BLACK RIDERS CAME FROM THE SEA > Black riders came from the sea. There was clang and clang of spear and shield, and clash and clash of hoof and heel, wild shouts and the wave of hair, in the rush upon the wind. Thus the ride of sin. http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Poems-Stephen-Crane/dp/0801491304
Read More »THE SCARLET LETTER – Romance, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Romance is an 1850 work of fiction in a historical setting, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, where you can know Hester Prynne, she bears an illegitimate child. It was June 1642, in the Puritan town of Boston, when a crowd gathers to witness the punishment of a young woman found guilty of adultery. The Hawthorne’s compelling novel, of the callous …
Read More »DEATH – Poetry, by Emily Dickinson
DEATH > Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me. The carriage held but just ourselves, and Immortality. We slowly drove, he knew no haste, and I had put away my labor, and my leisure too, for his civility. We passed the school, where children strove at recess, in the ring. We passed the fields of …
Read More »THE HOUSE OF MIRTH – Romantic novel, by Edith Wharton
She was caught between her entitled taste for luxury and her yearning for true love. “She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.” Lily Bart, the beautiful and intelligent heroine of this novel, slowly slithers down the rungs of the New …
Read More »DON’T THINK TWICE IT’S ALRIGHT – Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan – Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright > It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe it don’t matter, anyhow an’ it ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe if you don’t know by now, when your rooster crows at the break of dawn. Look out your window and I’ll be gone, you’re the reason …
Read More »ONE ART – Poetry, by Elizabeth Bishop
ONE ART > The art of losing isn’t hard to master. So many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, …
Read More »WINSON HOMER (1836/1910), AMERICAN PAINTER – He believed that artists only should stutter in a language of their own
DADDY – Poetry, by Sylvia Plath
DADDY – You do not do, you do not do any more, black shoe in which I have lived like a foot for thirty years, poor and white, barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time. Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, ghastly statue with one gray toe, big …
Read More »MARINE LANDSCAPES & FARM LIFE SCENES – Winson Homer: The son of art who loved the sea
WINSON HOMER 1/3 – He was an American landscape painter, best known for his marine subjects. Winslow Homer was born in Boston (Massachusetts), and his mother was a amateur watercolorist, also for that his art talent was on display early. He is considered a preeminent figure in American art. Almost self-taught, he began his career like a illustrator (Homer’s career …
Read More »THE PEOPLE, YES – Poetry, by Carl Sandburg
THE PEOPLE, YES – The people yes, the people will live on. The learning and blundering people will live on. They will be tricked and sold and again sold, and go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds, the people so peculiar in renewal and comeback, you can’t laugh off their capacity to take it. The mammoth rests between his …
Read More »OUR YOUNG MAN – Novel, by Edmund White
Our Young Man, interrogates the crucible of vanity prevalent in modern gay life. “He thought he was like an expensive racehorse whom all the people around him kept inspecting and trotting not for his well-being but to protect their investment. Feel his withers … is he off his feed? The grandstand seems to spook him, he needs blinders … his …
Read More »STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING – Poetry, by Robert Frost
STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING – Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though. He will not see me stopping here, to watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer, to stop without a farmhouse near, between the woods and frozen lake, the darkest evening …
Read More »SIA – Cheap thrills
Sia – Cheap Thrills > Up with it girl, rock with it girl, show dem it girl, bounce with it girl, dance with it girl, get with it girl. Come on, come on, turn the radio on. It’s Friday night and it won’t be long. Gotta do my hair, put my makeup on. It’s Friday night and it won’t be …
Read More »WILLIAM MULREADY (1786/1863), IRISH PAINTER – Romanticizing depictions in Victorian times
THE EVERYDAY SCENES FROM RURAL LIFE – William Mulready: from Ennis to the Royal Academy School
WILLIAM MULREADY 1/2 – Best known for his romanticizing depictions of rural scenes, he was an Irish genre painter. William Mulready (the pupil and brother-in-law of John Varley), he was born in Ennis, County Clare, but after six years its family moved to London, where he was accepted at the Royal Academy School. In 1802, he married Elizabeth (a landscape …
Read More »