"I am mainly preoccupied with the world as I experience it, and at times when I would rather be dead the thought that I could never write another poem has so far stopped me. I think this is an ignoble attitude. I would rather die for love, but I haven't."
In love with You at Age 6
I think the lines should come out through the back (and open up) so there's a visual balance. But for now, this is fine.
I was looking for Korean poetry on-line and stumbled upon a beautiful poem-
Separation is Beauty's Creation
Separation is beauty's creation. Separation's beauty is in the intangible yellow-gold of morning and the textureless black silk of evening and eternal life's deathlessness and even in the unwithering sky's blue blossoms lacking. You. If it were not for separation, I would be unable to die in tears and live again in laughter. Oh, oh! Separation. Beauty is separation's creation.
Manhae Han Yong (1879~1944)
이별은 美의 創造
이별은 美의 創造입니다. 이별의 美는 아침의 바탕 없는 황금과 밤의 올 없는 검은 비단과 죽음 없는 永遠의 生命과 시들지 않는 하늘의 푸른 꽃에도 없습니다. 님이여, 이별이 아니면 나는 눈물에서 죽었다가 웃음에서 다시 살아날 수가 없습니다. 오오, 이별이여. 美는 이별의 創造입니다.
만해 한룡운 (1879~1944)
Also in the process stumbled upon a nice blog featuring Korean poems both in English translation and in original Korean. Check it out here.
Separation is beauty's creation/Beauty is separation's creation. This leaves me speechless...
I will go brush my teeth now, it's bed time. The blade cut in too deeply and dug into the bed. There is a slit in the sheet in which my toe gets caught, every now and then.
Once I fell asleep sitting against the wall of the Borders on State Street. I woke up to suits walking around me. My hair was orange.
It took me three years to realize I could never be blonde. And two more to realize I look good in black.
All the fire alarms destroyed, the lamps pulled from the roots, and the old lady's stolen shoes? We were just belligerent. Thought the world of pretty boys with cigarettes and stained teeth. We didn't even know what beauty was.
How the fuck did we come out of that one alive? The truth is, we barely did.
Statistically speaking I rejected more than I accepted, when you account for the ratio of hours into days into months into the year, etc.
I was young. And just like that, you get it now.
The winter I blew a lot of money, I couldn't get myself to lose control really. But the rent was at least free.
To anyone getting seriously involved- dissolved, is how I see it, cause we all saw them less and less.
Rings and bookmarked jewelers on-line. I haven't bothered taking them down. I wonder what the big deal is in getting into it or out of it.
I don't even have the guts to kiss you. Where do I get off fancying you a good fuck? It's those shoes you wear, I'd like you to keep them on.
When I hear footsteps above me I like to think it's the hot neighbor coming and going.
Just so you know I'm jumping years and skipping faces.
Two weeks notice. I think I'll make some coffee now.
I don't remember anything that happens anymore someone I used to give a fuck about I've already forgotten I remember I used to love her but it's nothing compared to your back up against the door pressed against where your skin meets the fabric of my shirt
I have to admit that I've not been as productive, I work on drawings almost daily, but at times it's feeling forced. It's an expected cycle. Mentally and emotionally it's bound to happen regardless of how disciplined you are.
So I've recently turned to books. I find that it's so important to be proactive and stay stimulated always. If you're not feeling (visual) art then write. If you can't write, then read. So I've been reading, a bit.
I have to write an entry about finally picking up Nadja (by Breton) finishing it in one sitting and being astonished, but for me to give him and Nadja justice, it must wait for when my mind can form thoughts into paragraphs. Not today.
Frank O'Hara. I'm revisiting his book of collected poems. He's written so much, you won't love all of it (which I don't) but you'll love a lot of it (which I do.)
Here are few that in the past two days have really grabbed me (of course what poem, painting, film "grabs" you have as much to do with your personal emotional, state at the time as it does the quality of the piece...)
DEATH
1 If half of me is skewered by grey crested birds in the middle of the vines of my promise and the very fact that I'm a poet suffers my eyes to be filled with vermillion tears,
2 how much greater danger from occasion and pain is my vitality yielding, like a tree on fire!- for every day is another view of the tentative past grown secure in its foundry of shimmering that's not even historical; it's just me.
3 And the other half of me where I master the root of my every idiosyncrasy and fit my ribs like a glove,
4 is that me who accepts betrayal in the abstract as if it were insight? and draws its knuckles across the much-lined eyes in the most knowing manner of our time?
5 The wind that smiles through the wires isn't vague enough for an assertion of a personal nature, it's not for me,
6 I'm not dead. Nothing remains, let alone "to be said," except when I fall backwards I am trying something new and shall succeed, as in the past.
Song
Did you see me walking by the Buick Repairs? I was thinking of you having a Coke in the heat it was your face I saw on the movie magazine, no it was Fabian's I was thinking of you and down at the railroad tracks where the station has mysteriously disappeared I was thinking of you as the bus pulled away in the twilight I was thinking of you and right now
A Hill
Yes, it's disgusting when you lose control, but my wilderness is love
of a kind, no? And the purity of my confusion is there, it's poetry
in love with you along with me, both of us love you in the same "My!"
Yes, but don't be scared; poetry is intangible and there's no purity
in me outside of love, which you can easily wreck and I can lose.
Clouds pass in my notorious eyes but you, through all, I see.
My Heart
I'm not going to cry all the time nor shall I laugh all the time, I don't prefer one "strain" to another. I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie, not just a sleeper, but also the big, overproduced first-run kind. I want to be at least as alive as the vulgar. And if some aficionado of my mess says "That's not like Frank!", all to the good! I don't wear brown and grey suits all the time, do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera, often. I want my feet to be bare, I want my face to be shaven, and my heart-- you can't plan on the heart, but the better part of it, my poetry, is open.
Michelle Jane Lee’s art is minimalist in form yet muscular in content. There is a complexity, density; to put it simply, there is a lot of heart in her often times sparse drawings and paintings.
She is about going back to the moment of childhood possibility before our imaginations become impoverished and our options seemingly circumscribed. Her work reminds us that things could be different, if only we are brave enough to embrace the free fall, letting go of all of our prosthetics that keep us from realizing our freedom.
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