De Amerikaanse schrijfster en feministe Marge Piercy werd geboren op 31 maart 1936 in Detroit.  Zie ook mijn blog van 31 maart 2007 en ook mijn blog van 31 maart 2008 en ook mijn blog van 31 maart 2009.

Colors Passing Through Us

Purple as tulips in May, mauve

into lush velvet, purple

as the stain blackberries leave

on the lips, on the hands,

the purple of ripe grapes

sunlit and warm as flesh.

Every day I will give you a color,

like a new flower in a bud vase

on your desk. Every day

I will paint you, as women

color each other with henna

on hands and on feet.

Red as henna, as cinnamon,

as coals after the fire is banked,

the cardinal in the feeder,

the roses tumbling on the arbor

their weight bending the wood

the red of the syrup I make from petals.

Orange as the perfumed fruit

hanging their globes on the glossy tree,

orange as pumpkins in the field,

orange as butterflyweed and the monarchs

who come to eat it, orange as my

cat running lithe through the high grass.

Yellow as a goat’s wise and wicked eyes,

yellow as a hill of daffodils,

yellow as dandelions by the highway,

yellow as butter and egg yolks,

yellow as a school bus stopping you,

yellow as a slicker in a downpour.

Here is my bouquet, here is a sing

song of all the things you make

me think of, here is oblique

praise for the height and depth

of you and the width too.

Here is my box of new crayons at your feet.

Green as mint jelly, green

as a frog on a lily pad twanging,

the green of cos lettuce upright

about to bolt into opulent towers,

green as Grand Chartreuse in a clear

glass, green as wine bottles.

Blue as cornflowers, delphiniums,

bachelors’ buttons. Blue as Roquefort,

blue as Saga. Blue as still water.

Blue as the eyes of a Siamese cat.

Blue as shadows on new snow, as a spring

azure sipping from a puddle on the blacktop.

Cobalt as the midnight sky

when day has gone without a trace

and we lie in each other’s arms

eyes shut and fingers open

and all the colors of the world

pass through our bodies like strings of fire.

Marge Piercy (Detroit, 31 maart 1936)

De Amerikaanse schrijfster Judith Rossner werd geboren als Judith Perelman op 31 maart 1935 in New York. Zie ook mijn blog van 31 maart 2009.

Uit: Perfidia

„She was raised on a farm west of Montreal, ran away from home when she was sixteen. In 1965. She packed her knapsack with some clothes and necessities, plus she stole her favorite two of her father’s 78’s that the two of them listened to together on the phonograph in the kitchen. “Perfidia” and “Remember.” Her mother had no use for music and they’d never bought a more modern system. She stayed with the first man who gave her a hitch until she lied about her age and got a job as a waitress. She’d changed her name a few times, but I think that she’d settled on Anita by then. She alwaysinsisted that she wasn’t pretty, though I thought she was beautiful, and she was terribly sexy, with a big bosom, great legs, and a lively, teasing manner with men. She had no trouble connecting with them in those days when even the middle class had begun to think that sex was free and easy. After a couple of years in Montreal, she hitched to Toronto, which she’d say she eventually left because it was too clean. She had stories about the café and restaurant owners she worked for and slept with. She called them Pierre One, Pierre Two and so on, though they mostly weren’t French. (My given name was Madeleine. She claimed it was one of the few things my father ever insisted upon. She didn’t like it because it was French.) When she told the umpteenth Pierre that she was leaving Toronto, and he said she had to stay until he found another waitress, she suggested he bring in the cow who was his wife, it wouldn’t hurt for her to know what it was like to work for a living.
My mother told stories like that more readily than she told ones in which she did something nice. Nor did she ever make any effort to conceal her sexual adventures from me, though she was occasionally surprised or amused that I knew as much as I did.“

Judith Rossner (31 maart 1935 – 9 augustus 2005)

De Nederlandse dichter Rob Boudestein werd geboren op 31 maart 1947 in Den Haag. Boudestein begon pas op latere leeftijd met schrijven. Hij is al langere tijd werkzaam als docent economie; de laatste jaren bij een instelling voor HBO te Groningen. Boudestein publiceerde verhalen in vele tijdschriften. Gedichten publiceerde hij in Wel, het Drents letterkundig tijdschrift Roet, Meulenhoffs Dagkalender (2001 en 2004) en de Tuinscheurkalender.

Impressie

Achter een raam, bij neonlicht
Showt blonde Nel haar handelswaar
En met geroutineerd gebaar
Brengt zij haar roze vlees in ’t zicht.

Ach, denkt het jonge blonde wicht
Het is gewoon m’n werk, nietwaar?
Zelf vindt ze het niet zo’n bezwaar
Maar ’t is wel om het geld, allicht.

Een jonge man loopt langs haar ruit,
Hij aarzelt, neemt dan een besluit.
Wordt hij haar eerste klant vandaag?

Wat of het kost wil hij graag weten.
Ze noemt een prijs, wat afgemeten.
Hij knikt. ‘Maar dun gesneden graag.’

Rob Boudestein (Den Haag, 31 maart 1947)

De Engelse romanschrijver en essayist John Fowles werd geboren in Leigh-on-Sea (Essex) op 31 maart 1926. Zie ook mijn blog van 31 maart 2007 en ook mijn blog van 31 maart 2008.en ook mijn blog van 31 maart 2009.

Uit: The Journals

 „25 September (1949)
3 a.m. Beautifully played New Orleans jazz, with clarinet in low register, and very jazzy tuba and cornet. Bessie Smith singing. This sort of stuff has in it the germ of music that will last.
Op. 55. Splendidly vigorous, with some of the secret lyricality of the last quartets.2

Writing fever. Can’t get any university work done. Full of ideas for ‘Cognac’ and full of frustration at not having the time to do them. ‘Cognac’ must aim at being popular, with art overboard. The idea came all in two hours last night and this morning.

30 September
Another appalling half-hour of talk. When screaming was close. Talk of the utmost banality, on prices of mattresses, on Mrs Ramsey’s daughter who married a doctor in Montreal. A few comments are made on poetry. So hopeless to try and explain. They would never understand. No mention of art can ever be developed in case we are ‘highbrow’ – God, how I hate that word! No philosophy is mentioned, without Thomas Hardy and Darwin getting dragged in. It is la mere. Her attitude to conversation is one of complete alertness. I must break in, and I must say something – and in she breaks and says something, whether she has any knowledge, real opinion or not. It is with great difficulty that I can keep my oyster silence. But I must not hurt. With le pere, it is partly a defence; modernity is ignored, age is suspicious of invention.
I feel violent with ‘hate’ against this bloody town. Least violent, now, against the geographical situation (once I longed for Devon), most against the way of life, and then the people who allow it to sap all the beauty of life out of them. All my sympathy goes out to the boy who ran away to be a bullfighter. I’m sure he must have ‘felt’ the complete horror of this place. This town can have as much horror mentally for a sensitive person as a blitzed city may have, physically, for a turnip. It is the unsociability, the not-knowing-anyone, the having-no-colour, that kills. No interesting people to talk to, no sincere people, no unusual things to do.
Then there is ‘niceness’ as a standard of judgement – God, how I hate that word, too! – ‘a nice girl’, ‘a nice road’. Nice = colourless, efficient, with nose glued to the middle path, with middle interests, dizzy with ordinariness. Ugh!“

John Fowles (31 maart 1926 – 5 november 2005)

De Engelse dichter Andrew Marvell werd geboren in Winestead, Yorkshire op 31 maart 1621 in Londen. Zie ook mijn blog van 31 maart 2007 en ook mijn blog van 31 maart 2009.

Bermudas

Where the remote Bermudas ride

In th’ Oceans bosome unespy’d,

From a small Boat, that row’d along,

The listning Winds receiv’d this Song.

What should we do but sing his Praise

That led us through the watry Maze,

Unto an Isle so long unknown,

And yet far kinder than our own?

Where he the huge Sea-Monsters wracks,

That lift the Deep upon their Backs.

He lands us on a grassy stage;

Safe from the Storms, and Prelat’s rage.

He gave us this eternal Spring,

Which here enamells every thing;

And sends the Fowl’s to us in care,

On daily Visits through the Air,

He hangs in shades the Orange bright,

Like golden Lamps in a green Night.

And does in the Pomgranates close,

Jewels more rich than Ormus show’s.

He makes the Figs our mouths to meet;

And throws the Melons at our feet.

But Apples plants of such a price,

No Tree could ever bear them twice.

With Cedars, chosen by his hand,

From Lebanon, he stores the Land.

And makes the hollow Seas, that roar,

Proclaime the Ambergris on shoar.

He cast (of which we rather boast)

The Gospels Pearl upon our coast.

And in these Rocks for us did frame

A Temple, where to sound his Name.

Oh let our Voice his Praise exalt,

Till it arrive at Heavens Vault:

Which thence (perhaps) rebounding, may

Eccho beyond the Mexique Bay.

Thus sung they, in the English boat,

An holy and a chearful Note,

And all the way, to guide their Chime,

With falling Oars they kept the time.

De Engelse dichter, schrijver en vertaler Edward FitzGerald werd geboren in Woodbridge, Suffolk, op 31 maart 1809. Zie ook mijn blog van 31 maart 2009.

The Meadows In Spring

‘Tis a dull sight

To see the year dying,

When winter winds

Set the yellow wood sighing:

Sighing, oh! sighing.

When such a time cometh,

I do retire

Into and old room

Beside a bright fire:

Oh, pile a bright fire!

And there I sit

Reading old things,

Of knights and lorn damsels,

While the wind sings—

Oh, drearily sings!

I never look out

Nor attend to the blast;

For all to be seen

Is the leaves falling fast:

Falling, falling!

But close at the hearth,

Like a cricket, sit I,

Reading of summer

And chivalry—

Gallant chivalry!

Then with an old friend

I talk of our youth!

How ’twas gladsome, but often

Foolish, forsooth:

But gladsome, gladsome!

Or to get merry

We sing some old rhyme,

That made the wood ring again

In summertime—

Sweet summertime!

Then go we to smoking,

Silent and snug:

Nought passes between us,

Save a brown jug—

Sometimes!

And sometimes a tear

Will rise in each eye,

Seeing the two old friends

So merrily—

So merrily!

And ere to bed

Go we, go we,

Down on the ashes

We kneel on the knee,

Praying together!

Thus, then, live I,

Till, ‘mid all the gloom,

By heaven! the bold sun

Is with me in the room

Shining, shining!

Then the clouds part,

Swallow soaring between;

The spring is alive,

And the meadows are green!

I jump up, like mad,

Break the old pipe in twain,

And away to the meadows,

The meadows again!

Edward FitzGerald (31 maart 1809 – 14 juni 1883)

De Schotse dichter, schrijver en journalist Andrew Lang werd geboren op 31 maart 1844 in Selkirk. Zie ook mijn blog van 31 maart 2009.

RHYME OF RHYMES

Wild on the mountain peak the wind
Repeats its old refrain,
Like ghosts of mortals who have sinned,
And fain would sin again.

For “wind” I do not rhyme to “mind,”
Like many mortal men,
“Again” (when one reflects) ’twere kind
To rhyme as if “agen.”

I never met a single soul
Who SPOKE of “wind” as “wined,”
And yet we use it, on the whole,
To rhyme to “find” and “blind.”

We SAY, “Now don’t do that AGEN,”
When people give us pain;
In poetry, nine times in ten,
It rhymes to “Spain” or “Dane.”

Oh, which are wrong or which are right?
Oh, which are right or wrong?
The sounds in prose familiar, quite,
Or those we meet in song?

To hold that “love” can rhyme to “prove”
Requires some force of will,
Yet in the ancient lyric groove
We meet them rhyming still.

This was our learned fathers’ wont
In prehistoric times,
We follow it, or if we don’t,
We oft run short of rhymes.

Andrew Lang (31 maart 1844 – 20 juli 1912)
Portret door Sir William Blake Richmond 

 

De Franse schrijver, dichter en journalist Robert Brasillach werd geboren in Perpignan op 31 maart 1909. Zie ook mijn blog van 31 maart 2009.

 

Les Noms Sur Les Murs

D’autres sont venus par ici,

Dont les noms sur les murs moisis,

Se défont déjà, et s’écaillent.

Ils ont souffert et espéré,

Et parfois l’espoir était vrai,

Parfois il dupait ces murailles.

 

Venus d’ici, venus d’ailleurs,

Nous n’avions pas le même coeur,

Nous a-t-on dit. Faut-il le croire ?

Mais qu’importe ce que nous fûmes !

Nos visages noyés de brume

Se ressemblent dans la nuit noire.

C’est à vous, frères inconnus,

Que je pense le soir venu,

O mes fraternels adversaires

Hier est proche d’aujourd’hui.

Malgré nous, nous sommes unis

Par l’espoir et par la misère.

 

Je pense à vous, vous qui rêviez,

Je pense à vous qui souffriez,

Dont aujourd’hui j’ai pris la place.

Si demain la vie est permise,

Les noms qui sur ces murs se brisent

Nous seront-ils nos mots de passe ?

 

Robert Brasillach (31 maart 1909 – 6 februari 1945)

 

 

De Duitse dichteres en schrijfster Angela Kreuz werd geboren in Ingolstadt op 31 maart 1969. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 juli 2009.

Im Turm

der Wind verfängt sich
in der schaurigen Stille,
eine abgerissene Spirale
aus moosgrünem Licht
windet sich empor,
die Decke ein lauernder Stein
in der Höhe.
der Blick nach oben gleicht dem
in einen Brunnenschacht –
draußen das federnde Gras so weich, wie zum Trost

Angela Kreuz (Ingolstadt, 31 maart 1969)