En.Citatepedia^®.ro

Swashbuckling

Demanding either ahs or chuckles,
I am an artist who swashbuckles,
performing before ears that hear,
and eyes that read, what is most dear
to the magician in me, sleight
of mouth with which I gravitate
above the ground of common sense,
beyond the past and present tense,
by twisting words like wires Calder
once twisted, and the authors Alter
has found in many Bible tales
twist words as if they were entrails,
serious topics that with whimsy
fligh high with fancies that sound flimsy.

Without ifs or ans or buts
my poems, aiming for the guts,
have spirals echoing the mobiles
of Calder, with phonetic foibles
I hope the reader will enjoy
as if they were a mobile toy
whose batteries won’t fall apart
unless they’re battered by your heart.

Holland Cotter reviews an exhibition of the work of Alexander Calder (The Paris Years,1926-33) in the Whitney Museum (“Calder at Play: Whimsy in Simple Wire, ” NYT, October 17,2008) : :
Calder didn’t start out with ambitions to be an artist; if anything, he was pulled in the opposite direction. He watched his father, a professional sculptor, fret over commissions and struggle with money. So when it came time for college the young Calder chose an engineering school in New Jersey over art school. But of course he was an artist, a natural. He may just not have known at first what that meant. Even as a child he was astonishingly inventive. The tiny figure of a rocking-horse-style bird shaped from brass sheeting is, for economy of form and conceptual daring, one of the more radical works in the show. He made it when he was 11. He made stuff all the time. He was one of those people with nonstop eyes and hands: every scrap of stray matter was a candidate for transformation. Give him some wire, clothespins and a scrap of cloth and, presto chango, you had a bird or a cow or a circus clown: nothing, then something, which is what magic is. There’s a hyperactive pace to his early career. While working at engineering jobs after college, he was also drawing like crazy and designing toys. In 1923 he enrolled at the Art Students League to study painting; John Sloan and George Luks were his teachers. At the same time he took on illustrating gigs for publications like The New Yorker and The National Police Gazette. His academic drawings from the time are gauche and ordinary. The staying-still-in-a-studio they required obviously cramped his style. Much fresher is the dashed-off, manic-looking magazine work. And his Ash Can School-type paintings of New York scenes — a drunken party; a trip to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus — have a gawky spark of life. Then there are his pen-and-ink drawings of zoo animals. They’re in a different category, almost by a different artist, one more relaxed and assured. Often done as one continuous line, they are like an effortlessly sophisticated form of penmanship. So are some of the openwork sculptures of bent and twisted wire that he began to experiment with at this time. In 1926, with all these balls in the air, he suddenly moved to Paris, because motion for him was a stimulant and because he felt that Paris was the hot place to be, which it was. With its crowded cafes, charged thinking, endless talking and jumpy personalities, the city was hyperkinetic. Calder fell in love with it. And, although he continued to return to New York for long stretches, he made Paris his home base for seven years. His wire sculpture took off there. Several examples in the form of portrait heads are the first thing you see when you step off the elevator on the Whitney’s fourth floor. They’re an arresting sight, in a gently wow-inspiring way. Wows were what Calder was after, along with chuckles and satisfied ahs. He was a showman, a performer. “See what I can do, right before your eyes, without even trying? ” his art seems to say.

10/17/08

poem by Gershon Hepner
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!

To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there's no such thing as perfect.

quote by Alexander Calder
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!

I paint with shapes.

quote by Alexander Calder
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!

My fan mail is enormous. Everyone is under six.

quote by Alexander Calder
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!

When tales of the cosmos are told, this period of ours may always be recalled as that in which men first came to realise what a violent universe we inhabit.

quote by Nigel Calder
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
Vote! | Copy!

Dina Vieny, Maillol And Matisse

When posing for Maillol she looked quite obese,
since Aristide thought fat is fine,
but having been drawn by his good friend Matisse,
she left him reduced to a line.

Inspired by an obituary of Dina Vierny, Aristide Maillol’s model, by William Grimes (“Dina Vierny,89, model for Maillol’s sculptures, ” NYT, January 27,2009) :
Ms. Vierny was a 15-year-old lycée student in Paris when she met Maillol, in the mid-1930s. The architect Jean-Claude Dondel, a friend of her father’s, decided that she would make the perfect model for the artist, who was 73 and in the professional doldrums. “Mademoiselle, it is said that you look like a Maillol and a Renoir, ” Maillol wrote to her. “I’d be satisfied with a Renoir.” For the next 10 years, until his death in a car accident in 1944, Ms. Vierny was Maillol’s muse, posing for monumental works of sculpture that belied her modest height of 5 feet 2 inches. By mutual agreement, the relationship was strictly artistic….Her Rubenesque figure and jet-black hair indeed made her, as Dondel had predicted, “a living Maillol, ” memorialized in works like “The Seated Bather, ” “The Mountain, ” “Air, ” “The River, ” and “Harmony, ” his last, unfinished sculpture. Maillol also turned to her as a subject for drawings and painted portraits, like “Dina With a Scarf, ” now in the Maillol Museum.
In 1939, Maillol took refuge at his home in Banyuls-sur-Mer, at the foot of the eastern Pyrenees. There, Ms. Vierny, who had already begun working for a Resistance group in Paris, was approached by the Harvard-educated classicist Varian Fry, whose organization in Marseille helped smuggle refugees from occupied France into Spain. Unbeknownst to Maillol, she began working as a guide, identifiable to her fleeing charges by her red dress. The work was doubly dangerous because she was Jewish. Ms. Vierny soon began dozing off at her posing sessions. The story came out, and Maillol, a native of the region, showed her secret shortcuts, smugglers’ routes and goat paths to use. After several months of working for the Comité Fry, Ms. Vierny was arrested by the French police, who seized her correspondence with her friends in the Surrealist movement but failed to notice stacks of forged passports in her room. A lawyer hired by Maillol won her acquittal at trial, and to keep her out of harm’s way the artist sent her to pose for Matisse in Nice. “I am sending you the subject of my work, ” Maillol told Matisse, “whom you will reduce to a line.” Matisse did several drawings and proposed an ambitious painting that he called a “Matisse Olympia, ” after the famous painting by Manet. When Maillol heard that the project would take at least six months, he hastily recalled her to Banyuls. She also posed for Dufy and for Bonnard, who used her as the model for “Somber Nude.” In 1943, Ms. Vierny was again arrested, this time by the Gestapo, in Paris. She was released after six months in prison when Maillol appealed to Arno Breker, Hitler’s favorite sculptor.

1/27/09

poem by Gershon Hepner
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!

One of my complaints is that you've got far more scientists than ever before but the pace of discovery has not increased. Why? Because they're all busy just filling in the details of what they think is the standard story. And the youngsters, the people with different ideas have just as big a fight as ever and normally it takes decades for science to correct itself. But science does correct itself and that's the reason why science is such a glorious thing for our species.

quote by Nigel Calder
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
Vote! | Copy!

Queen of the Desert

Nicole Kidman, James Franco, Damian Lewis, Robert Pattinson, Jay Abdo, Jenny Agutter, David Calder, Christopher Fulford, Holly Earl

by Werner Herzog from Queen of the Desert (2015)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
Vote! | Copy!

Dear Madam Barnum

I put on a fake smile
And start the evening show
The public is laughing
I guess by now they know
So climb from your high horse
And pull this freak show down
Dear madam barnum
I resign as clown
You said I was the master of all I surveyed
But now Im sweeping up
The last in line in your circus parade
Children are clapping
As I fall to the floor
My heart torn and broken
And they just scream for more
If Im not the sole fool
Who pulls his trousers down
Then dear madam barnum
I resign as clown
You tread the high wire
Between truth and lies
Your safety net just walked out
Much to your surprise
Strike up the band love
And let the show begin
For this is the last time
Im painting on a grin
If Im not the sole fool
Who pulls his trousers down
Then dear madam barnum
I resign as clown

song performed by by Xtc
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!

Start

And through the wire I hear your voice
And through the wire I touch the power
And through the wire I see your face
It's through the wire
Friday night, you're staying at home I want you
I'm tickling and clicking a metronome I want you
Prowling the waterhole-I wait for the kill I want you
Pressure's building-overspill I want you
And through the wire You are secure
And through the wire We can talk
And through the wire We can walk
It's through the wire
Watchmaker steadies his delicate hand I want you
For barbecue parties on blood red sands I want you
Caught in the struggle tight on the rod I want you
Bring out the devil to bring out the god I want you
And through the wire I hear your voice
And through the wire I touch the power
And through the wire I see your face
It's through the wire
Driving 'round the city rings
Staring at the shape of things
I talk in pictures not in words
Overloaded with everything we said
be careful where you tread
Watch the wire
And through the wire You are secure
And through the wire We can talk
And through the wire We can walk
And through the wire We're clinging like leeches
And through the wire We push out tailor-made speeches
And through the wire We get so strange across the border
We get so strange across the border

song performed by by Peter Gabriel
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!

Science at best is not wisdom it is knowledge. Wisdom is knowledge tempered with judgment.

quote by Lord Ritchie-Calder
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!

In a sense, human flesh is made of stardust. Every atom in the human body, excluding only the primordial hydrogen atoms, was fashioned in stars that formed, grew old and exploded most violently before the Sun and the Earth came into being. The explosions scattered the heavy elements as a fine dust through space. By the time it made the Sun, the primordial gas of the Milky Way was sufficiently enriched with heavier elements for rocky planets like the Earth to form. And from the rocks atoms escaped for eventual incorporation in living things: carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur for all living tissue; calcium for bones and teeth; sodium and potassium for the workings of nerves and brains; the iron colouring blood red… and so on. No other conclusion of modern research testifies more clearly to mankind’s intimate connections with the universe at large and with the cosmic forces at work among the stars.

quote by Nigel Calder
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
Vote! | Copy!

The Circus

I remember when I wrote The Circus
I was living in Paris, or rather we were living in Paris
Janice, Frank was alive, the Whitney Museum
Was still on 8th Street, or was it still something else?
Fernand Léger lived in our building
Well it wasn’t really our building it was the building we lived in
Next to a Grand Guignol troupe who made a lot of noise
So that one day I yelled through a hole in the wall
Of our apartment I don’t know why there was a hole there
Shut up! And the voice came back to me saying something
I don’t know what. Once I saw Léger walk out of the building
I think. Stanley Kunitz came to dinner. I wrote The Circus
In two tries, the first getting most of the first stanza;
That fall I also wrote an opera libretto called Louisa or Matilda.
Jean-Claude came to dinner. He said (about “cocktail sauce”)
It should be good on something but not on these (oysters).
By that time I think I had already written The Circus
When I came back, having been annoyed to have to go
I forget what I went there about
You were back in the apartment what a dump actually we liked it
I think with your hair and your writing and the pans
Moving strummingly about the kitchen and I wrote The Circus
It was a summer night no it was an autumn one summer when
I remember it but actually no autumn that black dusk toward the post office
And I wrote many other poems then but The Circus was the best
Maybe not by far the best Geography was also wonderful
And the Airplane Betty poems (inspired by you) but The Circus was the best.

Sometimes I feel I actually am the person
Who did this, who wrote that, including that poem The Circus
But sometimes on the other hand I don’t.
There are so many factors engaging our attention!
At every moment the happiness of others, the health of those we know and our own!
And the millions upon millions of people we don’t know and their well-being to think about
So it seems strange I found time to write The Circus
And even spent two evenings on it, and that I have also the time
To remember that I did it, and remember you and me then, and write this poem about it
At the beginning of The Circus
The Circus girls are rushing through the night
In the circus wagons and tulips and other flowers will be picked
A long time from now this poem wants to get off on its own
Someplace like a painting not held to a depiction of composing The Circus.

Noel Lee was in Paris then but usually out of it
In Germany or Denmark giving a concert
As part of an endless activity
Which was either his career or his happiness or a combination of both
Or neither I remember his dark eyes looking he was nervous
With me perhaps because of our days at Harvard.

It is understandable enough to be nervous with anybody!

How softly and easily one feels when alone
Love of one’s friends when one is commanding the time and space syndrome
If that’s the right word which I doubt but together how come one is so nervous?
One is not always but what was I then and what am I now attempting to create
If create is the right word
Out of this combination of experience and aloneness
And who are you telling me it is or is not a poem (not you?) Go back with me though
To those nights I was writing The Circus.
Do you like that poem? have you read it? It is in my book Thank You
Which Grove just reprinted. I wonder how long I am going to live
And what the rest will be like I mean the rest of my life.

John Cage said to me the other night How old are you? and I told him forty-six
(Since then I’ve become forty-seven) he said
Oh that’s a great age I remember.
John Cage once told me he didn’t charge much for his mushroom identification course (at the New School)
Because he didn’t want to make a profit from nature

He was ahead of his time I was behind my time we were both in time
Brilliant go to the head of the class and “time is a river”
It doesn’t seem like a river to me it seems like an unformed plan
Days go by and still nothing is decided about
What to do until you know it never will be and then you say “time”
But you really don’t care much about it any more
Time means something when you have the major part of yours ahead of you
As I did in Aix-en-Provence that was three years before I wrote The Circus
That year I wrote Bricks and The Great Atlantic Rainway
I felt time surround me like a blanket endless and soft
I could go to sleep endlessly and wake up and still be in it
But I treasured secretly the part of me that was individually changing
Like Noel Lee I was interested in my career
And still am but now it is like a town I don’t want to leave
Not a tower I am climbing opposed by ferocious enemies

I never mentioned my friends in my poems at the time I wrote The Circus
Although they meant almost more than anything to me
Of this now for some time I’ve felt an attenuation
So I’m mentioning them maybe this will bring them back to me
Not them perhaps but what I felt about them
John Ashbery Jane Freilicher Larry Rivers Frank O’Hara
Their names alone bring tears to my eyes
As seeing Polly did last night
It is beautiful at any time but the paradox is leaving it
In order to feel it when you’ve come back the sun has declined
And the people are merrier or else they’ve gone home altogether
And you are left alone well you put up with that your sureness is like the sun
While you have it but when you don’t its lack’s a black and icy night. I came home
And wrote The Circus that night, Janice. I didn’t come and speak to you
And put my arm around you and ask you if you’d like to take a walk
Or go to the Cirque Medrano though that’s what I wrote poems about
And am writing about that now, and now I’m alone

And this is not as good a poem as The Circus
And I wonder if any good will come of either of them all the same.

“The Circus” from The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright © 2006 by Kenneth Koch.

poem by Kenneth Koch
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!

... & Through The Wire

And through the wire I hear your voice
And through the wire I touch the power
And through the wire I see your face
Its through the wire
Friday night, youre staying at home I want you
Im tickling and clicking a metronome I want you
Prowling the waterhole-i wait for the kill I want you
Pressures building-overspill I want you
And through the wire you are secure
And through the wire we can talk
And through the wire we can walk
Its through the wire
Watchmaker steadies his delicate hand I want you
For barbeque parties on blood red sands I want you
Caught in the struggle tight on the rod I want you
Bring out the devil to bring out the God I want you
And through the wire I hear your voice
And through the wire I touch the power
And through the wire I see your face
Its through the wire
Driving round the city rings
Staring at the shape of things
I talk in pictures not in words
Overloaded with everything we said
Be careful where you tread
Watch the wire
And through the wire you are secure
And through the wire we can talk
And through the wire we can walk
And through the wire were clinging like leeches
And through the wire we push out tailormade speeches
And through the wire we get so strange across the border
We get so strange across the border

song performed by by Peter Gabriel
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!

Sonnet -Indelible Art?

How far an artist takes his art forward?
If labour hard is continued for long,
It dedication has not disappeared,
And Pride has not polluted his art’s song.

One's art improves if Will of God is there;
If Luck and Pluck come timely to his aid;
If vices poison not his mind to err;
And love enters his art when it is made.

For art lives longer than the artist's age;
And brings alive the beauty it derived;
All life, the artist must truly manage;
To perfect works of art in which he’d strived.

Such art alone will stand the test of time,
For it has made the Artist's life sublime.

poem by John Celes
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!

And Through The Wire

And through the wire I hear your voice
And through the wire I touch the power
And through the wire I see your face
Its through the wire
Friday night, youre staying at home I want you
Im tickling and clicking a metronome I want you
Prowling the waterhole-i wait for the kill I want you
Pressures building-overspill I want you
And through the wire you are secure
And through the wire we can talk
And through the wire we can walk
Its through the wire
Watchmaker steadies his delicate hand I want you
For barbeque parties on blood red sands I want you
Caught in the strugle tight on the rod I want you
Bring out the devil to bring out the God I want you
And through the wire I hear your voice
And through the wire I touch the power
And through the wire I see your face
Its through the wire
Driving round the city rings
Staring at the shape of things
I talk in pictures not in words
Overloaded with everything we said
Be careful where you tread
Watch the wire
And through the wire you are secure
And through the wire we can talk
And through the wire we can walk
And through the wire were clinging like leeches
And through the wire we push out tailormade speeches
And through the wire we get so strange across the border
We get so strange across the border

song performed by by Peter Gabriel
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!

Graduation

In couple months I will graduate from high school
I'm so excited and anixety
First, I have to get through this couple months and
Do everything I need to do
We are leaving behind good and bad memories
Is another chapter in your life
Time to start new one in college or whereever you go
Years in school fly so fast
This is our moment to show people we love that we can do it
You have plan to go to college or whatever you have in mind
Time to get our freedom and be away from home
Time to live our life way we want
We are going our separate path, but
We still can get in contact with each other
No matter where we are in the world
This is greatest moment of our life
We are going tear, laugh, smile, and be proud what we done
Graduation
Is once in life time
High school don't last forever
This is what we been dreaming
All our life and we make it through
With our ups and downs, bad and good times
I never picture myself that I would be here
In front of whole school and get my diploma in my hand
This is all worth it
I never gave up or had any doubt
Thank you to all my friends who was like my brothers and sisters
They have been there for me, fun to hang out, talktative, and funny
Thank you to my family who is supportive, caring, and love me
Thank you to all my teachers who never give up on me and help me through
I have confident, hope, and believe in myself
That I will make it through and look where I am
Graduation

poem by Christina Phan
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!

Now almost every artist outside of New York is connected with some school or some museum school, and even in New York the majority are. That's an interesting fact when you take the idea of making money, making a living selling paintings. Only a dozen or two painters do that.

quote by Ad Reinhardt
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!

Bird On A Wire

Bird on a wire, up there much higher
than the poeple on the ground.
Do you observe all those you see
or stay intent on what you've found?

That sitting on a wire is just a good perch
that provides you a place to rest.
You may be joined by others of your kind
and that can't happen in a nest.

Bird on a wire, such a good flier,
it amazes me how you land.
You travel from wire to wire as if
you are making a stand
saying

'This is my place. Yours is below
and you may look up to me.
You would not trade places. Neither would I
for it's dangerous up here you see.

poem by Edwina Reizer
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!

I Love Paris

Every time I look down on this timeless town,
Whether blue or gray be her skies,
Whether loud be her cheers, or whether soft be her tears,
More and more do I realize that...
I love paris in the spring time
I love paris in the fall
I love paris in the summer when it sizzles
I
Love paris in the winter when it drizzles
I love paris every moment
Every moment of the year
I love
Paris, why oh why do I love paris
Because my love is here

song performed by by Ella Fitzgerald
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!

A Trip to Paris

A Trip to Paris

To enjoy a day Paris
Must be like an eternity in the clouds
One day I hope to my girl there, my little heirs
Go to the Tower, just shout “I love Paris” aloud

Although this maybe my first time here
I feel like I’m home, like I know this country
I know there are some dark places and alleys but I have yet to support fear
This is such a beautiful place, I’m glad it accepts me

As the sun goes down the night skies fill with promise
The stars are no help as the rays from their brightness illuminates the eyes of the river ways
Everything about this land seems too good to be true, she’s just so honest
Set up the way she wants to be makes me so happy I can’t see myself leaving this place.

A Tribute to Paris

poem by Boonk Jackson
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!