How can you not love Anne Sexton Infinately more engaging than Sylvia.. more tragic..
A bright burning star.. that went Super Nova

The Truth the Dead Know by Anne Sexton

Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.
We drive to the Cape. I cultivate myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
where the sea swings in like an iron gate and we touch.
In another country people die.
My darling, the wind falls in like stones from the whitehearted water
and when we touch we enter touch entirely.
No one's alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.
And what of the dead?
They lie without shoes in the stone boats.
They are more like stone than the sea would be if it stopped.
They refuse to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.

e.e. cummings versus Ravel

You gotta love a little e.e. cummings And to dish it out with some Ravel.... Heaven on earth

Existential Enigma

Not really all that sure what that means.
I just heard it on Freaks and Geeks.. and it struck
me as sooooo cool.
Sorry if I wasted your time...
But it alwasy makes me smile when I say it..
Why don't you try to say it aloud right now!

Maybe M. Conrad??

Definitely Sartre!

A Life of Picasso and a Detour with Klimt

I have been reading John Richardson's A Life of Picasso - a brilliant three volume series that follows the painter from a young man until his death.

Richardson is a magnificent essayist - clean and evocative prose - and his subject is a man of many facets.

I visited a Picasso workshop when I was in Arles - playing at being Van Gogh. I like to think of them as the the two sides of my Gemini artistic soul.

Along the way.. I can not recall how or why.. I did a quick survey of Gustav Klimt. I was never a huge fan... to be honest I had never spent much time really looking at his work. But when I did take a second look.. what a revelation.

I envy those of you close to Liverpool - there is a great and a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see his work at the Tate Gallery outpost there.

Make the pilgrimage.. I would die (well not actually expire) to see the Beethoven Frieze.

1001 Novels You Must Read Before You Die

Well the Brits have done it again!

An overwhelming list of the proper books to consume to make your life complete.

As a masochist of the first sort.. I can hardly resist!

I downloaded the list.. randomized the order using a trusty excel spreadsheet.. and

ended up with my first ten books to read this summer.

This - on top of - my annual undertaking of the Pulitzer Prize winners!

I will order these from Abe Books (Check this on-line house out if you don't know them)

and see how the selection goes.

Here are the first ten for me. If you want the entire list - email me and I can forward it on to you! ;-)

1 A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
2 Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev
3 Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard
4 Operation Shylock – Philip Roth
5 Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
6 Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
7 Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham
8 The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
9 Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet
10 Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon

As always.. any comments on my undertaking are welcome!

Pablo Neruda

I am re-reading my many volumes of Neruda this long week-end.

The 1971 Nobel Laureate is truly amazing - what a voice and soooo prolific too.

I especially like the Captain's Verses. My used 1972 edition is a little dog-eared. It is full of annotations and random thoughts.

But I think that is what makes it special. I love to underline and capture ideas as I read. It makes for a messy book.. but it is very interesting a decade later.

Consider a poem from his third book.. at only 20!

Body of woman, white hills, white thighs,
you look like the world in your posture of surrender.
My savage peasant body digs through you
and makes the son leap from the depth of the earth.
(From "Song I")