Letters We Never Sent

Cover
Interactive Publications, 2000 - 146 Seiten
As we enter a new millennium, it's no accident that David Reiter's fifth poetic work recalls the grand scope and ambition of TS Eliot's The Waste Land. His is a transparent eye through which we witness ourselves, articulating the unspoken but deeply felt. This is a book of quotes and epigrams, speculation and anecdote, yearnings and palimpsests, and voices in profusion as David Reiter puts his head down into historical but also fictive intertexts of Tahiti. "I am tired of old planets" one of these voices says, and we too travel through his richly interwoven monologues to search out the nature of art, of civilisation... These poems even name the siren call of the Internet as the new exotic, the medium of desire. But I waas especially struck by the central idea of letters 'never sent' as poetic speculation, at its most pointed in the wit and banter between Gauguin and Van Gogh, climaxing in the wonderful Van Gogh commentaries on the famous paintings. - Philip Salom Gauguin in the South Seas, Van Gogh in Arles, surfing the Internet, stumbling into chat rooms or a fish and chip shop in the Cook Islands, explorations of past travellers and the random confused explorations of the Information Highway... Such is the exciting collage of images Reiter places skillfully before us. Phrases, lines, stories that reflect back and forth touching always on the dream of happiness, the longing to make sense of ourselves. - Peter Boyle

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Ausgewählte Seiten

Inhalt

preludes
1
the silence at night
14
give me that old time religion
22
intoxicants
33
shedding skin
44
settling in
60
lost in the translation
86
change of pace
95
soaring
105
reputations
113
keepsakes
122
twilight of the gods
132
Urheberrecht

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Beliebte Passagen

Seite 25 - Be not afeard ; the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices That, if I then had waked after long sleep, Will make me sleep again : and then, in dreaming, The clouds methought would open and show riches Ready to drop upon me, that, when I waked, I cried to dream again.
Seite 18 - In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure dome decree : Where Alph, the sacred River, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.
Seite 131 - Lord; and thy saints shall bless thee. They shall speak of the glory of thy kingdom, and talk of thy power; To make known to the sons of men his mighty acts, and the glorious majesty of his kingdom.
Seite 25 - Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears ; and sometime voices, That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep, Will make me sleep again : and then, in dreaming, The clouds methought would open, and show riches Ready to drop upon me ; that, when I wak'd, I cried to dream again.
Seite 29 - In a dark time, the eye begins to see, I meet my shadow in the deepening shade; I hear my echo in the echoing wood — A lord of nature weeping to a tree. I live between the heron and the wren, Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den. What's madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall. That place among...
Seite 42 - For heaven's sake though see to the driver! Take off the silk hat! In fact that's no place at all for him up there unceremoniously dragging our friend out to his own dignity! Bring him down— bring him down!
Seite 19 - ... suspicious look — their motions are vigorous, active and graceful and their behavior to strangers is such as declare at first sight their humane disposition, which is as candid as their countenances seem to indicate, and their courteous, affable and friendly behavior to each other shows that they have no tincture of barbarity, cruelty, suspicion or revenge. They are ever of an even unruffled temper, slow to anger and soon appeased and as they have no suspicion so they ought not to be suspected,...
Seite 37 - ... profound silence, so great that I can distinctly count the pulsations of the water running from the fountain near us into the sea. The shapes and finish of the government buildings, their long spaces of enclosure, the moss upon them, remind us of the sleepiest towns of out-of-the-way bits of France. The natives slip over the dust in bare feet, the waving draperies of the long gowns of the women seeming to add to the stealthy or undulating movement which carries them along. Many draw up under...
Seite 61 - ... compare with that coffee! Yes, you insist, the second chair the one under the awning where you can glimpse the fountain and the bronze angel. The City of Home is like no other city not even the City of Remembering or the Cities Of The Plain. The City of Home has only one drawback, but that is terrible: The City of Home is empty of people. All its songs are the songs of exile.
Seite v - I could have told you, Vincent, the world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.

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