[from "Thin on the Ground"] © Gregory Halpern Belle Isle, 1949 by Philip Levine We stripped in the first warm spring night and ran down into the Detroit River to baptize ourselves in the brine of car parts, dead fish, stolen bicycles, melted snow. I remember going under hand in hand with a Polish highschool [...]
Apple and Butter, 2004 © Jessica Backhaus [Audio clip: view full post to listen] Flume by Bon Iver (Justin Vernon) I am my mother’s only one It’s enough I wear my garment so it shows Now you know Only love is all maroon Gluey feathers on a flume Sky is womb and she’s the moon [...]
Girl in Fairground Caravan, 1926-1932 © August Sander [Audio clip: view full post to listen] Oh Comely by Jeff Mangum (of Neutral Milk Hotel) Oh comely I will be with you when you lose your breath Chasing the only meaningful memory you thought you had left With some pretty bright and bubbly terrible scene That [...]
Portrait (Stoya), 1986 © Thomas Ruff Untitled (A face devoid of love or grace,) by Emily Dickinson A face devoid of love or grace, A hateful, hard, successful face, A face with which a stone Would feel as thoroughly at ease As were they old acquaintances – First time together thrown.
(from “The Democratic Forest”) © William Eggleston [Audio clip: view full post to listen] Cucurrucucú Paloma by Caetano Veloso (originally by Tomás Méndez) They say that at night he did nothing but cry. They that he didn’t eat and did nothing but drink. They swear that heaven itself shuddered when it heard his cry, How [...]
Untitled (from “Family Photos, 1984-1992″) © Doug Dubois I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone by Richard Brautigan I was trying to describe you to someone a few days ago. You don’t look like any girl I’ve ever seen before. I couldn’t say “Well she looks just like Jane Fonda, except that she’s got [...]
Woman on Bus, Lithuania, 2001 (from “Buses”) © Andrew Miksys The Fault of It by Ezra Pound Some may have blamed us that we cease to speak Of things we spoke of in our verses early, Saying: a lovely voice is such as such; Saying: that lady’s eyes were sad last week, Wherein the world’s [...]
Tricia and Curtis, 2005 (from “Niagara”) © Alec Soth Love Song by Rainer Maria Rilke (Stephen Mitchell trans.) How can I keep my soul in me, so that it doesn’t touch your soul? How can I raise it high enough, past you, to other things? I would like to shelter it, among remote lost objects, [...]
This may be a bit obvious again, but nonetheless I give you Larry Sultan paired with one of my favorites poets of all time, E.E. Cummings. If I continue with this, you’ll be seeing more Cummings for sure. (from “Pictures From Home”) © Larry Sultan if there are any heavens my mother… (XLIII) by E.E. [...]
Upon reading Bertolt Brecht‘s poem Rembrances of Marie A. (you may recognize this as being briefly featured in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s beautiful film The Lives of Others), I found myself thinking of an image by Johan Bergström. This the start of a new series of posts I call “Phoetry” – pairing photographs with poetry. [...]
