Thoughtful Buster. Buster Keaton in momentary repose. Appears to be post-war.: photo by Michael Ryerson, 16 December 2017
Hong-Kong: photo by Jean-Sebastien David, 2 September 2015
Untitled [Chennai]: photo by Sasikumar Ramachandran, 12 November 2017
The pleasures of the flesh: photo by efo, 9 December 2015
86th Street Crosstown Bus, New York, NY 1976: photo by M. Chaussettes, 13 December 2017
86th Street Crosstown Bus, New York, NY 1976: photo by M. Chaussettes, 13 December 2017
86th Street Crosstown Bus, New York, NY 1976: photo by M. Chaussettes, 13 December 2017
Father Time | London, England: photo by DonStevie, August 2016
![;] | by www.bawgaj.eu /Brighton now/](https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4566/27088895319_09049f6ffc_z.jpg)
; Istanbul | “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”― Confucius: photo by Przemek Strzelecki, 5 December 2017
WAITING DOG | Neuberg, Styria, Austria: photo by LitterART, 11 December 2015
![;] | by www.bawgaj.eu /Brighton now/](https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4585/27245495699_8e3fc9ae9f_b.jpg)
; Morocco 2017 | “Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.”― Garrison Keillor: photo by Przemek Strzelecki, 12 December 2017
Untitled [Chennai]: photo by Sasikumar Ramachandran, 9 December 2015
Untitled [Kiev]: photo by Adrian Tsim, 7 December 2015
Frosty Fog Alders: photo by Nick Lyle, 11 December 2017
Frosty Fog Alders: photo by Nick Lyle, 11 December 2017
Frosty Fog Alders: photo by Nick Lyle, 11 December 2017
Crescent Street, Montreal, 1983. No filters, no phone | There was no direction home | Only the moment: photo by Avard Woolaver, sometime in 1983
Untitled [Chennai]: photo by Sasikumar Ramachandran, 13 December 2017
Meanwhile at home: February 2017: photo by Roccantica, 28 February 2017
Sixth Graders from Giannini Middle School, Outer Sunset District - San Francisco, CA. These kids were looking for something to photograph with their iPads. Yeah, a little ironic. Fuck you Donald Trump. You don't have the guts to call out hate groups. You're the biggest coward in the world.: photo by Rex Mandel, 3 May 2016
Sixth Graders from Giannini Middle School, Outer Sunset District - San Francisco, CA. These kids were looking for something to photograph with their iPads. Yeah, a little ironic. Fuck you Donald Trump. You don't have the guts to call out hate groups. You're the biggest coward in the world.: photo by Rex Mandel, 3 May 2016
You get what you pay for | Los Angeles, Ca.: photo by michaelj1998, 14 December 2017
You get what you pay for | Los Angeles, Ca.: photo by michaelj1998, 14 December 2017
You get what you pay for | Los Angeles, Ca.: photo by michaelj1998, 14 December 2017
![;] | by www.bawgaj.eu /Brighton now/](https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4646/25260681388_e0f16bf5ec_b.jpg)
; Ethiopia 2017 | “I don't think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.”― Anne Frank: photo by Przemek Strzelecki, 18 December 2017
Untitled [Chennai]: photo by Sasikumar Ramachandran, 16 December 2017
Meanwhile at home: photo by Roccantica, 25 February 2008
illegal gold mine!!! Mongolia |'Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.'-- Erich Fromm: photo by Przemek Strzelecki, 15 December 2017
; Ethiopia 2017 | “I don't think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.”― Anne Frank: photo by Przemek Strzelecki, 18 December 2017
Untitled [Chennai]: photo by Sasikumar Ramachandran, 16 December 2017
Meanwhile at home: photo by Roccantica, 25 February 2008
illegal gold mine!!! Mongolia |'Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.'-- Erich Fromm: photo by Przemek Strzelecki, 15 December 2017
Untitled [Chennai]: photo by Sasikumar Ramachandran, 11 December 2017
family days...: photo by Roccantica, 12 March 2011
![;] | by www.bawgaj.eu /Brighton now/](https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4557/38907550551_d39c3b90a6_b.jpg)
; Tsaatan family, Mongolia | 'I miss those childish days of long ago, when one day was as long as twenty are now .'– C.J. Heck: photo by Przemek Strzelecki, 7 December 2017
family days...: photo by Roccantica, 12 March 2011
; Tsaatan family, Mongolia | 'I miss those childish days of long ago, when one day was as long as twenty are now .'– C.J. Heck: photo by Przemek Strzelecki, 7 December 2017
Untitled [Chennai]: photo by Sasikumar Ramachandran, 13 November 2017
Imagined 53: photo by Desperate John, 14 December 2017
Imagined 53: photo by Desperate John, 14 December 2017
Imagined 53: photo by Desperate John, 14 December 2017
CARNIVAL WOMAN - 1953| photo by Jack Welpott: image by johnmike1969, 2 December 2017
IMG_4041: photo by ALBERTO VELARDI, 9 December 2017
IMG_4041: photo by ALBERTO VELARDI, 9 December 2017
IMG_4041: photo by ALBERTO VELARDI, 9 December 2017
Untitled: photo by lautrehidalgo, 11 December 2017
Ni par l'aveugle poignard des roches,
ni par la plus creusante tempête
tournant des paquets de feuilles à la fois,
ni par l'œil attentif de l'homme employé avec peine
et d'ailleurs sans contrôle
dans un milieu interdit aux orifices débouchés des autres sens
et qu'un bras plongé pour saisir trouble plus encore,
ce livre au fond n'a été lu.
Francis Ponge
Harmony| Los Angeles, Ca.: photo by michaelj1998, 21 November 2017
Harmony| Los Angeles, Ca.: photo by michaelj1998, 21 November 2017
Harmony| Los Angeles, Ca.: photo by michaelj1998, 21 November 2017
Harmony| Los Angeles, Ca.: photo by michaelj1998, 21 November 2017
Harmony| Los Angeles, Ca.: photo by michaelj1998, 21 November 2017
2017-163| Los Angeles, CA.: photo by biosfear, December 2017
As seen from afar| Los Angeles, Ca.: photo by michaelj1998, 16 December 2017
As seen from afar| Los Angeles, Ca.: photo by michaelj1998, 16 December 2017
As seen from afar| Los Angeles, Ca.: photo by michaelj1998, 16 December 2017
Harrison Street, San Francisco: photo by Patrick Vennari, 11 December 2017
Harrison Street, San Francisco: photo by Patrick Vennari, 11 December 2017
Harrison Street, San Francisco: photo by Patrick Vennari, 11 December 2017
Vác Hungary, 2017: photo by tamas bernath, 21 November 2017
Poor Clarence [Lone Pine, CA}: photo by Richard Hammond, 9 December 2017
On the roof | Djupavik [Iceland]: photo by efo, 2 December 2017
On the roof | Djupavik [Iceland]: photo by efo, 2 December 2017
On the roof | Djupavik [Iceland]: photo by efo, 2 December 2017
Bangkok, Thailand |Near the Grand Palace in the Phra Nakhon district, Bangkok, Thailand 1986: photo by Dave Glass, December 1986
Bangkok, Thailand |Near the Grand Palace in the Phra Nakhon district, Bangkok, Thailand 1986: photo by Dave Glass, December 1986
Japanese aerial photo of attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7th, 1941. Diamondhead far horizon background right.: photo by Michael Ryerson, 12 December 2017
Japanese aerial photo of attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7th, 1941. Diamondhead far horizon background right.: photo by Michael Ryerson, 12 December 2017
Japanese aerial photo of attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7th, 1941. Diamondhead far horizon background right.: photo by Michael Ryerson, 12 December 2017
Under the Fremont: photo by TimVo, 15 December 1986
one more saturday night
a blistering cold wind battering down the ghost freeway feeder @1:10 in the a.
m. as the year dies in branch sparking high voltage lines on the trans
former out front and somewhere under the now vacant house next door
the ferals are cowering, when last seen
spotty boy's closed (infected) left eye looked as big as the knot on the side
of dildar's eye after she was clubbed by the mindfulness machete gangsters
and they've taken away the planter box on the upper porch where his hunched
white spine poked out, in those last days
last days hard upon other last days
"let me enter unto no more last days
than already obligated"
spotty boy might have been thinking
when though smaller of girth he drove away
his own son blackie
in an act of paternal rejection characteristic of street post civilization
survivalist milieux blistering winds rickety steps wandering souls haunted houses
feral cats
blackie came, cried a bit, left "he is so fat"
- Angelica Bygum twixt choking coffs in the tubercular ward by the free
way, feeder of ghost cats benefactress
("Someone around here is so
aching to transition")
former out front and somewhere under the now vacant house next door
the ferals are cowering, when last seen
spotty boy's closed (infected) left eye looked as big as the knot on the side
of dildar's eye after she was clubbed by the mindfulness machete gangsters
and they've taken away the planter box on the upper porch where his hunched
white spine poked out, in those last days
last days hard upon other last days
"let me enter unto no more last days
than already obligated"
spotty boy might have been thinking
when though smaller of girth he drove away
his own son blackie
in an act of paternal rejection characteristic of street post civilization
survivalist milieux blistering winds rickety steps wandering souls haunted houses
feral cats
blackie came, cried a bit, left "he is so fat"
- Angelica Bygum twixt choking coffs in the tubercular ward by the free
way, feeder of ghost cats benefactress
("Someone around here is so
aching to transition")
The Behrman family say goodbye to their home after it was destroyed by the #ThomasFire.
They stopped by to retrieve their belongings, thanked the firefighters,
spoke to reporters and left in the cover of darkness. Breaks my heart
seeing this.: photo by Marcus Yam @yamphoto, 17 December 2017
Spanish tiles hang from a home on Park Hill Lane that was destroyed by the Thomas fire in Montecito, Calif.: photo by Marcus Yam @yamphoto, 17 December 2017
Snow (18.12.09) [Brighton]: photo by Tom Raworth, 2009
I look into my glass,
And view my wasting skin,
And say, "Would God it came to pass
My heart had shrunk so thin!"
For then I, undistrest
By hearts grown cold to me,
Could lonely wait my endless rest
With equanimity.
But Time, to make me grieve,
Part steals, lets part abide;
And shakes this fragile frame at eve
With throbbings of noontide.
Boxing Day Dawn (26.12.09): photo by Tom Raworth, 2009
![;] | by www.bawgaj.eu /Brighton now/](https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4574/27046734179_2203563014_b.jpg)
;] Brighton 2017 |“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.”― William Penn: photo by Przemek Strzelecki, 3 December 2017
![;] | by www.bawgaj.eu /Brighton now/](https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4528/27199172849_05b169c295_b.jpg)
;] Poland |'Dont be afraid to stand for what you believe in, even if that means standing alone..' – Andy Biersack: photo by Przemek Strzelecki, 10 December 2017
European Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis), Dunedin, New Zealand: photo by Benchill, 13 October 2007
Thomas Hardy: I Look Into My Glass
Snow (18.12.09) [Brighton]: photo by Tom Raworth, 2009
And view my wasting skin,
And say, "Would God it came to pass
My heart had shrunk so thin!"
For then I, undistrest
By hearts grown cold to me,
Could lonely wait my endless rest
With equanimity.
But Time, to make me grieve,
Part steals, lets part abide;
And shakes this fragile frame at eve
With throbbings of noontide.
Boxing Day Dawn (26.12.09): photo by Tom Raworth, 2009
;] Brighton 2017 |“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.”― William Penn: photo by Przemek Strzelecki, 3 December 2017
;] Poland |'Dont be afraid to stand for what you believe in, even if that means standing alone..' – Andy Biersack: photo by Przemek Strzelecki, 10 December 2017
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928): I Look Into My Glass, from Wessex Poems (1898)
Thomas Hardy: The Caged Goldfinch
European Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis), Dunedin, New Zealand: photo by Benchill, 13 October 2007
Within a churchyard, on a recent grave,
I saw a little cage
That jailed a goldfinch. All was silence save
Its hops from stage to stage.
There was inquiry in its wistful eye,
And once it tried to sing;
Of him or her who placed it there, and why,
No one knew anything.
European Goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis): photo by Monster 2000, 2008
European Goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis) in February, Moscow region: photo by Villa16, February 2009
Spanish Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis parva), looking for water, Sevilla: photo by Fernando Zamora, 15 January 2008
I saw a little cage
That jailed a goldfinch. All was silence save
Its hops from stage to stage.
There was inquiry in its wistful eye,
And once it tried to sing;
Of him or her who placed it there, and why,
No one knew anything.
European Goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis): photo by Monster 2000, 2008
European Goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis) in February, Moscow region: photo by Villa16, February 2009
Spanish Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis parva), looking for water, Sevilla: photo by Fernando Zamora, 15 January 2008
European Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis caniceps), female, caged: photo by Freegiampi, 20 August 2006
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928): The Caged Goldfinch, from Moments of Vision (1917)
Thomas Hardy: The Darkling Thrush
Mistle Thrush (Turdus viscivorous), England: photo by jo-h, 5 December 2010
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928): The Darkling Thrush, 31 December 1900 (originally published as By the Century's Deathbed in The Times, 1 January 1901), from Poems of the Past and the Present (1901)
Mistle Thrush (Turdus viscivorous), St. Johann, Styria, Austria: photo by Kurt Kulac, 24 January 2009
Mistle Thrush (Turdus viscivorous), England: photo by jo-h, 5 December 2010
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928): The Darkling Thrush, 31 December 1900 (originally published as By the Century's Deathbed in The Times, 1 January 1901), from Poems of the Past and the Present (1901)
Mistle Thrush (Turdus viscivorous), St. Johann, Styria, Austria: photo by Kurt Kulac, 24 January 2009
Mistle Thrush (Turdus viscivorous), the Netherlands: photo by Gerard Blokhuis, 14 February 2010
Mistle Thrush (Turdus viscivorus) in Baikonur-town, Kazakhstan: photo by Yuriy75, December 2009
Mistle Thrush (Turdus viscivorus viscivorus) singing near Germering in Bavaria: photo by N p Holmes, 28 February 2009
The male Mistle Thrush (Turdus viscivorus viscivorus) passed some earthworms to the female as a gesture of closeness. The female tasted one piece and thereafter the male fed the fledglings.: photo by T. Voekler, 25 April 2008
DSC06149-2 [Chumphon, Thailand]: photo by noppadol maitreechit, 11 December 2017
DSC06149-2 [Chumphon, Thailand]: photo by noppadol maitreechit, 11 December 2017
DSC06149-2 [Chumphon, Thailand]: photo by noppadol maitreechit, 11 December 2017
Mistle Thrush (Turdus viscivorus) in Baikonur-town, Kazakhstan: photo by Yuriy75, December 2009
Mistle Thrush (Turdus viscivorus viscivorus) singing near Germering in Bavaria: photo by N p Holmes, 28 February 2009
The male Mistle Thrush (Turdus viscivorus viscivorus) passed some earthworms to the female as a gesture of closeness. The female tasted one piece and thereafter the male fed the fledglings.: photo by T. Voekler, 25 April 2008
DSC06149-2 [Chumphon, Thailand]: photo by noppadol maitreechit, 11 December 2017
DSC06149-2 [Chumphon, Thailand]: photo by noppadol maitreechit, 11 December 2017
DSC06149-2 [Chumphon, Thailand]: photo by noppadol maitreechit, 11 December 2017
9 comments:
Hardy is stunning, fresh, alive
Thanks, Hilton - agreed on all counts.
I get two things from posting a bit of Hardy these past few days:
1. No one reads Hardy any more, because no one has ever told them to bother.
2. Those who however belatedly and grudgingly do bother to look, despite implicit proscriptions, are nicely surprised to learn that he is the very truest among the modern poets, and just keeps getting truer with the awful piling up of the false and lying years (which, of course, his poems unhappily anticipate - one of the major reasons no one reads him any more).
But poetry is dead and lazy attitudes live on, flourishing with peculiar vigour in the hothouse environment ("safe space") of the schools, where of course Hardy is not taught or even mentioned... with the backwards positive effect that anything not mentioned in today's curricula remains relatively uncontaminated... for at least a few minutes longer.
On Hardy:
Ezra Pound (1938):
"No man can read Hardy's poems collected but that his own life, and forgotten moments of it, will come back to him, a flash here and an hour there. Have you a better test of true poetry?...
"There is a flood of life caught in this crystal."
___
Some notes & remarks on poetry & life by TH:
"What made poetry 2000 years ago makes poetry now."
"The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it."
___
W. H. Hudson (1840-1922): from Nature in Downland (1900), on the Mistle Thrush:
"Mid-winter is the season of the missel-thrush... when there is no gleam of light anywhere and no change in that darkness of immense ever-moving cloud above; and the south-west raves all day and all night, and day after day, then the storm-cock sings his loudest from a tree-top and has no rival. A glorious bird!... You must believe that this dark aspect of things delights him; that his pleasure in life, expressed with such sounds and in such circumstances, must greatly exceed in degree the contentment and bliss that is ours, even when we are most free from pain and care, and our whole beings most perfectly in tune with nature... The sound is beautiful in quality, but the singer has no art, and flings his notes out anyhow; the song is an outburst, a cry of happiness."
OK, I guess this would be the damning admission:
"What made poetry 2000 years ago makes poetry now."
Of course one can't reasonably agree (or disagree) with that if one hasn't read anything writ more than 20 minutes ago.
("Reasonably" -- um, did he really dare to say that?)
"Uh, wait, I'm a snail, and I only want to read about a world in which snails matter."
"But maybe... 2000 years ago... snails mattered."
"So why aren't there more poems about them then?"
"How do you know there aren't?"
"OK, but I'm a Mistle Thrush, then, and I know what I like."
19 December 2017 at 06:02 Delete
(You can tell by his expression that Buster understands all this and will go on trying to get along - bad as it is, he's still in the game - but Poor Clarence - well not so much with the joy of the rain-puddled red wheel barrow, any more, for him.)
me encantó este post....feliz Navidad Tom y los mejores deseos para ti y familia!
¡Y los más cálidos deseos de nosotros para ti, Sandra!
Buster Keaton. Tom Raworth.
Saved me at 3:48 a.m.
Thanks!
Thanks Stuart. At about that hour, same always works for me too.
Happy new year to you.
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