In casting about for a poem to accompany the photographs on this post, I pulled Paroles, a slim book of poems by Jacques Prévert, from my book shelf. The photographs, by the way, are of the Central Park Conservatory garden in late March, with snow still on the ground, and late May. Continue reading
An altered look about the hills —
A Tyrian light the village fills — Continue reading
Einstein has remembered us
Savior of the daffodils!
—William Carlos Williams
St. Francis Einstein of the Daffodils (first version)
Innisfree opened early, and the daffodils are out! Continue reading
Marionette funeral ceremony (Korea)
In Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life, Kenneth Gross describes Sicilian puppeteer Mimmo Cuticchio’s L’urlo del mostro (The howl of the monster), a puppet theater based on the Odyssey. In one scene, Cuticchio
plays Odysseus himself, encountering the ghosts of puppets in the underworld, seeking his identity there among lost comrades and dead family members. Of one skeletal wooden figure he asks, in Sicilian, “Chi pupu eri?” (What puppet were you?).” Continue reading
Courtyard, Palazzo Abatellis
The Palazzo Abatellis, along with so much of Palermo’s Kalsa District (the old Arab quarter), was damaged extensively by Allied bombing in WWII. As Jeremy Dummett writes: Continue reading
