I dwell in Possibility
By EMILY DICKINSON
I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –
Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of eye –
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky –
Of Visitors – the fairest –
For Occupation – This –
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise –
Art – Charles Courtney Curran
Shortly after he received the Nobel Prize, Albert Camus sent this heartwarming letter of gratitude to his childhood teacher.
19 November 1957
Dear Monsieur Germain,
I let the commotion around me these days subside a bit before speaking to you from the bottom of my heart. I have just been given far too great an honor, one I neither sought nor solicited. But when I heard the news, my first thought, after my mother, was of you. Without you, without the affectionate hand you extended to the small poor child that I was, without your teaching and example, none of all this would have happened. I don’t make too much of this sort of honor. But at least it gives me the opportunity to tell you what you have been and still are for me, and to assure you that your efforts, your work, and the generous heart you put into it still live in one of your little schoolboys who, despite the years, has never stopped being your grateful pupil. I embrace you with all my heart.
Albert Camus
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1957 was awarded to Albert Camus “for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times.”
I have answered this at Quora.com.
Mr Ondaatje is not necessarily a love poetry writer, but for me, everything he writes is poetry and he is a poet, singing “unknowingly the message and the promise from the lotus-gardens beyond the sunset”.
This is a poem that I love:
Speaking To You
by Michael Ondaatje
Speaking to you
this hour
these days when
I have lost the feather of poetry
and the rains
of separation
surround us tock
tock like Go tablets
Everyone has learned
to move carefully
‘Dancing’ ‘laughing’ ‘bad taste’
is a memory
a tableau behind trees of law
In the midst of love for you
my wife’s suffering
anger in every direction
and the children wise
as tough shrubs
but they are not tough
–so I fear
how anything can grow from this
all the wise blood
poured from little cuts
down into the sink
this hour it is not
your body I want
but your quiet company.
You have allowance
to dissolve me
to crumple my soul
into dark pieces
to break my happiness layer
into two.
One over the rainbow
One washing the new moon
Away…
I put my sweet warm thoughts of you
into a single rose.
I leave my all tears, fears
and tainted dreams
Behind…
© Iulia Halatz
My poem, Allowance, has been published at Blue Insights, one of the Medium publications I write for.
Art – Danny Galieote
No wasted days, no regrets, just an endless party until the last breath…
medium.com/blueinsight/blue-insights-cultural-prompts-july-2020-b26f92e50eed
As always, I am proud to be a witer for the Medium publications.
Art – Ingo Swann
Happy July Everyone!
May poppies, lilies and mellow sunsets bring you merriment and inspiration!
July from Eugène Samuel Grasset‘s La Belle Jardinière calendar, 1896
“A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.” – Tim Ferriss
“The secret to success is to do the common things uncommonly well.” ― John D. Rockefeller
Art by a very successful painter who paints uncommonly well – Michael Cheval.
Curfew
by Paul Eluard
What else could we do, for the doors were guarded,
What else could we do, for they had imprisoned us,
What else could we do, for the streets were forbidden us,
What else could we do, for the town was asleep?
What else could we do, for she hungered and thirsted,
What else could we do, for we were defenceless,
What else could we do, for night had descended,
What else could we do, for we were in love?
Art – Mario Reviglione – Metaphysical Nocturne (Alassio), 1912.
I have written and answer at Quora.
I do believe there are many wonderful digital marketing websites, but everything I know about marketing and digital marketing I have got it from Seth Godin: Seth’s Blog
Also I particularly enjoyed his Icarus Deception:
“Author James Elkins writes of the three components necessary for someone to become an artist: seeing, making and the tabula rasa.
First, students need to learn to see. They have to see the world as it is without labels, without knowing the name of what is seen.
Second, they are taught how to make. How to use hands or voice or body to take what they see and reflect it back to the world.
And third, and most difficult, the artist starts with a blank slate. Art must be done for the first time, not repeated, and that first stroke, those first words – this is the source of our fear.”
–Seth Godin – The Icarus Deception
“A great story is true. Not necessarily because it’s factual, but because it’s consistent and authentic.” – This has become my guideline in everything I write.
Art – Jennifer Diehl.
Lycidas
by John Milton
Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forc’d fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear
Compels me to disturb your season due;
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his wat’ry bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.
………………………………………..
SAMUEL PALMER – An Illustration to Milton’s ‘Lycidas’
