Trouble in Mind

a soulful version...

REGIME DE VIVRE

I rise at eleven, I dine about two,
I get drunk before seven, and the next thing I do,
I send for my whore, when for fear of a clap,
I spend in her hand, and I spew in her lap;
Then we quarrel and scold, till I fall fast asleep,
When the bitch growing bold, to my pocket does creep.

Then slyly she leaves me, and to revenge the affront,
At once she bereaves me of money and cunt.
If by chance then I wake, hot-headed and drunk,
What a coil do I make for the loss of my punk!
I storm and I roar, and I fall in a rage.
And missing my whore, I bugger my page.
Then crop-sick all morning I rail at my men,
And in bed I lie yawning till eleven again.

attributed to Lord John Wilmot, 1647-1680

Poets in the Griffintown Cultural Corridor

I just got included in this event, part of the Montreal Highlights Festival (Nuit blanche à Montréal), which takes place in several locations around town. If the schedule goes well, I'll be reading between 2:50 and 3pm. Others on the bill: Carolyn Marie Souaid, Celine Pitre, Endre Farkas, Erika White, Ian Ferrier, Throw Poetry Collective, and more.  (Click on poster to see large.)

HAMMER THIS HEART

Hammer this heart any way you like
For the right ringing sounds
Spread like water
Over the dry listening dead.

- Jalal-ud-Din Rumi

Three pictures of Marilyn Munroe, previously cached away in a private collection for nearly 40 years, were released to the public for the first time this week.  Above, the best of the lot -- MM visits poet Carl Sandburg in 1961.  You can read and see more here.

"Let there be commerce between us."

A cafe in Toronto, near Dundas & Bathurst Sts.

J. W. Waterhouse

Last week we went to the J.W. Waterhouse exhibit, at the Musee des Beaux Arts here in Montreal – a huge, travelling retrospective that has done much to revive his work in the public eye.  I highly recommend this show, which runs till the end of this week. In all, we spent about two and a half hours enjoying the work of this British 19th C. master.

The renewed fascination with this work suggests something afoot in the zeitgeist, a return of interest in pictorial representation and in artistic interpretations of our mythological and religious past. It also, I daresay, partakes of the decadence of our own peculiar time.  All those thinly clad nymphs and cherubs rendered by Waterhouse and others served as softcore porn for a certain class of wealthy, repressed Victorian gentlemen. (The above doesn't quite serve as an example; you would have to go to the show to see what I mean!) His repetitive use of one, idealized model -- whose svelte figure conforms more closely to today's standards of beauty than say the women of Rubens or Renoir -- served as both his signature and to trivialize him. Nevertheless, paintings like The Lady of Shalott, above, are luminous masterpieces.

One can see why the post-WWI avant guarde -- a movement I very much appreciate, actually -- were so strenuous in their denunciations of this kind of work: would hate break the news to them today, but most of their own work doesn’t hold a candle to it.

For those who want to view and learn more about Waterhouse's art, check out this highly informative virtual tour put on by the curator.