Texas State University Flickr Commons, Unidentified Negatives (1963)
I CANNOT live with you,
It would be life,
And life is over there
Behind the shelfThe sexton keeps the key to,
Putting up
Our life, his porcelain,
Like a cup…So we must keep apart,
You there, I here,
With just the door ajar
That oceans are,
And prayer,
And that pale sustenance,
Despair!
— Emily Dickinson
Maclean’s Magazine (1967)
Unto the boundless Ocean of thy beauty
Runs this poor river, charged with streams of zeal:
Returning thee the tribute of my duty,
Which here my love, my youth, my plaints reveal.
Here I unclasp the book of my charged soul,
Where I have cast th’accounts of all my care:
Here have I summed my sighs, here I enroll
How they were spent for thee; look what they are.
Look on the dear expenses of my youth,
And see how just I reckon with thine eyes:
Examine well thy beauty with my truth,
And cross my cares ere greater sum arise.
Read it sweet maid, though it be done but slightly;
Who can show all his love, doth love but lightly.
— Samuel Daniel, “Delia 1: Unto the boundless Ocean of thy beauty”
Southworth and Hawes, “Miss Hodges of Salem” (ca. 1850)
All … demolish … burn …
I gain control … I suffer …
shameful … O!…
— Alkaios, Fragment From Papyri Oxyrhncus (7th-century BC)
cf. LIFE (1972)
HAMLET: …I did love you once.
OPHELIA: Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
cf. CIO Magazine (1987)
All my past life is mine no more,
The flying hours are gone,
Like transitory dreams giv’n o’er,
Whose images are kept in store
By memory alone.The time that is to come is not;
How can it then be mine?
The present moment’s all my lot;
And that, as fast as it is got,
Phyllis, is only thine.Then talk not of inconstancy,
False hearts, and broken vows;
If I, by miracle, can be
This live-long minute true to thee,
’Tis all that Heav’n allows.
— John Wilmot Earl of Rochester
cf. Microcomputing Magazine (1981)
Think not this paper comes with vain pretense
To move your pity, or to mourn th’ offense.
Too well I know that hard obdurate heart;
No softening mercy there will take my part,
Nor can a woman’s arguments prevail,
When even your patron’s wise example fails.
But this last privilege I still retain;
Th’ oppressed and injured always may complain…
— Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
cf. National Geographic Magazine (1952)
IT ’S all I have to bring to-day,
This, and my heart beside,
This, and my heart, and all the fields,
And all the meadows wide.
Be sure you count, should I forget,—
Some one the sun could tell,—
This, and my heart, and all the bees
Which in the clover dwell.
— Emily Dickinson
Zach Muhlbauer, “Wyeth Eyewear” (2019)
Of this worlds Theatre in which we stay,
My love lyke the Spectator ydly sits
Beholding me that all the pageants play,
Disguysing diversly my troubled wits.
Sometimes I joy when glad occasion fits,
And mask in myrth lyke to a Comedy:
Soone after when my joy to sorrow flits,
I waile and make my woes a Tragedy.
Yet she beholding me with constant eye,
Delights not in my merth nor rues my smart:
But when I laugh she mocks, and when I cry
She laughes, and hardens evermore her hart.
What then can move her? if not merth nor mone,
She is no woman, but a sencelesse stone.
— Edmund Spenser, “Amoretti LIV: Of this worlds Theatre in which we stay”
Maclean’s Magazine (1969)
But Minerva resolved to help Ulysses, so she bound the ways of all the winds except one, and made them lie quite still; but she roused a good stiff breeze from the North that should lay the waters till Ulysses reached the land of the Phaeacians where he would be safe…
While he was thus in two minds a wave caught him and took him with such force against the rocks that he would have been smashed and torn to pieces if Minerva had not shown him what to do…
Here poor Ulysses would have certainly perished even in spite of his own destiny, if Minerva had not helped him to keep his wits about him…
Then, as one who lives alone in the country, far from any neighbor, hides a brand as fire-seed in the ashes to save himself from having to get a light elsewhere, even so did Ulysses cover himself up with leaves; and Minerva shed a sweet sleep upon his eyes, closed his eyelids, and made him lose all memories of his sorrows.
Photograph by Les Anderson via Unsplash
I WHISPERED, ‘I am too young,’
And then, ‘I am old enough’;
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
‘Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair,’
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.Oh, love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away,
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.
— Yeats, The Young Man’s Song
cf. Videos by mohamed Hassan (storm) and Moshe Harosh (woman) both via Pixabay (edited collage by me)
THE LARGEST fire ever known
Occurs each afternoon,
Discovered is without surprise,
Proceeds without concern:
Consumes, and no report to men,
An Occidental town,
Rebuilt another morning
To be again burned down.
— Emily Dickinson
from the Toni Frissell collection, Library of Congress (1946)
She didn’t tell me there were rocks
Under the waves
Right off the shore…
Horst Ehricht, “Spring!” (Maclean’s Magazine, 1971)
Last night I was in the garden till 11 o’clock. It was the sweetest night that e’er I saw. The garden looked so well and the jasmine smelt beyond all perfume. And yet I was not pleased. The place had all the charms it used to have when I was most satisfied with it, and had you been there I should have liked it much more than ever I did; but that not being, it was no more to me than the next field…
— Letter from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, Sunday, July 10th, 1653
Toni Frissell, “Woman wearing headscarf seated at table with drink” (detail) (ca. 1940)
I NEVER saw that you did painting need…
— Sonnet LXXXIII
Thomas J. O’Halloran, “Medlars – new computer to keep medical information” (1964)
Now I’ve found my heaven
From the neck on up
You’re a perfect eleven
From the neck on up…
cf. Elmer Underwood, “Gossip at a wayside inn at Botten…” (ca. 1905)
And Benedick, love on; I will requite thee…
— Much Ado About Nothing
National Geographic Magazine (1948)
I waited all night, I remember that
smoked a cigarette
watched TV
went out and saw some friends
drove by your house
went to a bar and had a beer
got back home and tried to sleep…
— J.S.
I knocked the phone off the nightstand
And the operator said, “May I help you please?”
and I said “No thanks, baby tonight there ain’t no help for me —
see I just had a bad dream, that’s all that’s wrong with me
see I just had a bad dream.”
Thomas J. O’Halloran, “Young people working in Library” (1964)
From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive.
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire.
They are the books, the arts, the academes
That show, contain, and nourish all the world.
Else none at all in ought proves excellent.
— Love’s Labor’s Lost
cf. Warren K. Leffler, “George Mason College, Va.” (detail) (1964)
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
— Hamlet
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
cf. Gold Bell Catalog (1963)
cf. Richard Avedon, “Carmen, Homage To Munkacsi, Coat By Cardin, Place François-Premier, Paris” (ca. 1957) and Horst Ehricht, “All the rage in Paris” (Maclean’s Magazine, 1977)
cf. Screen Magazine (2003)
BENEDICK:
Come, come, we are friends. Let’s have a
dance ere we are married, that we may lighten our
own hearts and our wives’ heels.LEONATO:
We’ll have dancing afterward.BENEDICK:
First, of my word! Therefore play, music.—
Prince, thou art sad. Get thee a wife, get thee a wife…
— Much Ado About Nothing
W.E. Daugherty, “Solitary” (ca. 1904)
BEHOLD her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
— Wordsworth, The Solitary Reaper
I’m thinking of you Mary Anne…
cf. photographs of Frances Benjamin Johnston by Frances Benjamin Johnston (ca. 1888)
Until You Come Back To Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do)
Esther Bubley, “Girl sitting alone in the Sea Grill…” (1943)
I’ve been made blue
I’ve been lied to
When will I be loved?
cf. Handy (Jam) Organization, “Consuming Women (Women as Consumers)” (ca. 1967)
Play That Funky Music (Jul Nako remix)
Garry Winogrand, Untitled (ca. 1965)
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice…
— Robert Frost, Fire and Ice
You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine
cf. Arthur Murray Dance Studio television commercial (ca. 1970)
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet…
— Maya Angelou, Phenomenal Woman
cf. Library of Congress, “King’s Highway (Remains)”
here and gone
found and lost…
— J.S.
cf. Courier Company, Theatrical poster (1899)
She is neither pink nor pale,
And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.She has more hair than she needs;
In the sun ’tis a woe to me!
And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.She loves me all that she can,
And her ways to my ways resign;
But she was not made for any man,
And she never will be all mine.
— Edna St. Vincent Millay, Witch-Wife
LIFE Magazine, 1966
I would never see any thing but Pleasure in your eyes, love on your lips, and Happiness in your steps…
— Letter from Keats to Fanny Brawne, July, 1819
cf. Schlesinger Library, “Midnight pranks of college girls” (1903)
But you can’t see you’re still running wild
Oh Madalaine!
Now don’t run away from me…
Maclean’s Magazine (1967)
Unto the boundless Ocean of thy beauty
Runs this poor river, charged with streams of zeal:
Returning thee the tribute of my duty,
Which here my love, my youth, my plaints reveal.
Here I unclasp the book of my charged soul,
Where I have cast th’accounts of all my care:
Here have I summed my sighs, here I enroll
How they were spent for thee; look what they are.
Look on the dear expenses of my youth,
And see how just I reckon with thine eyes:
Examine well thy beauty with my truth,
And cross my cares ere greater sum arise.
Read it sweet maid, though it be done but slightly;
Who can show all his love, doth love but lightly.
— Samuel Daniel, Delia 1: Unto the boundless Ocean of thy beauty
Educational Screen Magazine, 1954
Sometimes she tries to hide it from me
But when she starts talking over my head
It makes me dizzy…
Warren K. Leffler, “Couple listening to radio” (1957)
fragment
a hundred windings of the heart —
— J.S.
David Falconer, “One Family of Four Moved Into the Attic of Their Home…” (1973)
I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I?
Twentyeight I was. She twentythree.
When we left Lombard street west something changed.
Could never like it again after Rudy.
Can’t bring back time. Like holding water in your hand.
Would you go back to then? Just beginning then. Would you?
—James Joyce, Ulysses
cf. photograph by Tim Gouw via Unsplash and Northeastern University Course Catalog, 1980-82
simultaneity
kaleidoscope,
I see you
through
two
eyes
one
now
one
then
—J.S.
cf. Thomas A. Morgan, “After The Dip” (edit) (ca. 1904)
And all those acts which Deity supreme
Doth ease its heart of love in.—I am gone
Away from my own bosom: I have left
My strong identity, my real self,
Somewhere between the throne, and where I sit
Here on this spot of earth. Search, Thea, search!
Open thine eyes eterne, and sphere them round
Upon all space: space starr’d, and lorn of light;
Space region’d with life-air; and barren void;
Spaces of fire, and all the yawn of hell.—
Search, Thea, search! and tell me, if thou seest
A certain shape or shadow, making way
With wings or chariot fierce to repossess
A heaven he lost erewhile…
—John Keats, Hyperion
“Missing” by Everything But The Girl
The Finnish Museum of Photography, “At Hotel Aulanko’s Cafe Terrace” (ca. 1950’s)
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe…
—The Waste Land
Read my palm and tell me why do lovers come and go…
cf. Marie Denise Villers, “Marie Joséphine Charlotte du Val d’Ognes” (1801) and
video by Electric_Cat via Pixabay
cf. Library Company of Philadelphia, “Frankford Creek and Vicinity, Winter” (ca. late 19th century) and
photograph by Peter Gonzalez via Unsplash
Ashes denote that fire was;
Respect the grayest pile
For the departed creature’s sake
That hovered there awhile.Fire exists the first in light,
And then consolidates,—
Only the chemist can disclose
Into what carbonates.
Emily Dickinson
cf. unidentified photographer, “Head-and-shoulders profile portrait of young woman…” (ca. 1900)
“Don’t Know Much” (with Aaron Neville) by Linda Ronstadt
cf. photograph by Will Wilson (edited) via Unsplash
“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string…”
—Emerson
cf. LIFE, 1964
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself…
–Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
cf. MPO Productions, “Design for Dreaming” (1956) (Digital Edit)
David Falconer, “Reading and Studying by Kerosene Lamps…” (1973)
The gaslight shone yellow through the frosted transom above the door of Number 31. Gordon took out his key and fished about in the keyhole — in that kind of house the key never quite fits the lock. The darkish little hallway — in reality it was only a passage — smelt of dishwater, cabbage, rag mats, and bedroom slops. Gordon glanced at the japanned tray on the hall-stand. No letters, of course. He had told himself not to hope for a letter, and nevertheless had continued to hope. A stale feeling, not quite a pain, settled upon his breast. Rosemary might have written! It was four days now since she had written…
—George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying
cf. Corson Hirschfeld, “Sporting Life” (Cincinnati Magazine, 1977)
Morris looked vaguely round him, and gave a deep sigh. “Well, I was in hopes that we might still have been friends.”
“I meant to tell you, by my aunt, in answer to your message — if you had waited for an answer — that it was unnecessary for you to come in that hope.”
—Henry James, Washington Square
“You weren’t so nice to me last night.”
“How could it have mattered then?”
Silence for a moment. Then:
“However — I want to see you.”
“I want to see you, too.”
“Suppose I don’t go to Southampton, and come into town this afternoon?”
“No — I don’t think this afternoon.”
“Very well.”
“It’s impossible this afternoon. Various ——”
We talked like that for a while, and then abruptly we weren’t talking any longer. I don’t know which of us hung up with a sharp click, but I know I didn’t care. I couldn’t have talked to her across a tea-table that day if I never talked to her again in this world.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Left: H.E. Peck, “Cheer Up Lassie” (ca. 1908);
Right: H. E. Peck, “On Norway’s Coast” (ca. 1908)
The largest fire ever known
Occurs each afternoon,
Discovered is without surprise,
Proceeds without concern:
Consumes, and no report to men…
—Emily Dickinson
cf. J. Craig Annan, “Au Jardin” (ca. 1899)
A crowd will gather, and not know it walks the very street
Whereon a thing once walked that seemed a burning cloud.
—Yeats, Fallen Majesty (excerpt)
She’s a cloud
That hangs above my world…
Photograph by Les Anderson via Unsplash
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire…
—T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Tookapic, “Woman Wearing Jacket Sitting On Concrete During Night Time” (via pexels.com)
Hyperion arose, and on the stars
Lifted his curved lids, and kept them wide
Until it ceas’d; and still he kept them wide:
And still they were the same bright, patient stars.
Then with a slow incline of his broad breast,
Like to a diver in the pearly seas,
Forward he stoop’d over the airy shore,
And plung’d all noiseless into the deep night.
—Keats, Hyperion (excerpt)
Elton John – “Love Lies Bleeding”
LIFE, 1972
O My Luve’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June…
—Robert Burns
Trevor T. White, “The Alley” (ca. 1938)
Transit Of Venus
half in sun
half in shadow
you smiled
the last time I saw you
turning away
eppur sim
u
o
v
e
—J.S.
cf. photograph by Alice Moore via Unsplash
“You have a soul in you of rare quality, an artist’s nature; never let it starve for lack of what it needs.”
—Proust, Swann’s Way
John Sapiro 