Painters speak...

Just found some wonderful sayings of some of the greatest painters the world has seen. Publishing them here, lest I should lose them.

Paul Cezanne:

It took me 40 years to find out that painting is not sculpture.

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.

All my life I have worked to be able to earn my living, but I thought that one could do good painting without attracting attention to one's private life. Certainly, an artist wishes to raise himself intellectually as much as possible, but the man must remain obscure. The pleasure must be found in the work.

Henri Matisse:

I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.

Hatred, rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of everything which could make it more so.

Claude Monet:

It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.

Vincent Van Gogh:

I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.

I am not strictly speaking mad, for my mind is absolutely normal in the intervals, and even more so than before. But during the attacks it is terrible - and then I lose consciousness of

everything. But that spurs me on to work and to seriousness, as a miner who is always in danger makes haste in what he does.

I am risking my life for my work, and half my reason has gone.

I tell you, the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech.

Leonardo Da Vinci:

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.

The color of the object illuminated partakes of the color of that which illuminates it.

He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss.

Andy Warhol:

Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.

Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting. The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.

I suppose I have a really loose interpretation of 'work', because I think that just being alive is so much work at something you don't always want to do.

Salvador Dali:

You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life.

The desire to survive and the fear of death are artistic sentiments.

Poem Recordings

I found this wonderful site where you can hear rare recordings of poems by the poets themselves. Click on each poem to read and listen.

There's a plethora of great poets you can pick from. The link to the most striking one, that of T.S. Eliot, I give here: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=7069

Gabriel's words...

...If I would know that these will be the last minutes that I will see you, I will say to you "I love you" and wouldn't assume that you would know it....

- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"Only in Sleep" by Sara Teasdale

Only in sleep I see their faces,
Children I played with when I was a child,
Louise comes back with her brown hair braided,
Annie with ringlets warm and wild.
Only in sleep Time is forgotten —
What may have come to them, who can know?
Yet we played last night as long ago,
And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair.
The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces,
I met their eyes and found them mild —
Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder,
And for them am I too a child?

Story - Stephen Dunn

A woman's taking her late-afternoon walk
on Chestnut where no sidewalk exists
and houses with gravel driveways
sit back among the pines. Only the house
with the vicious dog is close to the road.
An electric fence keeps him in check.
When she comes to that house, the woman
always crosses to the other side.
I'm the woman's husband. It's a problem
loving your protagonist too much.
Soon the dog is going to break through
that fence, teeth bared, and go for my wife.
She will be helpless. I'm out of town,
helpless too. Here comes the dog.
What kind of dog? A mad dog, a dog
like one of those teenagers who just loses it
on the playground, kills a teacher.
Something's going to happen that can't happen
in a good story: out of nowhere a car
comes and kills the dog. The dog flies
in the air, lands in a patch of delphiniums.
My wife is crying now. The woman who hit
the dog has gotten out of her car. She holds
both hands to her face. The woman who owns
the dog has run out of her house. Three women
crying in the street, each for different reasons.
All of this is so unlikely; it's as if
I've found myself in a country of pure fact,
miles from truth's more demanding realm.
When I listened to my wife's story on the phone
I knew I'd take it from her, tell it
every which way until it had an order
and a deceptive period at the end. That's what
I always do in the face of helplessness,
make some arrangements if I can.
Praise the odd, serendipitous world.
Nothing I'd be inclined to think of
would have stopped that dog.
Only the facts saved her.

Love Calls Us To The Things Of This World - Richard Wilbur

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded
soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and
simple
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with
angels.

Some are in bed-sheets, some are
in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there
they are.
Now they are rising together in calm
swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they
wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal
breathing;

Now they are flying in place,
conveying
The terrible speed of their
omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now
of a sudden
They swoon down in so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
The soul shrinks

From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every
blessed day,
And cries,
"Oh, let there be nothing on
earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising
steam
And clear dances done in the sight of
heaven."

Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world's hunks
and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter
love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns
and rises,

"Bring them down from their ruddy
gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs
of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be
undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure
floating
Of dark habits,
keeping their difficult
balance."

Different Hours -Stephen Dunn

And now, next day, I wake before
the sound of traffic, amazed
that the paper has been delivered,
that the world is up and working.
A dazed rabbit sits in the dewy grass.
The clematis has no aspirations
as it climbs its trestle. . . .

And somewhere a philosopher is erasing
"time's empty passing" because he's seen
a woman in a ravishing dress.
In a different hour he'll put it back.

-------------

Words of interest:

Clematis - Any of various ornamental climbing plants of the genus Clematis usually having showy flowers .

Trestle - A horizontal beam or bar held up by two pairs of divergent legs and used as a support.

Like Most Revelations by Richard Howard

It is the movement that incites the form,
discovered as a downward rapture--yes,
it is the movement that delights the form,
sustained by its own velocity. And yet

it is the movement that delays the form
while darkness slows and encumbers; in fact
it is the movement that betrays the form,
baffled in such toils of ease, until

it is the movement that deceives the form,
beguiling our attention--we supposed
it is the movement that achieves the form.
Were we mistaken? What does it matter if

it is the movement that negates the form?
Even though we give (give up) ourselves
to this mortal process of continuing,
it is the movement that creates the form.

No Platonic Love - by William Cartwright

Tell me no more of minds embracing minds,
And hearts exchang'd for hearts;
That spirits spirits meet, as winds do winds,
And mix their subt'lest parts;
That two unbodied essences may kiss,
And then like angels, twist and feel one Bliss.
I was that silly thing that once was wrought
To practise this thin love;
I climb'd from sex to soul, from soul to thought;
But thinking there to move,
Headlong I rolled from thought to soul, and then
From soul I lighted at the sex again.

As some strict down-looked men pretend to fast,
Who yet in closets eat;
So lovers who profess they spririts taste,
Feed yet on grosser meat;
I know they boast they souls to souls convey,
Howe'r they meet, the body is the way.

Come, I will undeceive thee, they that tread
Those vain aerial ways
Are like young heirs and alchemists misled
To waste their wealth and days,
For searching thus to be for ever rich,
They only find a med'cine for the itch.

--------

Words To Note:

Alchemy: Any magical power or process of transmuting a common substance, usually of little value, into a substance of great value.