I always miss Wallace Stevens’ birthday—October 2—so this year I’m prematurely tipping my hat to the great poet. Thinking of him this evening, I spent some time rifling around in the archives. I do love him so. And he loved all the good things: snow, poetry, honey, walking, ravens, tea… I found a funny site [...]
http://www.encyclopediaoftheexquisite.com/?p=1305
I love a certain kind of macabre /fetishistic museum show, like “Shelley’s Ghost,” currently on at the New York Public Library. In conjunction with the Oxford University, curators have gathered together ephemera and relics from the poet’s life—his coral and gold baby-rattle, a copy of his first poem, about a cat, as well as many [...]
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It’s been too long! I just wanted to drop a line here on an article about Keats and Shelley meeting at Lake Geneva in the New York Times (See it here), as described in Encyclopedia of the Exquisite’s entry on Tempests. The two loved sailing, and even went in on a small boat together. Unfortunately, [...]
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Every time I go to Paris’ Jardin de Luxembourg I have to make sure that it’s there—Rilke’s beloved elephant, going round and round on the park’s carousel, as described in Encyclopedia of the Exquisite. The wooden carousel, created in 1879, were installed in the park in 1904. Poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was hypnotized by [...]
http://www.encyclopediaoftheexquisite.com/?p=1141
I have a cartoonish sense of the beatniks, the kind of pop-informed cliche vision—people in black turtlenecks snapping in some 50s era coffeehouse—that poet Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972) would have hated. Patchen pioneered the poetry-jazz movement of the late 50s, donning his bright red, second-hand sport coat to perform his poetry accompanied by a jazz quartet [...]
http://www.encyclopediaoftheexquisite.com/?p=1036
With the fashion collections just around the corner, it seems an appropriate moment to pay homage to Charles Baudelaire, fashion’s first poet, who recognized that fashion is integral to portraying modern times in art, and who swans his way through Encyclopedia of the Exquisite. “What poet would dare in the depiction of the pleasure caused [...]
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Watch Royal Shakespeare Company’s Trevor Nunn school one of his peers in how to read a Shakespeare sonnet—here, Sonnet 138. Each sonnet is like a soliloquy, he explains. The results of his efforts are remarkable. Thanks to Nico for passing this on. The clip is from British TV circa 1979. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YLhu_f4Pwg&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
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A stark wooden vitrine showcases a stunning work by the minimalist sculptor Carl Andre at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, “one hundred sonnets, I…flower.” To be honest, I didn’t know much about Andre as of three days ago. (And I wish I hadn’t googled him today.) I went to Marfa for the divine Judds and [...]
http://www.encyclopediaoftheexquisite.com/?p=303
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tnV6NunQgw[/youtube]A lovely sunny picnic yesterday, and snow today. All I can say is, come on, haste thee, nymph. I’m dying for spring. So this ridiculously spring-y song is a classic summons to the season, with words taken from John Milton’s 1645 lyric poem L’Allegro, an ode to the goddess Mirth, and set to music by [...]
http://www.encyclopediaoftheexquisite.com/?p=156
