TOM CLARK

Edwin Muir: Post-Apocalyptic: The Horses

2012-02-01T03:02:00.000-08:00

Highland Ponies, Isle of Muck: photo by Chris Booth, 3 July 2008

Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence,
But in the first few days it was so still
We listened to our breathing and were afraid.
On the second day
The radios failed; we turned the knobs, no answer.
On the third day a warship passed us, headed north,
Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day
A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter
Nothing. The radios dumb;
And still they stand in corners of our kitchens,
And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms
All over the world. But now if they should speak,
If on a sudden they should speak again,
If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak,
We would not listen, we would not let it bring
That old bad world that swallowed its children quick
At one great gulp. We would not have it again.
Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep,
Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow,
And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.
The tractors lie about our fields; at evening
They look like dank sea-monsters crouched and waiting.
We leave them where they are and let them rust:
"They'll molder away and be like other loam."
We make our oxen drag our rusty plows,
Long laid aside. We have gone back
Far past our fathers' land.
................................And then, that evening
Late in the summer the strange horses came.
We heard a distant tapping on the road,
A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again
And at the corner changed to hollow thunder.
We saw the heads
Like a wild wave charging and were afraid.
We had sold our horses in our fathers' time
To buy new tractors. Now they were strange to us
As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield
Or illustrations in a book of knights.
We did not dare go near them. Yet they waited,
Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent
By an old command to find our whereabouts
And that long-lost archaic companionship.
In the first moment we had never a thought
That they were creatures to be owned and used.
Among them were some half a dozen colts
Dropped in some wilderness of the broken world,
Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden.
Since then they have pulled our plows and borne our loads,
But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts.
Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.

Highland Ponies on the beach, Isle of Muck: photo by Chris Booth, 3 July 2008

Edwin Muir: The Horses, from One Foot in Eden (1956)

Bertolt Brecht: Hollywood

2012-01-30T06:11:00.000-08:00

Activists of the Ukrainian feminist nudity group Femen clash with Swiss police during a protest at the meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Saturday 28 January 2012: photo by Jean-Christophe Bott/AP

Every day, to earn my daily bread
I go to the market where lies are bought
Hopefully
I take up my place among the sellers.

A topless Ukrainian protester is arrested by Swiss police after climbing up a fence at the entrance to the congress center where the World Economic Forum takes place in Davos, Switzerland, Saturday January 28 2012. The activists are from the group Femen, which has have become popular in Ukraine for staging small, half-naked protests against a range of issues including oppression of political opposition: photo by Anja Niedringhaus/AP

Bertolt Brecht: Hollywood, 1942 (written to be set to music for voice and piano by Hanns Eisler), from Poems in Exile, 1944, reissued in Selected Poems, 1947; translated by Michael Hamburger in Bertolt Brecht: Poems 1913-1956, 1976

A Wild Goose Chase

2012-01-29T06:35:00.000-08:00

Greylag Geese (Anser anser) in flight: photo by Michael Maggs, 3 July 2008

MERCUTIO

Come between us, good Benvolio; my wits faint.

ROMEO

Switch and spurs, switch and spurs; or I'll cry a match.

MERCUTIO

Nay, if thy wits run the wild-goose chase, I have
done, for thou hast more of the wild-goose in one of
thy wits than, I am sure, I have in my whole five:
was I with you there for the goose?

ROMEO

Thou wast never with me for any thing when thou wast
not there for the goose.

MERCUTIO

I will bite thee by the ear for that jest.

ROMEO

Nay, good goose, bite not.

Startled by the approach of the photographer, the Greylag Goose takes off, near Kromenie, The Netherlands: photo by Jens Buurgaard Nielsen, 17 April 2006

MERCUTIO

Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is a most
sharp sauce.

ROMEO

And is it not well served in to a sweet goose?

MERCUTIO

O here's a wit of cheveril, that stretches from an
inch narrow to an ell broad!

ROMEO

I stretch it out for that word 'broad'; which added
to the goose, proves thee far and wide a broad goose.

A skein of Greylag Geese in flight, near Krommenie, The Netherlands: photo by Michael Hanselmann, 2007

William Shakespeare: from Romeo and Juliet, II.IV

Edwin Muir: Horses

2012-01-28T09:49:00.000-08:00

Horse Frightened by a Storm: Eugène Delacroix, 1824 (Szépmûvészeti Múzeum, Budapest)

Those lumbering horses in the steady plough,

On the bare field -- I wonder why, just now,

They seem terrible, so wild and strange,

Like magic power on the stony grange.

Perhaps some childish hour has come again,

When I watched fearful, through the blackening rain,

Their hooves like pistons in an ancient mill

Move up and down, yet seem as standing still.

Their conquering hooves which trod the stubble down

Were ritual that turned the field to brown,

And their great hulks were seraphim of gold,

Or mute ecstatic monsters on the mould.

And oh the rapture, when, one furrow done,

They marched broad-breasted to the sinking sun!

The light flowed off their bossy sides in flakes;

The furrows rolled behind like struggling snakes.

But when at dusk with streaming nostrils home

They came, they seemed gigantic in the gloam

And warm and glowing with mysterious fire

That lit their smouldering bodies in the mire.

Their eyes as brilliant and as wide as the night

Gleamed with a cruel apocalyptic light.

Their manes the leaping ire of the wind

Lifted with rage invisible and blind.

Ah, now it fades! It fades! And I must pine

Again for that dread country crystalline,

Where the black field and the still-standing tree

Were bright and fearful presences to me.

Rearing Horse: Leonardo da Vinci, 1503-1504 (Royal Library, Windsor)

Jaguar attacking a Horseman Frightened by a Storm: Eugène Delacroix, c. 1855 (Národní Galerie, Prague)


Edwin Muir (1887-1959): Horses, from First Poems, 1925

JJ Harrison: Birds of Tasmania and Queensland

2012-01-27T04:50:00.000-08:00

Scarlet Robin (Petroica boodang), Meehan Range, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 13 February 2009

JJ Harrison is a remarkable nature photographer from Hobart, Tasmania.

"Scarlet Robins are not too difficult to spot if you look in the right places. It is another matter to get within a few meters of a wild bird for a high quality photograph. In this instance I’d spotted this bird previously in the Meehan Range. I knew the species was sedentary and territorial so I was able to return to the same location a few times until I got a photo I was happy with. I waited patiently near a perch where I had seen it before with the sun to my back. When it arrived I took a few photos before it left again. I believe the camera was hand-held. I used fill flash with a home made version of the better beamer to even out the shadows created by the sun."

Red Oystercatchers (Haematopus longirostris), Austin's Ferry, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 21 August 2011

Great Crested Grebe (Podiceps cristatus), Lake Dulverton, Oatlands, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 15 December 2011

Radjah Shelduck (Tadorna radjah), Centenary Lakes, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 30 June 2011

Rainbow Bee-eater (Merops ornatus), perching on a drinking fountain at Centenary Lakes, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 30 June 2011

Bush Stone-curlew (Burhinus grallarius), Centenary Lakes, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 30 June 2011

Straw-necked Ibis (Threskiornis spinicollis), Centenary Lakes, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 30 June 2011

Yellow-throated Honeyeater (Lichenostomus flavicollis), stealing a hair from a Tasmanian Pademelon (Thylogale billardierae) for nesting material, Melaleuca, Southwest Conservation Area, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 12 November 2011

Olive Whistler (Pachycephala olivacea), Melaleuca, Southwest Conservation Area, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 13 November 2011

Tasmanian Scrubwren (Sericornis humilis), Melaleuca, Southwest Conservation Area, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 12 November 2011

Beautiful Firetail (Stagonopleura bella), male, Melaleuca, Southwest Conservation Area, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 13 November 2011

Beautiful Firetail (Stagonopleura bella), female, Melaleuca, Southwest Conservation Area, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 13 November 2011

Orange-bellied Parrot (Neophema chysogaster), male, Melaleuca, Southwest Conservation Area, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 11 November 2011

Azure Kingfisher (Alcedo azurea ruficollaris), Julatten, Queensland, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 3 July 2011

Golden Whistler (Pachycephala pectoralis), Risdon Brook Park, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 28 August 2011

Spotted Pardalote (Pardalotus punctatus), male with nesting material, Risdon Brook Park, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 27 August 2011

Spotted Pardalote (Pardalotus punctatus), female with nesting material, Risdon Brook Park, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 27 August 2011

Striated Pardalote (Pardalotus striatus), Risdon Brook Park, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 28 August 2011

Pale-yellow Robin (Tregellasia capito), Julatten, Queensland, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 4 July 2011

Grey-headed Robin (Heteromyias cinereifrons), Julatten, Queensland, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 5 July 2011

Dusky Honeyeater (Myzomela obscura), Daintree Village, Queensland, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 30 June 2011

Yellow-spotted Honeyeater (Meliphaga notata), Daintree Village, Queensland, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 2 July 2011

Striated Heron (Butorides striatus), Daintree Village, Queensland, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 2 July 2011

Fairy Tern (Sterna nereis), Little Swanport, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 28 December 2011

Double-banded Plover (Charadrius bicinctus), breeding plumage, Ralph's Bay, Lauderdale, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 30 July 2011

Hooded Plover (Thinornis rubricollis rubricollis), Prosser River Spit, Orford, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 28 December 2011

Mangrove Robin (Peneoenanthe pulverenta), Cairns Esplanade , Cairns, Queensland, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 29 June 2011

Wandering Albatross (Diomedea exultans), East of the Tasman Peninsula, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 18 September 2011

Katherine Mansfield: To L. H. B. (1894-1915)

2012-01-26T03:47:00.000-08:00

Red Mistletoe, Hopkins River, New Zealand: photo by William M. Connolley, December 2005

Last night for the first time since you were dead
I walked with you, my brother, in a dream.
We were at home again beside the stream
Fringed with tall berry bushes, white and red.
“Don't touch them: they are poisonous,” I said.
But your hand hovered, and I saw a beam
Of strange, bright laughter flying round your head
And as you stooped I saw the berries gleam.
“Don't you remember? We called them Dead Man's Bread!”
I woke and heard the wind moan and the roar
Of the dark water tumbling on the shore.
Where -- where is the path of my dream for my eager feet?
By the remembered stream my brother stands
Waiting for me with berries in his hands...
“These are my body. Sister, take and eat.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923): photographer unknown, 1912; image by Yohan euan o4, 23 October 2008

Pittosporum crassifolium, Pukerua Bay, New Zealand: photo by Pseudopanax, 1 August 2006

Ngaio or Mousehole Tree (Myoporum laetum): photo by Júlio Reis, 19 June 2004

The man in the moon becomes, in Maori legend, a woman, one Rona by name. This lady, it seems, once had occasion to go by night for water to a stream. In her hand she carried an empty calabash. Stumbling in the dark over stones and the roots of trees she hurt her shoeless feet and began to abuse the moon, then hidden behind clouds, hurling at it some such epithet as "You old tattooed face, there!" But the moon-goddess heard, and reaching down caught up the insulting Rona, calabash and all, into the sky. In vain the frightened woman clutched, as she rose, the tops of a ngaio-tree. The roots gave way, and Rona with her calabash and her tree are placed in the front of the moon for ever, an awful warning to all who are tempted to mock at divinities in their haste. -- William Pember Reeves: The Long White Cloud, 1899

Katherine Mansfield's birthplace, Thorndon, Wellington, New Zealand: photo by Lanma726, 3 December 2007

Myoporum sandwicense, habitat, sunrise: photo by Forest & Kim Starr, 29 October 2004

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923): To L. H. B. (1894-1915), from Poems at the Villa Pauline, 1916, in Poems, 1923

Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become Love. This is the mystery. This is what I must do.

-- Journal entry for 19 December 1920, in The Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927), ed. J. Middleton Murry

for A.

Lewis W. Hine: Child Scavengers

2012-01-25T01:42:00.000-08:00

Street kids, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909

Boys of the Dumps, South Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909

Patching up a meal, Boston slums, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909

Tony on his way home from the market bringing chicken heads and feet to sell to the soap man, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909

Garbage gleaners among ash barrels, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909

"Gimme a smoke" -- street boys, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909

Swiping behind the cop's back, Boston. Massachusetts, October 1909

Picking over ash barrels, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909

Boy woodpicker loading, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909

Mister, give me a lift? Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909

Boy woodpickers under way, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909

Little girl woodpickers making up a load, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909

Bringing home the wood, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909

Boy woodpicker resting, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909

Carrying home decayed refuse from markets, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909

Boys picking over garbage on "the Dumps", Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909

Boys and girls working on "the Dumps", Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909

Scavenger toting wood, Fall River, Massachusetts, 21 June 1916

Toting wood, Fall River, Massachusetts, 16 June 1916

Scavengers, Fall River, Massachusetts, 16 June 1916

On the Pleasant Street Dump, Fall River, Massachusetts, 21 June 1916

Boy collecting discarded newspapers to sell to store-keepers, Union Square, New York City, July 1910

Pine Street Dump scavengers, Fall River, Massachusetts, 22 June 1916

Scavenger, Chicopee Falls. Massachusetts, 29 June 1916

Junk gatherers, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, April 1917

Photos by Lewis Wickes Hine (1874-1940) from National Child Labor Committee Collection, Library of Congress

Pearls

2012-01-24T03:55:00.000-08:00

Radio Listeners' Guide and Call Book, Volume 3, Number 2, November 1928: cover art showing imagined future of television: image by Swtpc, July 2008

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them — Ding-dong, bell.

William Shakespeare: Ariel's song, from The Tempest (1610-1611), I.ii

Girl with Pearl Earring: Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), c. 1665 (Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague)

Woman with a Pearl Necklace: Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), c. 1660-1665 (Staatliche Museen, Berlin)

Magdalen (detail): Michelangelo Caravaggio (1573-1610), 1594-1596 (Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome)

One angry looking Egret in front of HMAS Protector, Heron Island, Queensland: photo by Sirrob01, 2008

Small tank on the Nippo Maru. Sunk during World War II. Chuuk, Federated States of Micronesia: photo by Dr. Dwayne Meadows, NOAA/NMFS/OPR, 27 September 2010 (NOAA Photo Library)

Looking through hole in Da Na Hino Maru. Sunk during World War II. Chuuk, Federated States of Micronesia: photo by David Burdick, NOAA/NMFS/OPR, 27 September 2010 (NOAA Photo Library)

Shipwreck in Tobermory, Full Fathom Five National Marine Park, Canada: photo by Bruce County, 25 June 2008

Black pearl in its shell: photo by Mila Zinkova, 2007

Amethyst

2012-01-23T04:47:00.000-08:00

Amethyst Quartz (macro): photo by Jon Zander, 24 July 2007

Turning the days
over in the hand
seeing the points
uncertain
as in a clouded prism
seeing the facets
the changing aspects
shifting into view
but not the soul
not the heart
the dark history
hid within
this mystery
undisclosed
concealed
what is it
this unseen
central secret
shadow
buried deep
in the amethyst

Amethyst Quartz (macro): photo by Jon Zander, 24 July 2007

Bashô: snow-viewing

2012-01-22T08:55:00.000-08:00

Cat dancing in snow, Tscherno: photo by Matthias Zirngibl, 26 February 2006

....Now then!
Let's go snow-viewing, --
....Till we tumble down!

Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) with cub, Buffalo Zoo: photo by Dave Pape, 2008

Irish Setter in a snowstorm, northeastern Pennsylvania: photo by Wb6772, 19 December 2008

Now then!: Bashô (1644-1694), translated by R. H. Blyth in Haiku, Vol. IV (Autumn-Winter), 1951

Winter Fog

2012-01-21T04:32:00.000-08:00

Bratislava Temperature Inversion: photo by Ondrejk, 11 November 2005

Winter fog -- thought

neither

in

nor out --

hid through

the day

in the night

window

shadow of

a doubt --

Fog shadow of Sutro Tower, San Francisco: photo by Mila Zinkova, 2006

John Vachon: The Wind and the Rain

2012-01-20T06:37:00.000-08:00

Rainy day, Indianapolis, Indiana: photo by John Vachon, January 1942

Rainy day, Indianapolis, Indiana: photo by John Vachon, January 1942

Rainy day, Indianapolis, Indiana: photo by John Vachon, January 1942

Rainy day, Indianapolis, Indiana: photo by John Vachon, January 1942

Rainy day, Indianapolis, Indiana: photo by John Vachon, January 1942

Rainy day, Indianapolis, Indiana: photo by John Vachon, January 1942

Rainy day, Indianapolis, Indiana: photo by John Vachon, January 1942

Rainy day, Indianapolis, Indiana: photo by John Vachon, January 1942

Rainy day, Indianapolis, Indiana: photo by John Vachon, January 1942

Rainy day, Indianapolis, Indiana: photo by John Vachon, January 1942

Rainy day, Indianapolis, Indiana: photo by John Vachon, January 1942

Photos from Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress

Happiness, or the Jacaranda Tree

2012-01-19T07:44:00.000-08:00

Jacaranda tree in flower in Whakatāne, New Zealand: photo by Kahuroa, 12 December 2006

.........................................for Angelica

It's too late, and there are such great
Obstacles, there were always great obstacles;
At least they once seemed common, that was a relief,
So long ago, in that other now barely remembered

Place; now so difficult to recall, in which
It seemed we were somehow free
Deluded as we were by dreams, by foolishness, youth --
By the mysterious illusion of being permitted

To do as we wished and chose -- to look beyond
Ourselves, to see what there was
To do, and to do it, or not, as the time arose;
And then, done, or not done, equally, know

It would in any event soon be over; and then
We would forget; the days would again begin,
Pass gently by, and end; in the late light
We could at last step back, take a long deep breath,

Drink in the surroundings, enjoy
The wonders of the view
From beneath the pleasant, peaceful, sheltering
Light-filtering violet shade of the lovely

Spreading, flowering jacaranda tree.

Landscape in Upper Austria: photo by Werner100359, 18 December 2010

Jack Delano: At the Vermont State Fair

2012-01-18T08:07:00.000-08:00

On the ferris wheel at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

View of the grounds of the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

At the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

At the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress

"Backstage" at the "girlie" show at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Side show at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Poster for a side show at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Side shows at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Barker at the grounds of the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Barker at the grounds of the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Barker at the grounds of the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

At the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

At the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Jack Delano: Side Shows I (Humans: Mr. Blue)

2012-01-18T07:54:00.001-08:00

Outside a freak show at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

The barker had laughed, the pitch of it rolled out, on us, and I wondered if he was as drunk as he looked. He was calling the midget, cute, saying, a cute little fellow. He made a joke of it, looking at the women and laughing. Saying, who would like to take him home. There was laughing, they liked the joke, and he carried it further, sensing their tolerance, and played it up. It was the joke he seemed intent on making us remember, the cuteness, the idea of the women.

-- Robert Creeley: Mr. Blue (excerpt), 1951, from The Gold Diggers, 1954

Poster advertising a side show at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Poster advertising a side show at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Poster advertising a side show at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Poster advertising a side show at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Poster advertising a side show at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Poster advertising a side show at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Poster advertising a side show at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Poster advertising a side show at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

A side show at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

A side show at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Barker at a side show at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

At a side show at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

At a "girlie" side show at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Visitors at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Visitors at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Fortune teller at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Trapeze artists at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Tired visitors at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Grandstand and parked cars at the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Jack Delano: Side Shows II (Animal Curiosities)

2012-01-18T07:50:00.000-08:00

Stevie Smith: To Carry the Child

2012-01-17T05:47:00.000-08:00

Girl next to barn with chicken: photographer unknown, between 1941 and 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

To carry the child into adult life
Is good? I say it is not,
To carry the child into adult life
Is to be handicapped.

The child in adult life is defenceless
And if he is grown-up, knows it,
And the grown-up looks at the childish part
And despises it.

The child, too, despises the clever grown-up,
The man-of-the-world, the frozen,
For the child has the tears alive on his cheek
And the man has none of them.

As the child has colours, and the man sees no
Colours or anything,
Being easy only in things of the mind,
The child is easy in feeling.

Easy in feeling, easily excessive
And in excess powerful,
For instance, if you do not speak to the child
He will make trouble.

You would say a man had the upper hand
Of the child, if a child survive,
I say the child has fingers of strength
To strangle the man alive.

Oh it is not happy, it is never happy,
To carry the child into adulthood,
Let children lie down before full growth
And die in their infanthood
And be guilty of no man's blood.

But oh the poor child, the poor child, what can he do,
Trapped in a grown-up carapace,
But peer outside of his prison room
With the eye of an anarchist?

Girl with doll standing by fence: photographer unknown, between 1941 and 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Stevie Smith: To Carry the Child, from The Best Beast, 1969

Robert Duncan: Unkingd by affection?

2012-01-16T05:46:00.000-08:00

Amethyst cluster, Magaliesburg, South Africa: photo by JJ Harrison, 18 July 2009

Unkingd by affection?

One exchanges the empire of one's desire for the anarchy of pleasures.

But pleasures themselves one finds are not domestic.

And the trouble of the soul casts jewel-like reflextions upon the daily surfaces.

One has moved only to a world where the devoted household commonplaces cast shadows that are empires; where the warmth of the hearth is kept alive in a cold that extends infinitely, the dreams of a king, ruthless in his omnipotence.

A plenitude of powers, an over-reaching inspired pretension, an unam sanctum, a papal conceit over all beloved things.

We live within our selves then, like honest woodsmen within a tyrannical forest, a magical element.

Shelterd by our humble imaginary lives from the eternal storm of our rage.

Beryl, emerald variety, seen under ultraviolet light; from Muzo Mine, Boyaca, Colombia: photo by Parent Géry, 28 January 2011

Robert Duncan: Unkingd by affection? from Poems for Jess, 1952 (A Shuffaloff Eternal Network Joint, 2012)

Vassilis Zambaras: Keep what I give you

2012-01-15T07:05:00.000-08:00

A meteor and galactic center of Milky Way galaxy. The image was taken in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park: photo by Mila Zinkova, 21 September 2008

Keep what I give you
a covenant

we shall inherit
the unimaginable

immaculate loneliness
of galaxies.

Vassilis Zambaras: from The Intricate Evasions of As (Kater Murr's Press, 1998)

The Whirlpool Galaxy (Spiral Galaxy M51, NGC 5194), a classic spiral galaxy located in the Canes Venatici constellation: image by NASA/ESA, January 2005

The Antennae Galaxies (NGC 4038 & 4039), a merging pair of spiral galaxies. During the course of the collision, billions of stars will be formed. The brightest and most compact of these star birth regions are called super star clusters.The two spiral galaxies started to interact a few hundred million years ago, making the Antennae Galaxies one of the nearest and youngest examples of a pair of colliding galaxies. Nearly half of the faint objects in the Antennae image are young clusters containing tens of thousands of stars. The orange blobs to the left and right of image center are the two cores of the original galaxies and consist mainly of old stars criss-crossed by filaments of dust, which appear brown in the image. The two galaxies are dotted with brilliant blue star-forming regions surrounded by glowing hydrogen gas, appearing in the image in pink: Hubble Space Telescope image by NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA), 16 October 2006

The starburst galaxy Messier 82 (M82). The galaxy is remarkable for its bright blue disk, webs of shredded clouds, and fiery-looking plumes of glowing hydrogen blasting out of its central regions. Throughout the galaxy's center, young stars are being born 10 times faster than stars are born inside our Milky Way Galaxy. The resulting huge concentration of young stars is carved into the gas and dust at the galaxy's center. The fierce galactic superwind generated from these stars compresses enough gas to make more millions of stars. In M82, young stars are crammed into tiny but massive star clusters. These, in turn, congregate by the dozens to make the bright patches, or "starburst clumps," in the central parts of M82. Most of the pale, white objects sprinkled around the body of M82 that look like fuzzy stars are actually individual star clusters about 20 light-years across and contain up to a million stars. The rapid rate of star formation in this galaxy eventually will be self-limiting. When star formation becomes too vigorous, it will consume or destroy the material needed to make more stars. The starburst then will subside, probably in a few tens of millions of years. Located 12 million light-years away, M82 appears high in the northern spring sky in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear. It is also called the "Cigar Galaxy" because of the elliptical shape produced by the oblique tilt of its starry disk relative to our line of sight: mosaic image by NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), 24 April 2006

Galaxy Evolution Explorer observation of the large galaxy in Andromeda, Messier 31. The Andromeda galaxy is the second massive in the local group of galaxies that includes our Milky Way. Andromeda is the nearest large galaxy to our own. The image is a mosaic of 10 separate Galaxy Evolution Explorer images taken in September, 2003. The color image (with near ultraviolet shown by red and far ultraviolet shown by blue) shows blue regions of young, hot, high mass stars tracing out the spiral arms where star formation is occurring, and the central orange-white "bulge" of old, cooler stars formed long ago. The star forming arms of Messier 31 are unusual in being quite circular rather than the usual spiral shape. Several companion galaxies can also be seen. These include Messier 32, a dwarf elliptical galaxy directly below the central bulge and just outside the spiral arms, and Messier 110 (M110), which is above and to the right of the center. M110 has an unusual far ultraviolet bright core in an otherwise "red", old star halo. Many other regions of star formation can be seen far outside the main body of the galaxy: ultraviolet wave image by Jet Propulsion Lab, NASA/California Institute of Technology, 10 December 2003

Hubble Space Telescope view of the disk galaxy NGC 5866, seen tilted nearly edge-on to our line-of-sight. Hubble's sharp vision reveals a crisp dust lane dividing the galaxy into two halves. The image highlights the galaxy's structure: a subtle, reddish bulge surrounding a bright nucleus, a blue disk of stars running parallel to the dust lane, and a transparent outer halo. Some faint, wispy trails of dust can be seen meandering away from the disk of the galaxy out into the bulge and inner halo of the galaxy. The outer halo is dotted with numerous gravitationally bound clusters of nearly a million stars each, known as globular clusters. Background galaxies that are millions to billions of light-years farther away than NGC 5866 are also seen through the halo. NGC 5866 is a disk galaxy of type "S0" (pronounced s-zero). Viewed face on, it would look like a smooth, flat disk with little spiral structure. It remains in the spiral category because of the flatness of the main disk of stars as opposed to the more spherically rotund (or ellipsoidal) class of galaxies called "ellipticals." Such S0 galaxies, with disks like spirals and large bulges like ellipticals, are called "lenticular'" galaxies. The dust lane is slightly warped compared to the disk of starlight. This warp indicates that NGC 5866 may have undergone a gravitational tidal disturbance in the distant past, by a close encounter with another galaxy. This is plausible because it is the largest member of a small cluster known as the NGC 5866 group of galaxies. The starlight disk in NGC 5866 extends well beyond the dust disk. This means that dust and gas still in the galaxy and potentially available to form stars does not stretch nearly as far out in the disk as it did when most of these stars in the disk were formed. The Hubble image shows that NGC 5866 shares another property with the more gas-rich spiral galaxies. Numerous filaments that reach out perpendicular to the disk punctuate the edges of the dust lane. These are short-lived on an astronomical scale, since clouds of dust and gas will lose energy to collisions among themselves and collapse to a thin, flat disk. For spiral galaxies, the incidence of these fingers of dust correlates well with indicators of how many stars have been formed recently, as the input of energy from young massive stars moves gas and dust around to create these structures. The thinness of dust lanes in S0s has been discussed in ground-based galaxy atlases, but it took the resolution of Hubble to show that they can have their own smaller fingers and chimneys of dust. NGC 5866 lies in the Northern constellation Draco, at a distance of 44 million light-years (13.5 Megaparsecs). It has a diameter of roughly 60,000 light-years (18,400 parsecs), only two-thirds the diameter of the Milky Way, although its mass is similar to that of our galaxy: image by NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), 8 June 2006

The Seyfert's Sextet, a compact galaxy group: image by HST/NASA/ESA, 3 May 2008

Edward Dorn: Hemlocks

2012-01-14T05:34:00.000-08:00

Mountain Hemlock (Tsuga mertensia), Alpine Lakes Wilderness, Washington: photo by Walter Siegmund, 26 September 2007

Red house. Green tree in mist.
How many fir long hours.
How that split wood
warmed us. How continuous.
Red house. Green tree I miss.
The first snow came in October.
Always. For three years.
And sat on our shoulders.
That clean grey sky.
That fine curtain of rain
like nice lace held our faces
up, in it, a kerchief for the nose
of softest rain. Red house.

Those green mists rolling
down the hill. Held our heads
when we went walking on the hills
to the side, with pleasure.
But sad. That's sad. That tall grass.
Toggenburg goat stood in, looking, chewing.
Time was its cud.

Red barn mist of our green trees of Him
who locks our nature in His deep nature
how continuous do we die to come down
as rain; that land's refrain
no we never go there anymore.

Edward Dorn: Hemlocks, 1959, from Hands Up! (1964)

Farmland, Skagit County, Washington: photo by Drums600, 26 July 2008

Toggenburg Goat: photo by RoseBridger, 28 May 2009

Toggenburg Goat: photo by Frances Taylor, 21 February 2011

Mountain Hemlock (Tsuga mertensia), Prince William Sound, Alaska: photo by Erin McKittrick, 14 May 2005

"We bought her [a Toggenburg goat, named Nanny] at a farm auction, thinking of sustenance but of course she became a pet. I even learned to milk her! The kids hated her milk but liked the cheese I made from it. We let her roam free in the yard and she used to come up when I was sitting out on the steps having a cup of coffee and chew on the buttons of whatever I was wearing. Goats are wonderful. Nanny gave us a lot of laughs and provided food as well. We got a billy goat to keep her company and provide us with kids, which he did... But taking them to be slaughtered was a nightmare. The billy goat tolerated me but did NOT like Ed. He peed on him whenever he approached, and billy goats have enormous pee power! We finally had to get rid of him. The house in Burlington had been a small farm at some point and we used it as such. The barn housed chickens, had a rabbit hutch outside, an we had a garden on the road side of it. We did, literally 'live off the land.''"

-- Helene Helmers Dorn, in TC: Edward Dorn: A World of Difference, 2002

Bertolt Brecht: The God of War (Der Kriegsgott)

2012-01-13T06:58:00.000-08:00

The USS Arizona (BB-39) burning after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941. USS Arizona sunk at Pearl Harbor. The ship is resting on the harbor bottom. The supporting structure of the forward tripod mast has collapsed after the forward magazine exploded: photographer unknown; image by Cobatfor, 2 September 2011 (Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum / National Archives and Records Administration)

I saw the old god of war stand in a bog between chasm and rockface.

He smelled of free beer and carbolic and showed his testicles to adolescents, for he had been rejuvenated by several professors. In a hoarse wolfish voice he declared his love for everything young. Nearby stood a pregnant woman, trembling.

And without shame he talked on and presented himself as a great one for order. And he described how everywhere he put barns in order, by emptying them.

And as one throws crumbs to sparrows, he fed poor people with crusts of bread which he had taken away from poor people.

His voice was now loud, now soft, but always hoarse.

In a loud voice he spoke of great times to come, and in a soft voice he taught women how to cook crows and seagulls. Meanwhile his back was unquiet, and he kept looking round, as though afraid of being stabbed.

And every five minutes he assured his public that he would take up very little of their time.

Bertolt Brecht: The God of War (Der Kriegsgott), 1938, translated by Michael Hamburger, from Bertolt Brecht: Poems 1913-1956 (1976)

Defenses against Japanese bombing, Chungking. Offices of the National Army of Republic of China deploying air defense against Japanese bombers: photo by Carl Mydans, 20 February 1939 (Central Archive Press, People's Republic of China)

Defenses against Japanese bombing, Chungking. The National Army of Republic of China preparing a flak light: photo by Carl Mydans, February 1939 (Central Archive Press, People's Republic of China)

Japanese bombing Chungking, 1939. People sheltering in cave: photo by Carl Mydans, 20 February 1939 (Central Archive Press, People's Republic of China)

Casualties of a mass panic; during Japanese air raid, 4,000 people were trampled or suffocated to death trying to return to shelters. Chungking, China, 5 June 1941: photo by Carl Mydans (National Archives and Records Administration)

Bertolt Brecht: When in my white room at the Charité

2012-01-12T04:08:00.000-08:00

Blackbird (Turdus merula), male, singing, Bogense havn, Funen, Denmark: photo by Malene Thyssen, 13 May 2004

When in my white room at the Charité
I woke towards morning
And heard the blackbird, I understood
Better. Already for some time
I had lost all fear of death. For nothing
Can be wrong with me if I myself
Am nothing. Now
I managed to enjoy
The song of every blackbird after me too.

Charité Hospital, East Berlin: photo by Zimontkrowski, June 1958 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv)

Bertolt Brecht: Als ich in weissem Krankenzimmer der Charité / When in my white room at the Charité (May 1956), translated by John Willett and Ralph Manheim, from Bertolt Brecht: Poems 1913-1956 (1976)

Beyond Fargo / In the West

2012-01-11T04:31:00.000-08:00

North Dakota farmers waiting for their grants in Resettlement Administration Office, North Dakota: photo by Arthur Rothstein, July 1936

What is there, out here on the edge, that makes our experience different from that of the city poet? First there is the land itself. It has been disciplined by machines, but it is still not dominated. The plow that broke the plains is long gone and the giant tractor and the combine are here, but the process of making a living is still a struggle and a gamble -- it is not a matter of putting raw materials in one end of a factory and taking finished products out of the other. Weather, which is only a nuisance in the city, takes on the power of the gods here, and vast cycles of climate, which will one day make all the area a dust bowl again and finally return it to grass, make all man's successes momentary and ambiguous. Here man can never think of himself, as he can in the city, as the master of nature. Like it or not he is subject to the ancient power of seasonal change: he cannot avoid being in nature; he has an heroic adversary that is no abstraction. At a level below immediate consciousness we respond to this, are less alien to our bodies, to human and natural time.

The East is much older than these farther states, has more history. But I believe that that history no longer functions, has been forgotten, has been "paved over." In the East man begins every day for himself. Here, the past is still alive and close at hand -- the arrowheads we turn up may have been shot at our grandfathers. I am not thinking of any romantic frontier. The past out here was bloody, and full of injustice, though hopeful and heroic. It is very close here -- my father took shelter with his family at Fort Ransom during an Indian scare when he was a boy. Later he heard of the massacre at Wounded Knee. Most of us are haunted by the closeness of that past, and by the fact that we are only a step from the Indian, whose sense of life so many of the younger people are trying to learn.

Thomas McGrath (1916-1990), b. Sheldon, North Dakota: On the West (excerpt), from The North Dakota Quarterly, Fall 1982

Farmer in Willliston, North Dakota, Saturday afternoon: photo by Russell Lee, October 1937

Farmers in Willliston, North Dakota, Saturday afternoon: photo by Russell Lee, October 1937

Farmers in Willliston, North Dakota, Saturday afternoon: photo by Russell Lee, October 1937

Street scene, Ray, North Dakota: photo by Russell Lee, October 1937

Drugstore, Ray, North Dakota: photo by Russell Lee, October 1937

Children of Floyd Peaches, near Willliston, North Dakota: photo by Russell Lee, October 1937

Grain elevator and flour mill, Fargo, North Dakota: photo by Arthur Rothstein, Summer 1939

Locomotive engineer, Fargo, North Dakota: photo by Arthur Rothstein, Summer 1939

Combine, East Grand Forks, Minnesota: photo by Russell Lee, October 1937

Flour mill in Grand Forks, North Dakota: photo by Marion Post Walcott, August 1941

Grand Forks, North Dakota: photo by John Vachon, October 1940

Grand Forks, North Dakota: photo by John Vachon, October 1940

Photos from Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress

Stevie Smith: Scorpion

2012-01-10T06:45:00.000-08:00

Circular diffraction of ripples at Point Reyes Lighthouse, Point Reyes National Seashore, California. Water wave is diffracted around the rocky outcrop of Point Reyes, forming circular ripples; solar reflection seen on the left; view from the staircase leading down to the lighthouse: photo by Wing-Chi Poon, 30 August 2008

'This night shall thy soul be required of thee'
My Soul is never required of me
It always has to be somebody else of course
Will my soul be required of me tonight perhaps?

(I often wonder what it will be like
To have one's soul required of one
But all I can think of is the Out-Patients' Department --
'Are you Mrs. Briggs, dear?'
No, I am Scorpion.)

I should like my soul to be required of me, so as
To waft over grass till it comes to the blue sea
I am very fond of grass, I always have been, but there must
Be no cow, person or house to be seen.

Sea and grass must be quite empty
Other souls can find somewhere else.

O Lord God please come
And require the soul of thy Scorpion

Scorpion so wishes to be gone.

A Great Skua swoops to defend its nesting territory by the burn of Winnaswarta Dale, on Hermaness National Nature Reserve, Unst, Shetland: photo by John Dally, 2002

Stevie Smith (1902-1971): Scorpion, from Scorpion and Other Poems, 1972

Joseph Stalin: Morning

2012-01-09T05:24:00.000-08:00

Joseph Stalin, 1902: photographer unknown, from Joseph Wissarionowitsch Stalin -- Kurze Lebenschreibung, Moscow 1947; image by ComtesseDeMingrelie, 23 February 2011

The pinkish bud has opened,
Rushing to the pale-blue violet
And, stirred by a light breeze,
The lily of the valley has bent over the grass.

The lark has sung in the dark blue,
Flying higher than the clouds
And the sweet-sounding nightingale
Has sung a song to children from the bushes.

Flower, oh my Georgia!
Let peace reign in my native land!
And may you, friends, make renowned
Our Motherland by study!

The Soviet Russian 11th Red Army holds a military parade in Tbilisi, 25 February 1921: photographer unknown; image by Kober, 6 December 2005 (Photomuseum of Georgia)

Self-portrait of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, created by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii as part of his work to document the Russian Empire from 1904 to 1916: photo by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, 1912 (Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii Collection, Library of Congress)

Joseph Stalin (1878-1953): Morning, published under the pseudonym Soselo in the Georgian journal Iveria, 1895