Meeting Benches World art in all forms
Without poem it you can do nothing and you are nothing
The story behind the name Meeting Benches is fascinating and full of meaning. Imagine any place, a park or a square, where the benches act as a meeting point for people; they are silent witnesses of chance encounters, deep conversations, love stories and moments of reflection. Imagine sitting on one of those benches, surrounded by trees and with the sun filtering through the leaves; listen to the six people who occupy a seat next to you, you will find that they share their works with you. Type on writers or poets if you want to know more, appreciate the images that Dastilige Nevante made for this post.
She loved acting with a friend in a quiet bush around Sydney. She never married, although her diaries contain love stories, perhaps due to never having found a special person. A third generation Australian, she was born one day in July 1885, in Dunara, Point Piper (Sydney). Always unusual, Dorothea Mackellar found herself in the contrast between the vigor of her youth and the atrophy of her talent. After a fall, she died in Paddington and was buried overlooking the open ocean in Waverley Cemetery, yet her life flame still seems to burn.
FIRE – This life we ​​call ours is neither strong nor free. Flame in the wind of death, trembles incessantly. And all we can do to use our little light before, in the piercing wind, it flickers in the night: to yield the heat of the flame, not to envy, but to give all we have of strength, that another flame may live.
Xu Zhimo was an early 20th century Chinese poet. He worked as a teacher in several schools before dying in a plane crash one day in November 1931, near Tai’an (Shandong). To commemorate this, a white marble stone was installed at the rear of King’s College in 2008, near the bridge over the River Cam. He left four collections of verses and several volumes of translations from various languages. A collection of his poems with English translations has been published by Oleander Press Cambridge. Look at the sky and look for its cloud, you will find that it is watching you.
POSSIBILITY – I am a cloud in the sky, a random shadow on the wave of your heart. Don’t be surprised or too elated. In an instant, I will vanish without a trace. We meet in the sea of ​​dark night, you on your path, I on mine. Remember if you want, or, better yet, forget the light exchanged in this meeting.
Michael Casey, an American poet of Armenian origin, was drafted into the American army after graduation. His stay at Fort Leonardwood, Missouri provided the backdrop for his book “The Million Dollar Hole.” It was the computer of the artillery fire directorate in Vietnam, serving in the Mekong Delta. Readers looking for authentic visceral poetry need look no further, for his poems rely heavily on weighty subject matter. Do not you believe it? At least read this one.
A SIN – We were going single file through his rice fields, and the farmer started hitting the track with a rake. He wouldn’t stop. The track commander went to talk to him and the farmer also tried to beat him. So, the tracks went sideways, side by side, across the boy’s fields instead of in single file. Tough, proud Mary. Too bad, Wallace, Rosemary’s Baby, Rutgers Road Runner and go get Em-Done, get Em. We went side by side, across the fields. If you have a farm in Vietnam and a house in hell, sell the farm and go home.
Despite living in the ultra-conservative Papal State, he came into contact with the main thoughts of the Enlightenment. Remembered for his strongly pessimistic attitude towards the human condition and life, Giacomo Leopardi was a significant figure of the era of Italian Romanticism. The extraordinarily lyrical quality of his poetry made him a central protagonist in the European literary and cultural landscape. He is widely recognized as one of the most radical and inspiring thinkers of the 19th century.
THE INFINITY – This hill and this hedge have always been dear to me, which excludes the gaze for a large part of the final horizon. But as I sit and look, boundless spaces beyond, and superhuman silences, and the deepest stillness, I thought of pretending; if only for the heart is overwhelmed. And while I hear the wind rustle in the trees, comparing that infinite silence to this voice, I go: and the eternal and dead seasons come to mind, and the present and alive, and its sound. So, in this immensity my thoughts drown: it is sweet to be shipwrecked in this sea.
Albert Verwey founded and directed “The movement”, the creative container that fueled the new post-symbolist trends. He also taught at Leiden University. As a contemplative poet he gave us surprising pages, collecting his literary inspiration in timeless books, such as “The Way of Light“. The concept of constant renewal of the self is essential for him, as is his mastery of rhythm and thinking in images.
CYCLE – I am an aimless, directionless spark, thrown into the universe at the beginning of my journey, in a short time another sun bound to me, and turning I lived for a time immeasurable, a kernel of life, empty in itself, full of the energy that revolved around me. Oh, that I could without knowing it for centuries turn within the elusive radiant rose. Infinite world, universe unfinished and without beginning, but where every part is an image of the whole and a show of lights, along the eternal ways, tell me, once, never will there be an end to your constant fire, you, a diamond in the hollow of a hand?
