I vilket fall, så bjuds ni på tre kända poeter och deras betraktelser av tre mycket kända konstverk.
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| Self Portrait at the Age of 63, 1669 Rembrandt (1606-1669) oljemålning National Gallery of United Kingdom |
Elizabeth Jennings (1926-2001) var en engelsk poet. Hennes tidiga poesi publicerades i tidskrifter som Oxford Poetry, New English Weekly, The Spectator, Outposts and Poetry Review, men hennes första bok publicerades inte förrän hon var 27. De lyriska poeter hon citerade och som influerade henne var Gerard Manly Hopkins, W.H. Auden, Robert Graves och Edwin Muir . Den andra diktsamlingen, A Way of Looking, vann Somerset Maugham Award.
Hon betraktas som traditionalist snarare än en innovatör. Källa: Wikipedia
Rembrandt's late self portraits, by Elizabeth Jennings
(from Collected poems, 1953-1985. Manchester : UK ; New York : Carcanet, 1986.)
You are confronted with yourself. Each year
The pouches fill, the skin is uglier.
You give it all unflinchingly. You stare
Into yourself, beyond. Your brush’s care
Runs with self-knowledge. Here
Is a humility at one with craft.
There is no arrogance. Pride is apart
From this self-scrutiny. You make light drift
The way you want. Your face is bruised and hurt
But there is still love left.
Love of the art and others. To the last
Experiment went on. You stared beyond
Your age, the times. You also plucked the past
And tempered it. Self-portraits understand,
And old age can divest,
With truthful changes, us of fear of death.
Look, a new anguish. There, the bloated nose,
The sadness and the joy. To paint’s to breathe,
And all the darknesses are dared. You chose
What each must reckon with.
***
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| The Starry Night, 1889 Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) oljemålning Museum of Modern Art, New York |
Anne Sexton (1928-1974). Amerikansk poet, född i Newton, Massachusetts. Anne Sexton kom från en privilegierad men konservativ New England-familj. Under sin uppväxt var hon hårt hållen och efter att ha börjat på Garland Junior College, smet hon som 19-åring iväg med Alfred M. Sexton, senare direktör i en bomullsfirma, med vilken hon så småningom fick två döttrar. Hon arbetade bl.a. som försäljare och modell innan hon i slutet på 50-talet började studera poesi för Robert Lowell på Boston College. Där mötte hon 1959 Sylvia Plath, vilken kom att utöva stort inflytande på henne. Under åren 1969-72 undervisade hon sedan själv i Boston och 1972 utnämndes hon till professor. Livet igenom plågades hon emellertid av psykisk sjukdom och i likhet med Sylvia Plath begick hon självmord. Källa: Alex författarlexikon
The starry night, by Anne Sexton
(from The complete poems. Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1981.)
That does not keep me from having a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars. Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother.
The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die.
It moves. They are all alive.
Even the moon bulges in its orange irons
to push children, like a god, from its eye.
The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die:
into that rushing beast of the night,
sucked up by that great dragon, to split
from my life with no flag,
no belly,
no cry.
***
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| En replika från 1947 av The Disquieting Muses Originalet målad 1916-18 Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) oljemålning Gianni Mattioli Collection, Milan |
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963), var en amerikansk författare, född i Boston. Fadern, som var professor i zoologi, dog när hon var liten och faderstemat kom senare att bli ett återkommande motiv i hennes lyrik. Modern, som var lärare, uppfostrade ensam barnen, Sylvia och hennes yngre bror. Sin akademiska grundexamen avlade Sylvia Plath vid Smith College, dit hon senare återvände som lärare. 1955 reste hon som Fullbright-stipendiat till England för fortsatta studier vid Cambridge. Under studietiden träffade hon den brittiske lyrikern Ted Hughes, med vilken hon gifte sig 1956. Paret bosatte sig efter Plaths fullgjorda studier och en gemensam vistelse i USA, på den engelska landsbygden.
Sylvia Plath publicerade tidigt dikter och noveller i olika tidningar och tidskrifter. Hon var en försigkommen och framgångsrik student med stora litterära ambitioner. Bland de litterära utmärkelser och priser som hon vann fanns bland annat en sommarvistelse på en populär tidningsredaktion i New York. Källa: Alex författarlexikon
The disquieting muses, by Sylvia Plath
(from The collected poems. New York : Harper & Row, 1981.)
Mother, mother, what illbred aunt
Or what disfigured and unsightly
Cousin did you so unwisely keep
Unasked to my christening, that she
Sent these ladies in her stead
With heads like darning-eggs to nod
And nod and nod at foot and head
And at the left side of my crib?
Mother, who made to order stories
Of Mixie Blackshort the heroic bear,
Mother, whose witches always, always,
Got baked into gingerbread, I wonder
Whether you saw them, whether you said
Words to rid me of those three ladies
Nodding by night around my bed,
Mouthless, eyeless, with stitched bald head.
In the hurricane, when father's twelve
Study windows bellied in
Like bubbles about to break, you fed
My brother and me cookies and Ovaltine
And helped the two of us to choir:
"Thor is angry: boom boom boom!
Thor is angry: we don't care!"
But those ladies broke the panes.
When on tiptoe the schoolgirls danced,
Blinking flashlights like fireflies
And singing the glowworm song, I could
Not lift a foot in the twinkle-dress
But, heavy-footed, stood aside
In the shadow cast by my dismal-headed
Godmothers, and you cried and cried:
And the shadow stretched, the lights went out.
Mother, you sent me to piano lessons
And praised my arabesques and trills
Although each teacher found my touch
Oddly wooden in spite of scales
And the hours of practicing, my ear
Tone-deaf and yes, unteachable.
I learned, I learned, I learned elsewhere,
From muses unhired by you, dear mother,
I woke one day to see you, mother,
Floating above me in bluest air
On a green balloon bright with a million
Flowers and bluebirds that never were
Never, never, found anywhere.
But the little planet bobbed away
Like a soap-bubble as you called: Come here!
And I faced my traveling companions.
Day now, night now, at head, side, feet,
They stand their vigil in gowns of stone,
Faces blank as the day I was born,
Their shadows long in the setting sun
That never brightens or goes down.
And this is the kingdom you bore me to,
Mother, mother. But no frown of mine
Will betray the company I keep.
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