R.M. Engelhardt's Blog: Burn Brightly
September 28, 2024
June 1, 2015
A WRITERS ADVICE
Poetry and cigarettes
May save your soul,
Or what once
Someone told me
Before I grew old,
And scotch and women?
It’s all the same,
For these four things
Shall keep you quite sane
But now that I’m older
And wiser for wear
I know it’s only love
That keeps our souls here.
For words
Might be wisdom
And the words may be true
But love is more
Beautiful and
Far wiser than you
(shall ever ever be)
~ R.M.
May 30, 2015
The spirit lives as long as someone who lives remembers you
“The spirit lives as long as someone who lives remembers you”
An angel goes to her rest,
Never more to suffer.
God brings her soul to Heaven.
Earth buries what she left behind.
Lo, though we cry for her sleep.
Alive, shall she always remain.
~ Unknown
________________
“Death steals everything except our stories.”
~ Jim Harrison
__________________
RIP
May 20, 2015
Shakespeare’s Sonnets Published Today In 1609
Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609)
Shakespeare’s Sonnets, quarto published by Thomas Thorpe, London, 1609
“Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.”
~ William Shakespeare
May 18, 2015
Ian Curtis: The Lost Lyrics…Poems By
Gone 35 years ago today…
Originally posted on R.M. ENGELHARDT:
Ian Curtis put an end to his life the night of May 18, 1980, two days before the roadshow to the United States. The lead singer of Joy Division played “The Idiot” of Iggy Pop in his pickup and hung himself in his kitchen in Macclesfield, leaving a short note: “This moment I would want to be dead, I simply cannot take it anymore”. In these few words, the enormity of a brilliant mind came to an end. It took him maybe few seconds, to tight the rope around his neck, deciding that this world is not enough for him. It took him only few seconds to decide that he would be better off someplace else, away from human cynicism.
an Curtis’ writings condemn cynicism, the lack of ethics, the autocratic greed of the Western world, and the secret nature of insight. For Curtis’ ability to integrate anything together and…
View original 1,222 more words
May 13, 2015
Chapter & Verse: On poetry and kitsch
Originally posted on Johns Hopkins University Press Blog:
With the Modern Language Association’s 2014 meeting now in full-swing, we’re pleased to publish a second installment of Chapter & Verse today. This post draws from Daniel Tiffany’s work discussing the idea and history of “kitsch” as it relates to poetry.
“Once upon a time, long before it had been reduced to a synonym for mediocrity in the arts, the term ‘kitsch’ functioned as a lightning rod in debates about mass culture and the fate of modernism confronting the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1920’s and 1930’s. For a word now applied quite casually to trivial and spurious things, ‘kitsch’ has a surprising history of provoking alarm and extreme reactions.”— From My Silver Planet: A Secret History of Poetry and Kitsch, by Daniel Tiffany
My Silver Planet makes the case for fundamentally redefining “kitsch” as a bridge between the elite and vernacular, as opposed to something to…
View original 425 more words
May 5, 2015
MY THERAPISTS ARE MR. ZEVON & MR. SCOTCH
Warren Zevon
Originally posted on R.M. ENGELHARDT:
��
She���s gone.
Temporarily
Forever
Finding me
Here alone on the couch in
The middle of
Another Sunday afternoon
With my good friends
The Clan Macallan
& Warren Zevon
Reminiscing about all
Of the old days & all of
The best days past.
Yet, perhaps it���s all
Just an illusion
Or maybe it���s just the sounds
That bring us all back to
To the land of
Stark raving reality from
The momentary
And marked passing
Of punk poetry, slam dancing
And black leather jackets.
As Warren says to me
���Life Will Kill Ya���
And Macallan says to me
No worries my good son
���Drink up���
For she will soon
Return with
The love that you
Gave her
And your
Foolish, sentimental heart
In her pocket
���Too���
_______________
R.M. ENGELHARDT
From ���The Resurrection Waltz���, 2013
O World of many worlds
O World of many worlds, O life of lives,
What centre hast thou? Where am I?
O whither is it thy fierce onrush drives?
Fight I, or drift; or stand; or fly?
The loud machinery spins, points work in touch;
Wheels whirl in systems, zone in zone.
Myself having sometime moved with such,
Would strike a centre of mine own.
Lend hand, O Fate, for I am down, am lost!
Fainting by violence of the Dance���
Ah thanks, I stand ��� the floor is crossed,
And I am where but few advance.
I see men far below me where they swarm���
(Haply above me ��� be it so!
Does space to compass-points conform,
And can we say a star stands high or low?)
Not more complex the millions of the stars
Than are the hearts of mortal brothers;
As far remote as Neptune from small Mars
Is one man���s nature from another���s.
But all hold course unalterably fixed;
They follow destinies foreplanned:
I envy not these lives in their faith unmixed,
I would not step with such a band.
To be a meteor, fast, eccentric, lone,
Lawless; in passage through all spheres,
Warning the earth of wider ways unknown
And rousing men with heavenly fears���
This is the track reserved for my endeavour;
Spanless the erring way I wend.
Blackness of darkness is my meed for ever?
And barren plunging without end?
O glorious fear! Those other wandering souls
High burning through that outer bourne
Are lights unto themselves. Fair aureoles
Self-radiated these are worn.
And when in after times those stars return
And strike once more earth���s horizon,
They gather many satellites astern,
For they are greater than this system���s Sun.
~ Wilfred Owen
April 27, 2015
April 22, 2015
“Art is sacred.
Punk r...
“Art is sacred.
Punk rock is freedom.
Expression and right to express is vital.
Anyone can be artistic.”
~ Kurt Cobain, Journals
Burn Brightly
- R.M. Engelhardt's profile
- 23 followers
