What Rilke said: I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone. Somehow, I was sure Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation would read very much like Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams, a much-praised book, which I unfortunately have to admit, I really didn’t like at all. And so the Department ……
Tag: Rilke
“We have no art. We do everything as well as we can.”
She probably wouldn’t like me saying this, but there is something almost otherworldly about Corita Kent. Corita Kent (1918–1986) was an artist, educator, and advocate for social justice. At age 18 she entered the religious order Immaculate Heart of Mary, eventually teaching in and then heading up the art department at Immaculate Heart College. Her…
. For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter that only by wintering through it will your heart survive. . ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus NOVEMBER TWO BLUE (2013), from Reading November Series © Mary Ellen Bartley .
Live the questions …
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point…
a grounded instance of seeing
I’ve just read this very interesting text on ekphrasis by Alfred Corn, the text can be found at poets.org; here are some passages on contemporary poetry Notes on Ekphrasis Perhaps the most effective contemporary poems dealing with visual art are those where the authors include themselves in the poem, recounting the background circumstances that led to…
I want to die painting – (among myriad triumphs of blueness)
In her book; Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter, Patricia Albers tells us: Rilke looked to painting, especially Cézanne’s, as a model for poetry. In late 1907, the writer visited the Paris Salon d’Automne nearly every day, seeking to memorize the work of the Post-Impressionist, whose discipline, nuance, precision, and chromatic emotion he emulated. Having visually devoured the blues…
We stumble – We fall – We fail –
– And so desire to progress, to become better poets, to eradicate a disease, to become better people, to perfect that which is perpetually imperfect. On Fear by Mary Ruefle
sub rosa 