1269 Arts and sciences poems

On the loan exhibit of his paintings at the Tate Gallery. You also, our first great, Had tried all ways; Tested and pried and worked in many fashions, And this much gives me heart to play the game. Here is a part that's slight, and part gone wrong, And much of little moment, and some few Perfect as Dürer! "In the Studio" and these two portraits,* if I had my choice I And then these sketches in the mood of Greece? You had your searches, your uncertainties, And this is good to know—for us, I mean, Who bear the brunt of our America And try to wrench her impulse into art. You were not always sure, not always set To hiding night or tuning "symphonies"; Had not one style from birth, but tried and pried And stretched and tampered with the media. You and Abe Lincoln from that mass of dolts Show us there's chance at least of winning through. * "Brown and Gold—de Race." "Grenat et Or—Le Pettt Cardinal."

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know That things depart which never may return: Childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow, Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn. These common woes I feel. One loss is mine Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore. Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar: Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood Above the blind and battling multitude: In honoured poverty thy voice did weave Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,— Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve, Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

There is a strain to read among the hills, The old and full of voices — by the source Of some free stream, whose gladdening presence fills The solitude with sound; for in its course Even such is thy deep song, that seems a part Of those high scences, a fountain from the heart. Or its calm spirit fitly may be taken To the still breast in sunny garden bowers, Where vernal winds each tree’s low tones awaken, And bud and bell with changes mark the hours. There let thy thoughts be with me, while the day Sinks with a golden and serene decay. Or by some hearth where happy faces meet, When night hath hushed the woods, with all their birds, There, from some gentle voice, that lay were sweet As antique music, linked with household words; While in pleased murmurs woman’s lip might move, And the raised eye of childhood shine in love. Or where the shadows of dark solemn yews Brood silently o’er some lone burial-ground, Thy verse hath power that brightly might diffuse A breath, a kindling, as of spring, around; From its own glow of hope and courage high, And steadfast faith’s victorious constancy. True bard and holy! — thou art e’en as one Who, by some secret gift of soul or eye, In every spot beneath the smiling sun, Sees where the springs of living waters lie; Unseen awhile they sleep — till, touched by thee, Bright healthful waves flow forth, to each glad wanderer free.

One Sunday morning, instead of studying The Illiad, I escaped with Bino to Florence, to see what miracles the aviator Manissero would perform. Whether he would demonstrate the art of Daedalus or the folly of Icarus. We found the whole city festooned with banners on which was written:Today We Fly. They were everywhere: Via Cerretani, Via Cavour, Via Calzaioli, along the embankments. There was even one stretched across the Arno with an enormous red Today We Fly reflected in the yellow water like the famous In Hoc Signo Vinces of Ponte Milvio. We almost expected that Florence itself would lift off, with its towers, its statues, its red roofs, with its cathedral's nodding cupola rising slowly through the clouds like a balloon. Every window, doorway and marketplace was crammed with upturned faces, scanning the sky for some sign of the direction the wind might take, and whether there would come with it the smell of rain. We were most afraid of the wind from Bologna, proud enemy to the north. Almost as bad would have been the wind from the south, from Empoli, called the scirocco; or Petrarch's east wind from Arezzo, with its Grecian-accented gusts. But even a soft westerly breeze from Pistoia— even that sweet breath from the ballads of Cino, full of dolce stil novo— would have spelled disaster. Luckily the sky that Sunday was clear, and the air was still. The leaves on the trees around the parade ground stood at ease, and the outlines of the hills were crisp, sharply etched in the crystalline air. Just wait. Today we really will fly, said Bino with a smile. For overnight Today We Fly had become a catchphrase, fit for every occasion: for a straw hat rolling along the pavement; for a parasol blown around the corner; for a dress tangled up between the knees, or blown flapping like a flag around rounded hips. It was the happy time of the first aeroplanes, before the War when it was fashionable for women to wear enormous hairdos as wide as their dresses were narrow. And those gigantic wings of hair, which were the objects of so many of our teenage jokes, have remained braided together in my heart with the fluttering Today We Fly: maliciously good-natured mementos of my adolescence. We hurried over the parade grounds, and there was Manissero crouched in the cockpit of his machine: a contraption of woven reeds and papery cloth, with a motor so small it made you think a horsefly was pinned to the frame behind his shoulders. The crowd had assembled, holding its breath, waiting for the miracle to happen, when suddenly the leaves began to tremble, and the blades of grass of nod. A few tiny white clouds sprouted like windowsills on Monte Morello, and the women's wings of hair began to come untucked from their padded nests of false braids. Manissero jumped out of his cockpit at the first sign of this unfortunate breeze, waved amicably to the crowd with a gloved hand, and yanked off his leather helmet while a banner was unfurled above the grandstands: Because of Unsettled Weather, Today We Will Not Fly. It was hard to imagine anything more settled than the weather that day: a magnificent, paradisiacal Sunday in spring. But all it took was this delicate breeze, this perfumed zephyr from Pistoia, to spoil everything. We returned to Prato with heavy hearts, and I took up my study of the abandoned Illiad, quiet and discouraged. Thursday morning the rumor began to spread that the following Sunday, if the weather was favorable, Manissero would attempt to fly from Florence to Prato and back: thirty kilometers round trip! By Saturday, Via Magnolfi, the Corso, Via del'Oche, Via Firenzuola—all the streets of Prato were crisscrossed with white banners carrying those fateful words: Today We Fly. By noon Sunday rivers of people from the surrounding the countryside were flooding into the city through its five gates, and by three o'clock the cathedral square was awash with a restless and noisy crowd, pale, perspiring, noses in the air. I stood among them with my classmates, all of us impatient, barely kept in check by the stern gaze of our principal and the softer reprimands of the teachers. We began to hear a new word: Velivolo! dancing above the buzz of the crowd. But that name for aeroplane, recently coined by d'Annunzio, seemed too delicate for the gaping mouths of dumbstruck farmers: it was still fresh, still smelled of varnish, and was as sweet and sharp in the mouth as mint candy. Velivolo! Suddenly a white wing appeared in the blue sky and the reed-and-paper bird grew larger, came closer, hovered over the cathedral square. A cry, only one, but from a thousand throats; a cry more of fear than joy: then sudden silence, bursting with anguish. Manissero was perhaps two hundred meters above our heads, and it seemed miraculous. Miraculous not just because he was flying, but because he was flying over Prato, in the virgin sky of Prato! which only the kites of children had dared to caress until today. As long as the flying was over Florence, things were fine: certain facts, in Florence, are understandable, are legitimate, and fit within in the logic of history. But over Prato! Over Prato where for centuries now nothing miraculous had happened. Not on the ground, and not in the sky. Especially not in the sky. Over Prato! Where it seemed that miracles had become impossible, caught as we were between the historic pride of Florence and the ancient jealousy of Pistoia. Sacrificed, reduced to poor relations, robbed not only of everything that we had, which would have been bad enough, but of everything we might have wanted to have. Yet here was Manissero flying in our sky, in the neglected sky of Prato. And he was flying, or so it seemed, better than he might have flown in the sky of Florence. Better than in any other sky in Tuscany! After a moment, though, the suspicion began to grow that he might fly as far as Pistoia. Everyone held their breath, balanced on one foot, hearts stopped between beats: The treacherous sky of Pistoia! Some us took out our keys, ready to rattle them against such a betrayal. The rest of us set our lips to whistle in defiance. But Manissero veered to the right, and after a wide turn over Prato he headed back toward Florence. The city detonated with joy. I lost myself in the crowd, beyond thought, proud citizen of Prato to my bones. It wouldn't be too much to say that all of us, that day, felt we held a piece of sky in our hands. That night, in my dreams, the Achaean army, assembling beneath the walls of Troy, came to a halt, astonished at what lay before them: stretching from tower to tower immense white banners on which great red letters spelled out: Today We Fly. And then Troy, the city of Priam— which from a distance resembled nothing more than Prato— detached itself gently from the earth, hovered with its banners snapping in the breeze, and drifted away into the clear sky, swinging gently from side to side. Maddened Achilles ran along below, commanding: Stop! Stop! And from the buzz of his accent you might have thought he was from Pistoia. Beloved Priam, from the top of the Trojan gates. answered sweetly: Too Late. Too Late. And his voice had all soft accents of Prato, taking flight.

At the end of the bridge is a state of prison. Then it goes back into my throat drying my throat. Miracle of Sicilian weeping. Bleeds in one of his many dreams. He announced that he was about to give a free ‘poetry suicide’—a free ‘poultry recital.’ Everyone be- lieved him. _______ At the end of the bridge is a state of prison. A voyage will hide itself in your heart, bleeding from the left eye, the organ of sight. A voyage will hide itself in someone unfamiliar like a heap of salt. Mingled with the ordinary blueness would be waves of foreheads shaped like cups. She thought he could hear her. To dance is to live. _______ Calm and order of an autumn sky. At the end of a bridge is the state of prison, voyage of eye and throat full of the fear of night. Then all of winter will enter like a red block, or like the calm and order of an autumn sky. 139. Change of form. 139a. Change of colour. 122. Pitfalls. 136. Covers with a lid. _______ It doesn’t matter what you say but how you say it. By pronouncing the words they become different. It comes from above (pointing to his head). Then it goes all sorts of ways down. Then it goes back into my throat drying my throat. Tonight it’s a certainty that the President will resign (‘a virtual certainty’). After the party they drove back to her house where she sucked him off while he spoke to someone on the tele- phone about the possibility of a job. _______ Plato’s warning against telling stories,mython tina diēgeisthai

The buried temple empties through its bowels, Sepulchral sewer spewing mud and rubies, Abominably some idol of Anubis, Its muzzle all aflame with savage howls. Or if the recent gas the wick befouls That bears so many insults, it illumines In haggard outline an immortal pubis Flying along the streetlights on its prowls. What wreaths dried out in cities without prayer Of night could bless like that which settles down Vainly against the marble of Baudelaire In the fluttering veil that girds her absence round, A tutelary poison, his own Wraith, We breathe in always though it bring us death.

gustave morin's primary form is the collage poem. His "toon tune" is a remarkable piece of craftsmanship. Its sixty-three individual fragments of text are cut into the shapes of jigsaw puzzle pieces and are fit perfectly together in a rectangular grid. The "words" of the poem consist almost entirely of the extravagant visualizations of onomatopoeia from comic books, producing a visual symphony of crashes and cries.—Geof Huth More About Visual Poetry >>

Anoint your dead poems. Put them in a little boat called She Who Must Be Obeyed — our little joke. Invite the Molotovs for cocktails on deck. Tell them to wear all their gold.

The sculptures in this gallery have been carefully treated with a protective wax so that visitors may touch them.

For Marshall “Major” Taylor A hoot is a hilarious person. Perhaps train scream or owl, jeer. Often done by mouth. A man may widen owl wide and give one away. Hoots may result in bans, as in, “the crowd ‘hooted’ the track star clean out of the sport.” Sometimes a hoot may be kept and saved for later. For instance, “They didn’t give a hoot.” A woman may sharpen a hoot in the toolshed with the bread knives. So there may be a toolshed, and this may be where the knives are kept and the hoots. They come from chambers — come at you with those wings. So when waiting in the tool- shed hoot runs its owl talon over the knives. Else it comes at you, other it stares. • In 1890, George “Little Chocolate” Dixon put his foot on the world and held it there, waiting for the Major to come. These were the days when extra layers of name were glazed on — a way of saying both more and less and not at all. In the case of the two-term moniker, permit either/or — you may grab from the bag “Little.” In France, Marshall “Major” Taylor was le Nègre Volant— you may grab from the bag “Flying.” • Sometimes it’s a bad investment to self-publish autobiography —what a hoot. As in, pauperism may wait for you with its long needles readying to blow you out. Under the pauper’s empty ton a man gets baby-bird gaping with hunger. The Major puts his wings inside and dies in Cook County Hospital where it’s too late. Hoot given, hoot held back. Ice-white nurses come warm in their linens to fold back the wings beside themselves, like any good cook come to shut a mouth. This case of hoot has called for leg and wing and swoop. Rise up, Major. Ghost-man old Birdie Munger’s bike — take back the front, it’s time to owl.