The Lovers’ Chronicle 5 September – immensity – art by Caspar David Friedrich – Verdi’s Un giorno di regno

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  Have you lost the fragrance of love’s ways?  Have you felt the sting of anguish?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
Andrew Marvel - “To His Coy Mistress”

The poet tells a woman whom he loves
that if they had endless time and space
at their disposal, then he could accept
her unwillingness to go to bed with him.
Life is short, however, and opportunities
must be seized.
Robert Penn Warren - World Enough and Time

© copyright 2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

been pullin’ back from the drama
of the word of the day, but i want
to talk about the d word in poetry
“I’ve always said the driver
gets to tune the radio”
the poet’s purpose is to express uncommon
messages, which was done at first through
drama because it was effective and new
now the challenge; to convey the same meanin’
in as few typical words as possible or abstractly
“Please anything but word soup”
oh sure, so we can wrap this up
by sayin’, we await the magnitude
of what unfolds before us

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

of the journey it could be said, it is a long dang way from there to here; wrote it off frequently as an unattainable destination, most folks never git there, an important part of my gittin’ there was acceptance that i never would, only then could i be vulnerable, open to the possibilities of you

© copyright 2022.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

still steerin ’ away from drama
but when you think about
what will unfold before us,
it is rather momentous

my half certainly
anyone tryin’ to handicap my odds
at this would have lost their ranch
i know i would have gone all in

and intensity, again pullin’
back on the reins a little,
we have it, but no need to brag

© copyright 2021.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

on this night, clear
in the moonlight,
lookin’ forward
is in order

we arrive together,
place does not matter

we turn to each other,
stripped of pretense,
of all that came before

a slow turnin’
under the stars,
we have been drawn
to this for a purpose

look and you will see

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

have to see if we, by that
i mean i, can bear the weight
of this one

i like intensity better
for one accustomed
to endurin’ the extreme
emotional swings of others,
to feel anything,
whatever is served

better be strong,
preferably dark and bitter

coffee, pain, beer, anguish, food
wine, heartache, liquor, grief, cigars

and do not be stingy with the servin’s

© copyright 2019.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

survived long discordant days,
despair, and Time’s laggin’ pace
to say farewell to those ways

let the past pass
and drowse those thoughts
a dream long sought
now at hand
no longer gone
grasp the chance
and welcome calm

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

on this night, clear
in the moonlight,
a long walk in order,
we arrive at the bridge
deserted at this time

we start across arm in arm
midway we stop to look
over the rail at the river below,
uniformly gray under the nocturnal sky

the water appears to vanish
into an empty space beyond
we turn to each other,
strip our clothes, and disappear
in the depths beneath

a fall with the dizzy
rapidity of a dream
we surface
from the cool water
and cling to each other
in the wan moonlight

we take a deep breath
and descend to the bottom
lost now in the darkness,
in the immensity of life,
in each other

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Gave all that up; had to
Matter of survival
Ridin’ the trail
I have chosen…
Could not hang on
To anything

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

for Kelli

I love that
You made me
Yearn to once
Again sketch
Even though
It will be
Difficult
To capture
The essence of you

© copyright 2014 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Come to me,
come before
it is too late
you alone can draw
the sting of anguish

© copyright 2012 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Today is the birthday of Caspar David Friedrich (Greifswald, Swedish Pomerania, on the Baltic coast of Germany; 5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840); Romantic landscape painter, perhaps the most important German artist of his generation.  He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic ruins.

Portrait by von Kügelgen c. 1810–20

On 21 January 1818, Friedrich married Caroline Bommer, the twenty-five-year-old daughter of a dyer from Dresden.  Physiologist and painter Carl Gustav Carus notes in his biographical essays that marriage did not impact significantly on either Friedrich’s life or personality, yet his canvasses from this period, including Chalk Cliffs on Rügen—painted after his honeymoon—display a new sense of levity, while his palette is brighter and less austere.

Gallery

And on this day in 1840 – Premiere of Giuseppe Verdi‘s Un giorno di regno premiered at La Scala in Milan.

Un giorno di regno, ossia il finto Stanislao (A One-Day Reign, or The Pretend Stanislaus, but often translated into English as King for a Day) is an operatic melodramma giocoso in two acts by Verdi to an Italian libretto written in 1818 by Felice Romani.  Originally written for the Bohemian composer Adalbert Gyrowetz, the libretto was based on the play Le faux Stanislas written by the Frenchman Alexandre Vincent Pineu-Duval in 1808.

After the success of his first opera, Oberto in 1839, Verdi received a commission from La Scala impresario Merelli to write three more operas.  Un giorno was first of the three, but he wrote the piece during a period when first his children and then his wife died and its failure in 1840 caused the young composer to almost abandon opera.  It was not until he was enticed to write the music for the existing libretto of what became Nabucco that Verdi restarted his career.

Mac Tag

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all

Isn’t that the way all love affairs run—from dream and cloud-journey to earth-firmness? – Leon Edel