Beat the drum, Heinrich!*

I have never seen an ass
who talked like a human being,
but I have met many human beings
who talked like asses.

Heinrich Heine (13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856)

* Heine's Doctrine

Beers & Books (407) – Sylvia Plath: Love Poems

Love Poems

Sylvia Plath (27 October 1932 – 11 February 1963) 

Monochrome Monday

Oh god, there was the morning light
as Dafydd ap Gwilym would whisper. Perhaps. ;-)

Beers & Books (396) – Goethe 275

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832)

When I try to imagine the time of the original creation of those 20,000 pages of my thin-print complete edition, I suddenly think of some Flemish painters. Should be possible that Privy Councillor Goethe, who today would celebrate his 275th birthday, had some industrious penmen write for him? ;-)
The following may seem casual, but seriously:
The man spends 25 years of his life as political advisor, minister, theater director, “rides” in times of small statehood for one and a half years by horse-drawn stage coach to and through “Bella Italia”, and – not to forget the one or other amorous adventure that also takes up this and that hour – finds time by candlelight with quill and inkwell to write such an enormous oeuvre?
Chapeau!
Happy birthday, Wolfi! ;-)

Coffee time with Seamus Heaney

The Redress of Poetry

 
Seamus Heaney (13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013)

Two things are certain

Two things are certain:
Humanity will vanish.
Nature will prevail.

 

Beers & Books (382) – Der gute Gott von Manhattan

The good god of Manhattan

Ingeborg Bachmann (25 June 1926 –17 October 1973)

Festival of German-Language Literature / Ingeborg Bachmann Prize

Beers & Books (375) – Birth & Death(lessness)

It's once again the (International) Day of the Book.
Well, and once again I do not care, but just repeat:
For me 365 days in any year are days of books,
and 366 in leap-years.

Anyway, on Shakespeare's 460th birthday
the 408th anniversary of either his dead
and the death of Cervantes
just to wish a very special literary evening.

May my voice not put you off the realm poetry. ;-)

Beers & Books CCCLXI – Lyrische Hausapotheke

Es gibt nichts Gutes,
außer: Man tut es.

Erich Kästner (23 February 1899 – 29 July 1974)

Take this Waltz

Leonard Cohen (21 September 1934 – 7 November 2016)
Federico García Lorca (5 Juni 1898 – 19 August 1936)

Nectarious Night

And I'll dance with you in Vienna
I'll be wearing a river's disguise
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder,
My mouth on the dew of your thighs . . .

Heine's Doctrine

Doctrine

Beat the drum and don't be afraid,
And kiss the sutler!
That is the whole science,
That is the deepest meaning of books.

Drum the people out of their sleep,
Drum Reveille with the vigour of youth,
Always march ahead drumming,
That is the whole of science.

That is Hegel's philosophy,
That is the deepest meaning of books!
I have grasped it because I am clever,
And because I am a good drummer. 

Heinrich Heine (13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856)

Beers & Books CCCXLII – The Poems of Emily Dickinson

Bilingual delight.

Emily Dickinson (10 December 1830 – 15 May 1886)

Adios for a while

Surrounded by books
writing is nothing but joy.
And nights getting long.

In praise of ...

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbed
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rotted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.


My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy neat the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

Seamus Heaney

Beers & Books CCCXXVIII – Bobby Sands

 Bobby Sands (9 March 1954 – 5 May 1981)

I rolled over again freezing and the snow came in the window on top of my blankets. Tiocfaidh ár lá' (Our day will come), I said to myself, Tiocfaidh ár lá. [Final diary entry]

 

Rather be it Shakespeare*

On Shakespeare's 459th birthday and

the 407th anniversary of either his death
and the death of Cervantes
just to wish a very special literary evening.

It's also the (International) Day of the book?

Well, yes. But isn't every day a day of the book?

Comparing the results of my recent attempts to write some sonnets myself with what I am rereading these days, I came to the conclusion, in order not to put anyone off the realm of poetry, to post rather one from the Master of Avondale.

Alack what poverty my muse brings forth,
That having such a scope to show her pride,
The argument all bare is of more worth
Than when it hath my added praise beside.
O blame me not if I no more can write!
Look in your glass and there appears a face,
That over-goes my blunt invention quite,
Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.
Were it not sinful then striving to mend,
To mar the subject that before was well?
For to no other my verses tend,
Than of your graces and your gifts to tell.
       And more, much more than in my verse can sit,
       Your own glass shows you, when you look in it.

 

* knowing I would be fighting with a deadline, I went back to April 23rd, 2014, copied and pasted, updated the years, and voilà.

Harbingers of spring

Busy visitor
Mason bee meets daffodil
Harbingers of spring

Beers & Books CCCXX – Small Anthology of Poetry in Spanish

This small anthology of poetry in Spanish
makes me looking forward to July 19th
when the following will be published:
Surveying a poetic continent.

 

Mo(o)nday Poetry

Cuando sale la luna
se pierden las campanas
y aparecen las sendas
impenetrables.*

* From Federico García Lorca's Canciones de luna