tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post7044481420677546906..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Philip Larkin / Adriaen Brouwer: The Card-PlayersUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-86517042151929888312012-09-17T10:15:05.398-07:002012-09-17T10:15:05.398-07:00Homo allegedly sapiens, drunk or sober: what’s the...Homo allegedly sapiens, drunk or sober: what’s the differential? Larkin’s a hoot. And I’ve always liked the Low Country schools of painting; maybe it’s the warm glow I find there, the world viewed as if through a glass of beer. Thanks, I needed this.Hazenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13417573435195561519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-60526312463546132912012-09-17T09:00:48.816-07:002012-09-17T09:00:48.816-07:00WB,
The white nights tend to run together after a...WB,<br /><br />The white nights tend to run together after a while, but I believe it was passing a crowded downtown watering hole on Saturday night (immediately preceding the aforementioned bleak talkshow epiphany), and looking in through the steamed windows at a legion of drunk collegians, that prompted this whole plunge into nescience.<br /><br />Questions continue to linger here as to whether it was really such a good idea to <a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/hanging-skeletons.html" rel="nofollow">come down out of the trees</a> in the first place.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-17912819965574915732012-09-17T08:50:28.257-07:002012-09-17T08:50:28.257-07:00Vassilis,
Some nights on the seas of talk it'...Vassilis, <br /><br />Some nights on the seas of talk it's one big good-ol-boys war room. <br /><br />Susan,<br /><br />Karen Uliberri ought to have started her own outfit. Uliberri Yogurt, All Natural. Blackberry, blueberry, raspberry, huckleberry and cranberry flavour specialties.<br /><br />Steve,<br /><br />Well as no actual crime or even extraordinary (for the period) indiscretion is involved, I don't see any harm in revealing the initials of the serendipitous Smiley's survivor as RC.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-33928413589515236682012-09-17T08:39:18.868-07:002012-09-17T08:39:18.868-07:00Larkin's words and brouwer's faces are a l...Larkin's words and brouwer's faces are a little too familiar. <br />The pleasure in the grotesque: the body's machinery at unthinking ease. That's a good thing, once in a while. What those mindless types on the talkshows have been told to want... Primal is too good a word for that.<br />Mose23https://www.blogger.com/profile/01100756913131511440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-84876344763520319882012-09-17T07:19:13.702-07:002012-09-17T07:19:13.702-07:00Tom,
Pray tell (on the back channel perhaps) who ...Tom,<br /><br />Pray tell (on the back channel perhaps) who might that great poet have been. Good to hear Days has arrived, maybe delivery boy is lying in the bushes somewhere?<br />STEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-38190616719996859622012-09-16T17:11:43.508-07:002012-09-16T17:11:43.508-07:00Las Vegas
In Reno your friends come and go.
At le...Las Vegas<br /><br />In Reno your friends come and go.<br />At least it snowed.<br />She told me to stop turning around<br />on the bar stool<br />it made her sea sick<br />twisting<br />I had to stop.<br />I got my warts frozen off.<br />All the grocery stores <br />were filled with slots.<br />A pond with swans the city park.<br />A man who said he had known Elvis<br />swam across the pool<br />but near the bottom.<br /><br />Once we jumped in<br />our feet-- he lived. Apartment<br />by the airport. Near the mall.<br />Leslie Brown with a whole wall<br />gold-veined mirror tiles.<br />Gene Gischu making Basque stew.<br /> Mom at the casino. <br />Karen Uliberri and her yogurt. <br />Seventh grade was never boring<br />drunk every day after school.Susan Kay Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16277139119869470939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-1122660941309627092012-09-16T16:20:46.265-07:002012-09-16T16:20:46.265-07:00So much life in the tavern! Dash here shadow ther...So much life in the tavern! Dash here shadow there.Susan Kay Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16277139119869470939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-52952152664010619002012-09-16T14:34:30.062-07:002012-09-16T14:34:30.062-07:00What a riot in the war room full of "cards&qu...What a riot in the war room full of "cards"-- all this not-so-funny atavism droning on and on.vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras)https://www.blogger.com/profile/14515165428574974933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-70456398320550768122012-09-16T12:29:38.124-07:002012-09-16T12:29:38.124-07:00Larry,
The idea for this post came along when I h...Larry,<br /><br />The idea for this post came along when I happened to be stranded with my one-earplug walkman in a lonely situation late and night with nowhere to hide from a not very amusing talkradio discussion.<br /><br />The topic was the wisdom, or lack of same, in obliterating Iran -- just for starters, and then going on to take out the rest of the Islamic Annoyances, drone hit by drone hit.<br /><br />It was hard not to recognize in this appalling "strategy" discussion over the nocturnal airwaves a cultural/evolutionary regression to primal traits which one had thought to have vanished long ago.<br /><br />It appears a resurgent atavism lives and walks amongst us, much as an unappeased zombie.<br /><br />In Brouwer's time this sort of pre-intellectual behaviour was at least never disguised as thought, and was in any case safely quarantined to men's smoky drinking caves.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-34527905374683579472012-09-16T11:24:25.232-07:002012-09-16T11:24:25.232-07:00Great to see such a range of Brouwer's work, h...Great to see such a range of Brouwer's work, however limited his subjects may appear. Larkin has caught beautifully "the secret, bestial peace" that the top picture limns. And then "the rain<br />courses in cart-ruts down the deep mud lane."<br />"Wet century-wide trees<br />Clash in surrounding starlessness above<br />This lamplit cave"larry whitehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05659637420532771765noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-51006982274358074482012-09-16T08:37:17.969-07:002012-09-16T08:37:17.969-07:00Steve,
He would certainly have felt right at home...Steve,<br /><br />He would certainly have felt right at home in that circumstance. <br /><br />There was the wonderful legend of the proof of a certain great American poet's immortal serendipity -- how, on a typical Dutch-interior-by-the-north Pacific night, lying in the gutter outside Smiley's, he rolled over just in time to avoid the crushing boot of the biker with the pool cue whom he'd insulted only moments before and who now intended to stomp him to death. The biker of course broke his foot. <br /><br />And speaking of notoriety, legend and poetry, hats off to you and thank you very much for Selected Days, which appeared as if by miracle upon our doorstep at dawn. (Few who climb those broken steps live to tell it.)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-72705198137933902112012-09-16T07:48:11.255-07:002012-09-16T07:48:11.255-07:00Tom,
Thanks for this glimpse of the tavern world ...Tom,<br /><br />Thanks for this glimpse of the tavern world of Antwerp according to Adriaen Brouwer. A lively scene it seems -- what might someone endowed with his gifts made of the world of Smileys 'back in the day'? <br /><br />9.16<br /><br />light coming into fog against invisible<br />ridge, bird slanting toward pine branch<br />in foreground, wave sounding in channel<br /><br /> here however, in the second<br /> place makes it appear<br /><br /> as that, in addition, which<br /> first term right side<br /><br />cloudless blue sky reflected in channel,<br />sunlit green shoulder of ridge above it<br />STEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.com