her sails filled with dream

2012-01-29T01:34:00.000-08:00

Hollyhocks and Blue Clouds
Werner Drewes

2012-01-18T00:57:00.000-08:00

The Cuckoo Calls from the Bamboo Grove

The cuckoo calls from the bamboo grove.
Cherry blossoms litter the path.
A girl walks under the full moon,
Trailing her silk skirts in the grass.

- Anonymous (Six Dynasties)
(Translated by Kenneth Rexroth)

2012-01-12T00:12:00.000-08:00

Die ferne Insel (The Distant Island), 1906-08
Oskar Kokoschka

2012-01-08T00:16:00.000-08:00

Cup of Coffee and Cigarette, 1950
John Gutmann

2012-01-08T00:13:00.000-08:00

Coffee, 1959
Richard Diebenkorn

2012-01-04T00:38:00.000-08:00

Gray Room

Although you sit in a room that is gray,
Except for the silver
Of the straw-paper,
And pick
At your pale white gown;
Or lift one of the green beads
Of your necklace,
To let it fall;
Or gaze at your green fan
Printed with the red branches of a red willow;
Or, with one finger,
Move the leaf in the bowl-
The leaf that has fallen from the branches of the forsythia
Beside you . . .
What is all this?
I know how furiously your heart is beating.

Wallace Stevens

2011-12-11T02:23:00.000-08:00

Daylight at Russell's Corners, 1944
George Ault

2011-11-28T01:39:00.000-08:00

Amelie Rives, Princess Troubetzkoy, 1904
Pierre Troubetzkoy
(Printed by Alvin Langdon Coburn)

2011-11-14T23:46:00.000-08:00

The Sound of the Light

I hear sheep running on the path of broken limestone
through brown curled leaves fallen early from walnut limbs
at the end of a summer how light the bony
flutter of their passage I can
hear their coughing their calling and wheezing even the warm
greased wool rubbing on the worn walls I hear them
passing passing in the hollow lane and there is still time

the shuffle of black shoes of women climbing
stone ledges to church keeps flowing up the dazzling hill
around the grassy rustle of voices
on the far side of a slatted shutter
and the small waves go on whispering on the shingle
in the heat of an hour without wind it is Sunday
none of the sentences begins or ends there is time

again the unbroken rumble of trucks and the hiss
of brakes roll upward out of the avenue
I forget what season they are exploding through
what year the drill on the sidewalk is smashing
it is the year in which you are sitting there as you are
in the morning speaking to me and I hear
you through the burning day and I touch you
to be sure and there is time there is still time

W.S. Merwin

2011-11-12T23:56:00.000-08:00

Tilly Losch, ca. 1925
Trude Fleischmann

2011-11-11T02:50:00.000-08:00

Orange Sweater, 1955
Elmer Bischoff

2011-10-30T02:07:00.000-07:00

My Neighbors, 1929
Emil Armin

2011-10-09T02:53:00.000-07:00

Two Women in a Garden, 1888
Camille Pissarro

2011-10-07T01:59:00.000-07:00

Woman with an Umbrella at the Seashore, 1905
Henri Matisse

2011-09-30T02:04:00.000-07:00

Alice in the Cities (1974)
Wim Wenders

2011-09-25T02:25:00.000-07:00

Fête, Paris , 1899
Eugène Atget

2011-09-21T00:56:00.000-07:00

Red Square Girls, Moscow, 1981
Boris Savelev

2011-09-14T00:00:00.001-07:00

Untitled (Ultramarine), 1974
Robert Motherwell

2011-09-09T23:42:00.000-07:00

Woman Buttoning Her Shoes, 1915
Egon Schiele

2011-09-09T23:34:00.000-07:00

View from a Balcony, 1945
Albert Marquet

2011-08-30T01:43:00.000-07:00

Reflection in Oval Mirror, Home Place, 1947
Wright Morris

2011-08-29T02:13:00.000-07:00

The Door

When she came suddenly in
It seemed the door could never close again,
Nor even did she close it-she, she-
The room lay open to a visiting sea
Which no door could restrain.

Yet when at last she smiled, tilting her head
To take her leave of me,
Where she had smiled, instead
There was a dark door closing endlessly,
The waves receded.

Robert Graves

2011-08-28T02:16:00.000-07:00

Glass Chandelier, 1969
Elmer Bischoff

2011-08-15T01:17:00.000-07:00

Untitled (Jane Ninas in Front of Parked Cars in French Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana), February-March, 1935
Walker Evans

2011-08-14T02:07:00.000-07:00

Untitled (Boulevard Corner), 1981
Garry Winogrand

2011-08-12T23:39:00.000-07:00

Whitestone Bridge, 1939-40
Ralston Crawford

2011-08-12T00:54:00.000-07:00

Room at the Top (1959)
Jack Clayton

2011-08-08T01:09:00.000-07:00

Buffalo '66 (1998)
Vincent Gallo

2011-07-31T03:09:00.000-07:00

Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1914
Arnold Genthe

2011-07-31T02:47:00.000-07:00

Yellow Circle, 1921
László Moholy-Nagy

2011-07-23T00:11:00.000-07:00

Seville, Spain, 1930
Martin Munkácsi

2011-07-16T03:19:00.000-07:00

Girls Braiding Straw, 1906
Ernest Bieler

2011-07-16T01:58:00.000-07:00

The Tree of Life (2011)
Terrence Malick

2011-06-29T00:06:00.000-07:00

The Kitchen Sink, 1919
Margaret Watkins

2011-06-05T01:26:00.000-07:00

Eleanor, Port Huron, 1942

Eleanor, 1948
Harry Callahan

2011-05-09T02:09:00.000-07:00

Nude Figure, 1969
Stanley Cosgrove

2011-04-22T02:20:00.000-07:00

Lena, Moscow, 1988

Girl in Box, Leningrad, 1981

Red Girl, Czernowitz, 1987
Boris Savelev

2011-04-22T02:09:00.000-07:00

Barbara, c. 1920s

Barbara Sitting in Chair, c. 1930
Artur Nikodem

2011-04-09T02:17:00.000-07:00

Nothing Now Astonishes

A month of vigilance draws to its close
With silence of snow and the Northern lights
In longed-for wordlessness.

This rainbow spanning our two worlds
Becomes more than a bridge between them:
They fade into geography.

Variegated with the seven colours
We twist them into skeins for hide and seek
In a lovers' labyrinth.

Can I be astonished at male trembling
Of sea-horizons as you lean towards them?
Nothing now astonishes.

You change, from a running drop of pure gold
On a silver salver, to the white doe
In nut-groves harbouring.

Let me be changed now to an eight-petalled
Scarlet anemone that will never strain
For the circling butterfly.

Rest, my loud heart. Your too exultant flight
Had raised the wing-beat to a roar
Drowning seraphic whispers.

Robert Graves

2011-04-01T02:14:00.000-07:00

Springfield, Massachusetts, 1973
Mitch Epstein

2011-03-18T03:27:00.000-07:00

Robson St., 1957
Fred Herzog

2011-03-18T03:24:00.000-07:00

Bright Light at Russell's Corners, 1946
George Ault

2011-03-18T03:02:00.000-07:00

2011-03-06T02:06:00.000-08:00

About the Party

I loved seeing you the other night
(and I think everyone noticed!)
which was the first time I'm estimating
since the Oak Street Psychic Fair
when I first saw your ears
as the two beautiful pink wheels they are
and your powerful boyfriend unnecessarily claimed
that I only spread unhappiness with my harmonica playing.

People see each other all the time
and they can't always figure out how to act,
so it sometimes seems as if the dandelions
growing silently behind the high school
are the only truly outstanding reaction
to existence,
and perhaps because I thought
I had no argument with the world
until the backyard mosquitoes
started penalizing my hands
and Wayne of Wayne's Hair Systems
and Jimmy Food Hill combined
to not let me near you,
it came as such a horrible shock to notice
you looked so damn beautiful
beneath Bob's silver maples
that I about shit my heart out.

David Berman

2011-02-21T03:13:00.000-08:00

Frida Kahlo on the Train to Mexico, On Route, 1932
Lucienne Bloch

2011-02-18T23:49:00.000-08:00

Pink Cyclamen, ca. 1870s
Fidelia Bridges

2011-02-12T03:13:00.000-08:00

Berenice Abbott, New York City, ca. 1930
Walker Evans

2011-02-07T01:50:00.000-08:00

Doves, 1864
Charles Chaplin

2011-02-07T01:40:00.000-08:00

Still Walking (2008)
Hirokazu Koreeda

2011-01-23T01:56:00.000-08:00

Landscape, 1938
Stanley Cosgrove

2011-01-20T02:00:00.000-08:00

Portrait de Raymonde Vaseur, ca. 1935-36
Moise Kisling

2010-12-25T01:13:00.000-08:00

WORDS FOR THE WIND

1
Love, love, a lily's my care,
She's sweeter than a tree.
Loving, I use the air
Most lovingly: I breathe;
Mad in the wind I wear
Myself as I should be,
All's even with the odd,
My brother the vine is glad.

Are flower and seed the same?
What do the great dead say?
Sweet Phoebe, she's my theme:
She sways whenever I sway.
"O love me while I am,
You green thing in my way!"
I cried, and the birds came down
And made my song their own.

Motion can keep me still:
She kissed me out of thought
As a lovely substance will;
She wandered; I did not:
I stayed, and light fell
Across her pulsing throat;
I stared, and a garden stone
Slowly became the moon.

The shallow stream runs slack;
The wind creaks slowly by;
Out of a nestling's beak
Comes a tremulous cry
I cannot answer back;
A shape from deep in the eye-
That woman I saw in a stone-
Keeps pace when I walk alone.

2
The sun declares the earth;
The stones leap in the stream;
On a wide plain, beyond
The far stretch of a dream,
A field breaks like the sea;
The wind's white with her name,
And I walk with the wind.

The dove's my will today.
She sways, half in the sun:
Rose, easy on a stem,
One with the sighing vine,
One to be merry with,
And pleased to meet the moon.
She likes wherever I am.

Passion's enough to give
Shape to a random joy:
I cry delight: I know
The root, the core of a cry.
Swan-heart, arbutus-calm,
She moves when time is shy:
Love has a thing to do.

A fair thing grows more fair;
The green, the springing green
Makes an intenser day
Under the rising moon;
I smile, no mineral man;
I bear, but not alone,
The burden of this joy.

3
Under a southern wind,
The birds and fishes move
North, in a single stream;
The sharp stars swing around;
I get a step beyond
The wind, and there I am,
I'm odd and full of love.

Wisdom, where is it found?-
Those who embrace, believe.
Whatever was, still is,
Says a song tied to a tree.
Below, on the ferny ground,
In rivery air, at ease,
I walk with my true love.

What time's my heart? I care.
I cherish what I have
Had of the temporal:
I am no longer young
But the winds and waters are;
What falls away will fall;
All things bring me to love.

4
The breath of a long root,
The shy perimeter
Of the unfolding rose,
The green, the altered leaf,
The oyster's weeping foot,
And the incipient star-
Are part of what she is.
She wakes the ends of life.

Being myself, I sing
The soul's immediate joy.
Light, light, where's my repose?
A wind wreathes round a tree.
A thing is done: a thing
Body and spirit know
When I do what she does:
Creaturely creature, she!-

I kiss her moving mouth,
Her swart hilarious skin;
She breaks my breath in half;
She frolicks like a beast;
And I dance round and round,
A fond and foolish man,
And see and suffer myself
In another being, at last.

Theodore Roethke

2010-12-24T23:56:00.000-08:00

Rockefeller Center Skating Rink at Night, New York City, 1950
Arthur Lavine

2010-12-22T00:18:00.000-08:00

Untitled (Self-Portrait with Elizabeth), March 27, 1921
André Kertész

2010-12-22T00:02:00.000-08:00

Climates (2006)
Nuri Bilge Ceylan

2010-12-18T23:29:00.001-08:00

2010-12-18T23:05:00.000-08:00

Hunger (1966)
Henning Carlsen

2010-12-14T01:21:00.000-08:00

Macaria, fotonovela para la revista “Capricho”, ca. 1970
Antonio Caballero

2010-11-26T03:12:00.000-08:00

Riverside Drive at 83rd St., New York, 1914
Paul Strand

2010-11-21T03:18:00.000-08:00

Bareback Riders, 1886
W.H. Brown

2010-11-11T01:52:00.000-08:00

Unable to sleep, I spent the whole night seeing her figure all
   by itself
And seeing it always in ways different from when I see her in
   person.
I fashion thoughts from my memory of how she is when she
   talks to me,
And in each thought she's a variation on her likeness.
To love is to think.
And from thinking of her so much, I almost forget to feel.
I don't really know what I want, even from her, and she's all I
   think of.
My distraction is as large as life.
When I feel like being with her,
I almost prefer not being with her,
So as not to have to leave her afterwards.
And I prefer thinking about her, because I'm a little afraid of
   her as she really is.
I don't really know what I want, and I don't even want to
   know what I want.
All I want is to think her.
I don't ask anything of anyone, not even of her, except to let
   me think.

Fernando Pessoa
July 10,1930

2010-11-10T01:29:00.000-08:00

The Yellow Curtain, ca. 1893
Edouard Vuillard

2010-11-02T01:31:00.000-07:00

Allegretto, ca. 1921
Cleo Damianakes

2010-10-31T00:53:00.000-07:00

Cray, ca. 1883-84
William Morris

2010-10-29T02:40:00.000-07:00

Back of a Woman, ca. 1857
Shepard Alonzo Mount

2010-10-16T15:28:00.000-07:00

Vera Karalli

The Dying Swan (1917)
Yevgeni Bauer

2010-10-11T01:23:00.000-07:00

Jupes
René Maltête

2010-10-09T02:45:00.000-07:00

Over the snowdrift's hard crust
Into your white, mysterious house,
We walked in tender silence,
Both hushed.
And sweeter to me than all songs sung
Is this dream fulfilled,
The gentle clinking of your spurs
And the swaying of branches we've brushed.

January 1917
Anna Akhmatova

2010-10-06T01:32:00.000-07:00

Untitled (Fashion, Paris), 1933
Ilse Bing

2010-10-06T01:28:00.000-07:00

At the Milliners, 1882
Edgar Degas

2010-09-29T01:13:00.000-07:00

A Study Head, 1900
Eva Watson-Schütze
(from Camera Notes, Vol. 4 No. 3, January 1901)

2010-09-29T01:03:00.000-07:00

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1964)
Sergei Parajanov

2010-09-27T02:37:00.000-07:00

Untitled (Store Window), 1981
Garry Winogrand

2010-09-26T02:49:00.000-07:00

New Moon, 1980
Alex Colville

2010-09-22T00:39:00.000-07:00

Le Baiser, Paris, 1936
Brassaï

2010-09-15T00:37:00.000-07:00

Self-Portrait with Elizabeth, 1921
André Kertész

2010-09-13T01:38:00.000-07:00

Femme aux Cartes, 1930
Florence Henri

2010-09-06T03:04:00.000-07:00

The Prairie, 1917
Laura Gilpin

2010-09-06T02:55:00.000-07:00

American Interior, 1934

Still Life, 1925
Charles Sheeler

2010-09-04T02:24:00.000-07:00

2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1966)
Jean-Luc Godard

2010-08-30T02:05:00.000-07:00

Two Lovers, ca. 1629-30
Riza `Abbasi

2010-08-25T23:52:00.000-07:00

Washington, D.C. (A radio is company for this girl in her boardinghouse room), Jan. 1943
Esther Bubley

2010-08-17T01:21:00.000-07:00

Untitled, c. 1867
Julia Margaret Cameron

2010-08-17T00:28:00.000-07:00

La Collectionneuse (1967)
Eric Rohmer

2010-08-16T01:24:00.000-07:00

Landscape, ca. 1835-45
Circle of Carl Rottmann

2010-08-06T02:01:00.000-07:00

Woman Holding Hand Drum (postcard)
Nakazawa Hiromitsu, 1874-1964

2010-07-31T02:43:00.000-07:00

Amarcord (1973)
Federico Fellini

2010-07-31T02:41:00.000-07:00

Day of Wrath (1943)
Carl Theodor Dreyer

2010-07-31T02:39:00.000-07:00

The White Sheik (1952)
Federico Fellini

2010-07-31T02:36:00.000-07:00

Variety Lights (1950)
Federico Fellini

2010-07-23T02:48:00.000-07:00

Window, New York, ca. 1939-45

Window, Bergdorf Goodman, New York, ca. 1939-45

Reflection, Fifty-Seventh Street, New York, ca. 1939-40
Lisette Model

2010-07-16T02:44:00.000-07:00

Judit, 1934
Imre Kinszki

2010-07-16T02:23:00.000-07:00

Can-Can, Moulin Rouge, Paris, 1931
Ilse Bing

2010-07-07T00:52:00.001-07:00

I will root out this day from your memory,
So that your helplessly hazy glance will ask:
Where did I see Persian lilac,
And swallows, and a little wooden house?

Oh, how often you will remember
The sudden anguish of unnamed desire,
And search, in drifting dream towns,
For the street that isn't on the map!

At the sight of every chance letter,
At the sound of a voice from a half-opened door,
You will think: "She herself
Has come to dispel my disbelief."

April 4, 1915
Tsarskoye Selo

Anna Akhmatova

2010-07-06T00:38:00.000-07:00

John and Mary (1969)
Peter Yates

2010-07-03T02:58:00.000-07:00

Girl of the Bangs-Phelps Family, ca. 1848
Erastus Salisbury Field

2010-06-26T02:02:00.000-07:00

Untitled (Elevator), 1981
Garry Winogrand

2010-06-25T01:52:00.000-07:00

Portrait of a Lady, ca. 1898
Theodora W. Thayer

2010-06-23T00:32:00.000-07:00

Eaton's Neck, Long Island, 1872

Sunset Sky, 1872
John Frederick Kensett

2010-06-17T01:07:00.000-07:00

New York City, ca. 1929-39
Walker Evans