De Amerikaanse dichteres en schrijfster Sylvia Plath werd geboren op 27 oktober 1932 in Jamaica Plain, een buitenwijk van Boston. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Sylvia Plath op dit blog.
The Everlasting Monday
Thou shalt have an everlasting
Monday and stand in the moon.
The moon’s man stands in his shell,
Bent under a bundle
Of sticks. The light falls chalk and cold
Upon our bedspread.
His teeth are chattering among the leprous
Peaks and craters of those extinct volcanoes.
He also against black frost
Would pick sticks, would not rest
Until his own lit room outshone
Sunday’s ghost of sun;
Now works his hell of Mondays in the moon’s ball,
Fireless, seven chill seas chained to his ankle.
April Aubade
Worship this world of watercolor mood
in glass pagodas hung with veils of green
where diamonds jangle hymns within the blood
and sap ascends the steeple of the vein.
A saintly sparrow jargons madrigals
to waken dreamers in the milky dawn,
while tulips bow like a college of cardinals
before that papal paragon, the sun.
Christened in a spindrift of snowdrop stars,
where on pink-fluted feet the pigeons pass
and jonquils sprout like solomon’s metaphors,
my love and I go garlanded with grass.
Again we are deluded and infer
that somehow we are younger than we were.
Ode For Ted
From under the crunch of my man’s boot
green oat-sprouts jut;
he names a lapwing, starts rabbits in a rout
legging it most nimble
to sprigged hedge of bramble,
stalks red fox, shrewd stoat.
Loam-humps, he says, moles shunt
up from delved worm-haunt;
blue fur, moles have; hefting chalk-hulled flint
he with rock splits open
knobbed quartz; flayed colors ripen
rich, brown, sudden in sunlight.
For his least look, scant acres yield:
each finger-furrowed field
heaves forth stalk, leaf, fruit-nubbed emerald;
bright grain sprung so rarely
he hauls to his will early;
at his hand’s staunch hest, birds build.
Ringdoves roost well within his wood,
shirr songs to suit which mood
he saunters in; how but most glad
could be this adam’s woman
when all earth his words do summon
leaps to laud such man’s blood!
Sylvia Plath (27 oktober 1932 – 11 februari 1963)
Hier met dichter en echtgenoot Ted Hughes
De Engelse dichter Dylan Thomas werd geboren op 27 oktober 1914 in Swansea in Wales. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Dylan Thomas op dit blog.
Do You Not Father Me
Do you not father me, nor the erected arm
For my tall tower’s sake cast in her stone?
Do you not mother me, nor, as I am,
The lovers’ house, lie suffering my stain?
Do you not sister me, nor the erected crime
For my tall turrets carry as your sin?
Do you not brother me, nor, as you climb,
Adore my windows for their summer scene?
Am I not father, too, and the ascending boy,
The boy of woman and the wanton starer
Marking the flesh and summer in the bay?
Am I not sister, too, who is my saviour?
Am I not all of you by the directed sea
Where bird and shell are babbling in my tower?
Am I not you who front the tidy shore,
Nor roof of sand, nor yet the towering tiler?
You are all these, said she who gave me the long suck,
All these, he said who sacked the children’s town,
Up rose the Abraham-man, mad for my sake,
They said, who hacked and humoured, they were mine.
I am, the tower told, felled by a timeless stroke,
Who razed my wooden folly stands aghast,
For man-begetters in the dry-as-paste,
The ringed-sea ghost, rise grimly from the wrack.
Do you not father me on the destroying sand?
You are your sisters’ sire, said seaweedy,
The salt sucked dam and darlings of the land
Who play the proper gentleman and lady.
Shall I still be love’s house on the widdershin earth,
Woe to the windy masons at my shelter?
Love’s house, they answer, and the tower death
Lie all unknowing of the grave sin-eater.
I Have Longed to Move Away
I have longed to move away
From the hissing of the spent lie
And the old terrors’ continual cry
Growing more terrible as the day
Goes over the hill into the deep sea;
I have longed to move away
From the repetition of salutes,
For there are ghosts in the air
And ghostly echoes on paper,
And the thunder of calls and notes.
I have longed to move away but am afraid;
Some life, yet unspent, might explode
Out of the old lie burning on the ground,
And, crackling into the air, leave me half-blind.
Neither by night’s ancient fear,
The parting of hat from hair,
Pursed lips at the receiver,
Shall I fall to death’s feather.
By these I would not care to die,
Half convention and half lie.
Dylan Thomas (27 oktober 1914 – 9 november 1953)
Portret door Augustus John, z.j.
De Engelse schrijfster Zadie Smith werd geboren op 27 oktober 1975 in Londen. Zie ook alle tags voor Zadie Smith op dit blog en eveneens mijn blog van 27 oktober 2010
Uit: On Beauty
“The family are another thing again – they deserve more space and time than I have right now (I’m writing this on my lunch hour). But in brief: one boy: Michael, nice, sporty. A little dull, I guess. You’d think he was anyway. He’s a business guy – exactly what business I haven’t been able to figure out. And he’s huge! He’s got two inches on you, at least. They’re all big in that athletic, Caribbean way. He must be 6′ 5′. There’s also a very tall and beautiful daughter, Victoria- who I’ve seen only in photos (she’s inter-railing in Europe), but she’s coming back for a while on Friday, I think. Monty’s wife, Carlene Kipps – perfect. She’s not from Trinidad, though – It’s a small island, St something – but I’m not sure. I didn’t properly hear it the first time she mentioned it and now it’s like it’s too late to ask. She’s always trying to fatten me up – she feeds me constantly. The rest of the family talk about sports and God and politics and Carlene floats above it all like a kind of angel – and she’s helping me with prayer. She really knows how to pray – and it’s very cool to be able to pray without someone in your family coming into the room and a) passing wind b) shouting c) analysing the ‘phoney metaphysics’ of prayer d) singing loudly e) laughing.
So that’s Carlene Kipps. Tell Mom that she bakes. Just tell her that and then walk away chuckling . . . .
Now, listen to this next bit carefully: in the morning THE WHOLE KIPPS FAMILY have breakfast together and a conversation TOGETHER and then get into a car TOGETHER (are you taking notes?) – I know, I know – not easy to get your head around. I never met a family who wanted to spend so much time with each other.”
Zadie Smith (Londen, 27 oktober 1975)
De Egyptische schrijfster, gynaecologe, moslimfeministe en politiek activiste Nawal el Saadawi werd geboren in Kafr Tahla op 27 oktober 1931. Zie ook alle tags voor Nawal el Saadawi op dit blog en ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2010
Uit: Woman at Point Zero
“The day came when I departed from my uncle’s house and went to live with Sheikh Mahmoud….He was already over sixty, whereas I had not yet turned nineteen. On his chin, below the lip, was a large swelling, with a hole in the middle. Some days the hole would be dry, but on others it would turn into a rusty old tap exuding drops red in colour like blood, or whitish yellow, like pus. When the hole dried up, I let him kiss me. I could feel the swelling on my face and lips like a small purse, or a water skin, full of a stagnant greasy fluid. But on days when it was not dry I would turn my lips and face away to avoid the odour of dead dogs which emanated from it. At night he would wind his arms and legs around me, and let his hold, gnarled hand travel all over my body, like the claws of a starving man who has been deprived of real food for many years wipe the bowl of food clean, and leave not a single crumb behind.”
ØP54 – “When the dustman came to empty the refuse from the bin, he would go through it carefully before putting it out on the landing. One day he discovered some leftover scraps of food, and started yelling at me so loudly that all the neighbours could hear. After this incident, he got into the habit of beating me whether he had a reason for it or not. On one occasion he hit me all over with his shoe. My face and body became swollen and bruised. So I left the house and went to my uncle. But my uncle told me that all husbands beat their wives, and my uncle’s wife added that her husband often beat her.”
Nawal el Saadawi (Kafr Tahla, 27 oktober 1931)
De Belgische dichter en schrijver Albrecht Rodenbach werd geboren te Roeselare op 27 oktober 1856. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Albrecht Rodenbach op dit blog.
Psalm
God, onze Heer, Gij zijt de Heer der Heren.
Gij draagt de wereld op uw hand;
lacht ge op een volk, het bloeit in roem en ere,
keert Gij uw blikken, ’t stort in ’t zand!
God, onze Heer, gij loecht* weleer op Vlaanderen;
toen was het machtig, schoon en fier;
kluister en juk, het sloeg ze ruw aan spaandren:
” Vrijheid en Nering!” klonk het hier.
God, onze Heer, wil ’t jong geslacht aanhoren;
red Vlaanderen uit zijn diepe val!
Zegen de eed door allen trouw gezworen;
Vlaanderen, Vlaanderen boven al!
Albrecht Rodenbach (27 oktober 1856 – 23 juni 1880)
Standbeeld in Roeselare
De Engelse dichter en vertaler Jamie McKendrick werd op 27 oktober 1955 in Liverpool geboren. Zie ook alle tags voor Jamie McKendrick op dit blog.
Il Capitano
He keeps a dark shed by the beachhuts and boathouses
smelling of diesel and damp wool;
there’s a yellowed notice tacked to the door
in a strange hand, or a strange tongue like the babble
of waves on pebbles, cursives of broken shell.
Bound in his nets and tackle, he carries a trident
to tap the ground in the tireless pacing
that keeps him always in sight of the sea
where the spiny rocks sift back the waves
like krill-less drizzle from the teeth of whales.
The villagers tell how once, years back,
he commanded a vessel wrecked miles out
and drifted days on a fragment of deck.
Ever since his rescue he’s lived like the last man alive
in this coast resort buzzing with tourists and Vespas.
He was washed up here like the rest of us
by seed, tide, trade or fate but clearly lives,
oblivious of custom, under a different sky
– the stars urgent and legible; the miles of black salt
crashing into coves, his intimate blueprint.
It’s said tha’t sometimes he sights a ship
far out in the blue and foams with an exquisite
panic of recognition. Dropping his stick
he thrashes through the waves like a fierce child
till the fishermen gently drag him back again.
Jamie McKendrick (Liverpool, 27 oktober 1955)
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 27 oktober ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2013 deel 1 en eveneens deel 2.
Zie voor onderstaande schrijver ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2008.
De Iraanse schrijver en filmmaker Reza Allamehzadeh werd geboren op 27 oktober 1943 in Sari, Mazandaran.