Tuesday, May 23, 2023

Thank you #ParisLitUp

 

 

Thanks to the folks at Paris Lit Up / Culture Rapide for featuring me at their Thursday night reading last April 26, 2023. Thanks to Leah Soeiro Nentis and Ursula Wynne who greeted and took care of me.

This literary group had also featured me last April 26, 2018. Thanks to Emily Ruck Keene, and Matthew. 







Read also

Pastel Art No. 1 at Musee d'Orsay

Pastel Art No. 2 at Musee d'Orsay

Art at Musee d'Orsay 

Tags: PLU, Open mic reading, poetry reading, Paris poetry reading, #parislitup #culturerapide

Sunday, May 21, 2023

Art at Musee d'Orsay - #3

 


Here are more art by Masters at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. These are works by Vincent Van Gogh and by Paul Gauguin. We visited the museum once, but I could have visited it a few more times to really appreciate and absorb the art there.  Wonderful museum!



Friday, May 19, 2023

Pastel Art at Musee d'Orsay - No. 2

 


This is the second batch of photos I took at the pastel exhibit at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. These are by Master Artists Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet and Mary Cassatt. 

I was thrilled to see these famous works with my own eyes. I had the opportunity to scrutinize the strokes these masters did using pastels and crayon. They knew how to draw. They did not smear their pastel to blend colors, but used strokes, so that in some cases, the look is quite graphic.

I have more photos of paintings and I'll get that up in my blog. The artists among you will enjoy them. I should clarify that I'm not posting all the pastels displayed there, but I am choosing the ones that spoke to me. 

Enjoy! 



Friday, May 5, 2023

Pastel Art at the Musee d'Orsay - No. 1

 

During a recent visit to Paris, we visited the Musee d'Orsay, which had a Spring 2023 Pastel Exhibition.  I love pastels and try to learn on my own.  I still have to find a pastel teacher. Most of my art teachers don't like this medium.  I'm posting some of the pastels that I really liked. This is set 1.

 I was fascinated by the Olympia done by Edouard Manet, and which was copied by Paul Gauguin.  Degas bought the Gauguin copy to hang in his place.  





 

 

Thursday, May 4, 2023

River Cruise of the Netherlands and Belgium - Keukenhof Gardens

 


 



Tulips were introduced to Holland in 1593 from Turkey. These flowers became very popular, so much so that "tulipmania" occurred. In the mid-1600s, tulip bulbs were so coveted that the Dutch invested in them. There was a tulip market, and bulbs would be auctioned, and people paid for the bulbs. But then speculation of how much money one could make from the bulbs came in and the bidding soared. At the height of the bubble market, tulips sold for 10,000 guilders, which was equivalent to the value of a mansion in Amsterdam.  The bubble occurred around 1634 to 1637, but then the bubble burst. 

Monday, May 1, 2023

River Cruise of the Netherlands and Belgium - Bruges

 


IN 2013, WE HAD PLANNED to visit Bruge as part of a driving tour through Normandy and Belgium. As things turned out, Lauren had an accident in Paris, broke his hip, ended up in the Clinique Blomet where he as he puts it "got screwed by the French."  His French doctor, Dr. Atassi, put two stainless steel pins to hold the bones together.  

When we explained to the doctor that this accident had messed up our plans to visit Bruge and other places, he scrunched his face, and poo-pooed and said, "Oh, it always rains in Bruge anyway." It was at that moment, raining in Paris.

Love Has Seven Names by Hadewijch of Brabant & Translations by Ralph Semino Galan


After visiting Belgium and seeing the beguine housing complex in Bruge, I became interested in the Beguines. They were women from the Middle Ages who lived as a community to pray and serve their communities. Unlike nuns, they did not make perpetual vows.  There is information about them in this link https://www.greynun.org/2020/02/the-beguines-of-medieval-europe-mystics-and-visionaries/ .

Hadewijch of Brabant was a 13th century beguine, poet, and mystic who came from the Duchy of Brabant, now Antwerp. 

I was delighted to learn that Professor Ralph Semino Galan, a friend and fellow-writer, translated one of Hadewijch's poems from English to Filipino and Cebuano. With his permission, I am sharing these with you. 

To have a better appreciation of the translations, I am sharing Professor Galan's bio here:

Ralph Semino Galán, poet, literary and cultural critic, translator and editor, is the Assistant Director of the UST Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies. He is an Associate Professor of Literature, the Humanities and Creative Writing in the UST Faculty of Arts and Letters and the UST Graduate School. 

He is the author of the following books: The Southern Cross and Other Poems (UBOD New Authors Series, NCCA, 2005), Discernments: Literary Essays, Cultural Critiques and Book Reviews (USTP, 2013), From the Major Arcana [poems] (USTPH, 2014), and Sa mga Pagitan ng Buhay at Iba pang Pagtutulay [translations] (USTPH, 2018). 

He is currently working on a research project sponsored by the UST Research Center for Culture, Arts and Humanities titled Labaw sa Bulawan: Translating 300 Mindanao Poems from Cebuano into English (1930-2020), as well as a book of poetry in Cebuano titled Mga Kalag Nga Nahisalaag, Mga Dili Ingon Nato: Mga Balak ug Garay.

The Filipino translation of Hadewijch's poem is included in Sa Mga Pagitan ng Buhay…

 


LOVE HAS SEVEN NAMES

by Hadewijch  

English version by Willis Barnstone and Elene Kolb
Original Language Dutch

Love has seven names.
Do you know what they are?
Rope, Light, Fire, Coal
make up its domain.

The others, also good,
more modest but alive:
Dew, Hell, the Living Water.
I name them here (for they
are in the Scriptures),
explaining every sign
for virtue and form.
I tell the truth in signs.
Love appears every day
for one who offers love.
That wisdom is enough.

Love is a ROPE, for it ties
and holds us in its yoke.
It can do all, nothing snaps it.
You who love must know.

The meaning of LIGHT
is known to those who
offer gifts of love,
approved or condemned.

The Scripture tell us
the symbol of COAL:
the one sublime gift
God gives the intimate soul.

Under the name of FIRE, luck,
bad luck, joy or no joy,
consumes. We are seized
by the same heat from both.

When everything is burnt
in its own violence, the DEW,
coming like a breeze, pauses
and brings the good.

LIVING WATER (its sixth name)
flows and ebbs
as my love grows
and disappears from sight.

HELL (I feel its torture)
damns, covering the world.
Nothing escapes. No one has grace
to see a way out.

Take care, you who wish
to deal with names
for love. Behind their sweetness
and wrath, nothing endures.
Nothing but wounds and kisses.

Though love appears far off,
you will move into its depth.