Shitao/painting

KELSMSCOTT PRESS: Morris, William. News from Nowhere: or, an Epoch of Rest, Being Some Chapters from a Utopian Romance. Woodcut frontispiece, title page, and initials. 8vo, gilt-lettered vellum with green cloth ties, one of 300 copies.

A Phonecall from Frank O�Hara


�oeThat all these dyings may be life in death”
I was living in San Francisco
My heart was in Manhattan
It made no sense, no reference point
Hearing the sad horns at night,
fragile evocations of female stuff
The 3 tones (the last most resonant)
were like warnings, haiku-muezzins at dawn
The call came in the afternoon
�oeFrank, is that really you?”

I'd awake chilled at dawn
in the wooden house like an old ship
Stay bundled through the day
sitting on the stoop to catch the sun
I lived near the park whose deep green
over my shoulder made life cooler
Was my spirit faltering, grown duller?
I want to be free of poetry's ornaments,
its duty, free of constant irritation,
me in it, what was grander reason
for being? Do it, why? (Why, Frank?)
To make the energies dance etc.

My coat a cape of horrors
I'd walk through town or
impending earthquake. Was that it?
Ominous days. Street shiny with
hallucinatory light on sad dogs,
too many religious people, or a woman
startled me by her look of indecision
near the empty stadium
I walked back spooked by
my own darkness
Then Frank called to say
�oeWhat? Not done complaining yet?
Can't you smell the eucalyptus,
have you never neared the Pacific?
�While frank and free/call for
musick while your veins swell�”
he sang, quoting a metaphysician
"Don't you know the secret, how to
wake up and see you don't exist, but
that does, don't you see phenomena
is so much more important than this?
I always love that.”
�oeAlways?” I cried, wanting to believe him
�oeYes.” �oeBut say more! How can you if
it's sad & dead?” �oeBut that's just it!
If! It isn't. It doesn't want to be
Do you want to be?” He was warming to his song
�oeOf course I don't have to put up with as
much as you do these days. These years.
But I do miss the color, the architecture,
the talk. You know, it was the life!
And dying is such an insult. After all
I was in love with breath and I loved
embracing those others, the lovers,
with my body.” He sighed & laughed
He wasn't quite as I'd remembered him
Not less generous, but more abstract
Did he even have a voice now, I wondered
or did I think it up in the middle
of this long day, phone in hand now
dialing Manhattan

Anne Waldman, �oeA Phonecall from Frank O�Hara” from Helping the Dreamer: Selected Poems, 1966-1988. Copyright © 1989 by Anne Waldman. Reprinted with the permission of Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, coffeehousepress.com [coffeehousepress.com] .

Source: Helping the Dreamer: Selected Poems, 1966-1988 (1989)

A lithograph by Edvard Munch valued at 300,000 euros (448,000 dollars) was stolen in Oslo in June, Norwegian police announced Wednesday, only days after the theft of another precious work by the painter.

The theft of "Loesrivelsen II" (The Separation II), a black and white drawing of a man and a woman with their backs turned to each other, went missing from an Oslo gallery during a move, police said.

"For now we haven't got a suspect," the chief of the Oslo police squad against organised crime John Roger Lund told AFP.

Kept secret until now, police only confirmed the theft after the NRK network noticed that Loesrivelsen II figured on an Interpol list of art works being sought.

The theft is only the latest of a series of thefts of works by Munch (1863-1944), considered a precursor of Expressionism.

Last week, a thief smashed the window of another Oslo art gallery and made off with another lithograph, "Historien" (History), valued at 240,000 euros. The work has not been found.

THE general effect proposed to be excited by this Picture is the terrible sublime and its various modifications, until lost in the opposite extremes of pity and horror, a sentiment which painting has so seldom attempted to awaken, that a particular description of the subject will probably be acceptable to the Public.
In poetry the same effect is produced by a few abrupt and rapid gleams of description, touching, as it were with fire, the features and edges of a general mass of awful obscurity; but in painting such indistinctness would be a defect, and imply that the Artist wanted the power to pourtray the conceptions of his fancy. Mr. WEST was of opinion, that, to delineate a physical form, which in its moral impression would approximate to that of the visionary Death of Milton, it was necessary to endow it if possible with the appearance of superhuman strength and energy : he has therefore exerted the utmost force and perspicuity of his pencil on the central figure. He has depicted the King of Terrors with the physiognomy of the dead in a charnel-house, but animated almost to ignition with inextinguishable rage--placed on his head the kingly crown, and clothed the length of his limbs with a spacious robe of funereal sable. His uplifted right hand holds no scepter, but is entwined with the serpent who first brought Death into the world, and he launches his darts from both hands in all directions with a merciless impartiality. His horse rushes forward with the universal wildness of a tempestuous element, breathing livid pestilence, and rearing and trampling with the vehemence of unbridled fury. Behind him is seen an insidious d�mon bearing the torch of Discord, with a monstrous progeny of the reptile world--

" All prodigious things,
Abominable, unutterable, and worse
Than fables yet have feign'd or fear conceiv'd,
Gorgons and hydras, and chimeras dire."

Oh-me, oh-my, oh-you
Whatever shall I do
Hallelujah, the question is peculiar
I'd give a lot of dough
If only I could know
The answer to my question
Is it yes or is it no

youtube.com/watch [youtube.com/watch]

Does your chewing gum lose its flavour
On the bedpost overnight
If your mother says don't chew it
Do you swallow it in spite
Can you catch it on your tonsils
Can you heave it left and right
Does your chewing gum lose its flavour
On the bedpost overnight

Here comes a blushing bride
The groom is by her side
Up to the altar
Just as steady as Gibraltar
Why, the groom has got the ring
And it's such a pretty thing
But as he slips it on her finger
The choir begins to sing

Does your chewing gum lose its flavour
On the bedpost overnight
If your mother says don't chew it
Do you swallow it in spite
Can you catch it on your tonsils
Can you heave it left and right
Does your chewing gum lose its flavour
On the bedpost overnight

Now the nation rise is one
To send their only son
Up to the White House
Yes, the nation's only White House
To voice their discontent
Unto the Pres-I-dent
They pawn the burning question
What has swept this continent

(Lonnie speaks)
If tin whistles are made of tin
What do they make fog horns out of
Boom, boom

Does your chewing gum lose its flavour
On the bedpost overnight
If your mother says don't chew it
Do you swallow it in spite
Can you catch it on your tonsils
Can you heave it left and right
Does your chewing gum lose its flavour
On the bedpost overnight

On the bedpost overnight

(Man)
Hello there, I love you and the one who holds you tight

(Lonnie)
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday
Thursday, Friday, Sat'day night

On the bedpost overnight

(Man)
A dollar is a dollar and a dime is a dime

(Lonnie)
He's singin' out the chorus
But he hasn't got the time

On the bedpost overnight, yeah