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[atonalpoems]

(DAYDREAM: In my daydream College for Bards, the curriculum would be as follows:

I. In addition to English, at least one ancient language, probably Greek or Hebrew, and two modern languages would be required.

II. Thousands of lines of poetry in these languages would be learned by heart.

III. The library would contain no books of literary criticism, and the only critical exercise required of students would be the writing of parodies.

IV. Courses in prosody, rhetoric, and comparative philology would be required of all students, and every student would have to select three courses in mathematics, natural history, geology, meteorology, archeology, mythology, liturgics, cooking.

V. Every student would be required to look after a domestic animal and cultivate a garden plot.

— W.H. Auden, from "The Poet & The City," excerpt featured in Lapham’s Quarterly Fall 2008 issue: “Ways of Learning”

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“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn."

— John Muir, The Mountains of California (1894)

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Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun - Madame Grande

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Beth Moon

The Lovers, Morondava, Madagascar, 2006

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learning to take your life seriously - ask polly

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[...] Here root vowels take an accent at high altitudes

the way dictionaries speak over mountains

A single word to portray light from that distant village reflected in a cloud, or your lover’s face lit by the moonlight on a stage

Landscapes nudge the dialect. In far places travellers know a faint gesture can mean desire or scorn,          just as a sliver of a phrase thrown away hides charms within its grammar [...]

— Michael Ondaatje, excerpt of "Definition" (published in The New Yorker)

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edvard munch

lithograph in black on paper

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"Let me offer a simple observation. There is a greater contrast between the moon and the night sky than there is between the sun and the daytime sky. And this contrast is more conducive to sorrow, which always separates or isolates itself, than it is to happiness, which always joins or blends. And to stand face-to-face with the sun is preposterous—it would blind you. Every child is taught not to stare at the sun. The sun is the source of life itself, the great creative power. One cannot confront god without instant annihilation; you can't look directly at Medusa, but you can look at her useless reflection. The moon has no light of its own; our apprehension of it is but a reflection of the sun. And some believe artists reflect the creative powers of some original impulse too great to name. Another thing: the moon is the very image of silence—and, as Charles Simic says, "The highest levels of consciousness are wordless." The great lunacy of most lyric poems is that they attempt to use words to convey what cannot be put into words. On the other hand, stars were the first text, the first instance of gabbiness; connecting the stars, making a pattern out of them, was the first story, sacred to storytellers. But the moon was the first poem, in the lyric sense, an entity complete in itself, recognizable at a glace, one that played upon emotions so strongly that the context of time and place hardly seemed to matter."

— Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack and Honey: Collected Lectures

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fyodor dostoevsky (the brothers karamazov), charles bukowski (a vote for the gentle light)

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Bridesmaids at a wedding in Cairo, Egypt, 1987.

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Waterlilies (Study) -  Lars Elling , 2022.

Norwegian, b.1966 -

Mixed media on canvas 

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SKALL STUDIO