balke, Isa Stoppi, Elsa Martinelli, Simone D’Aillencourt, and Suzy Parker.

gallery

Today is the birthday of Hannah Frank (Glasgow 23 August 1908 – 18 December 2008 Glasgow); artist and sculptor. She was known for her art nouveau monochrome drawings until she decided to concentrate on sculpture in 1952.

Frank and her husband Lionel were members of the Glasgow group of the Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

From 25 April – 5 June 2004 the Lancaster City Museum and Art Gallery hosted the first show of the successful touring exhibition: Hannah Frank: A Glasgow Artist. This toured for five years in the run up to Frank’s 100th birthday, which coincided with the exhibition’s final destination, her alma mater, the University of Glasgow. As part of this touring exhibition, Frank had her first solo exhibition in London at Ivy House, Golders Green, home to the London Jewish Cultural Centre. At the end of the London show Frank presented her 1943 drawing Sun to the Ben Uri London Jewish Museum of Art. Although she was not able to be there, due to travelling difficulties at the age of 98, she said that she was ‘glad that people in London are becoming as enthusiastic about my work as they are in Scotland’.  She was present at the opening of the final exhibition of the tour, at the University of Glasgow Chapel, where she was given a standing ovation by the 150 guests present.

The University of Glasgow recognised Frank’s talent and “international distinction” and the day before her death (too late for her to know) a letter had been sent, offering her an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters.

Gallery

And today marks the anniversary of the death of lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II.  He wrote the words to many fine songs and of course, one of them shall be the SOD, but which one.  Well, it is not much of a stretch to go from “Some Starlit Garden Grey With Dew” to “Some Enchanted Evening”.

The Song of the Day – Frank Sinatra’s version of “Some Enchanted Evening”.

Some enchanted evenin’ in a starlit garden grey with dew, I found my true love.  I felt her call me and I flew to her and made her mine.  But then I let her go.  But then I let her go.  And now, my evenin’s are enchanted no more.

One enchanted evenin’
in a starlit garden
grey with dew, I found her
I felt her call me and
I came to her and we
made love ‘neath the stars
But then I let her go
But then I let her go
And now, my evenin’s
are enchanted no more.

Mac Tag

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all