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Tonight is #GhostFestival (#中元普渡, #鬼節, #お盆) in Asian Buddhist/Taoist/folk traditions.
Don’t drink, don’t swim or go near bodies of water, don’t wear all white, don’t shave your legs, don’t touch walls —lest you walk into hungry ghosts
[Anita Mui in 胭脂扣 Rouge, 1987]
Don’t drink, don’t swim or go near bodies of water, don’t wear all white, don’t shave your legs, don’t touch walls —lest you walk into hungry ghosts
[Anita Mui in 胭脂扣 Rouge, 1987]
The 7th full moon of the lunar calendar marks the moment that all hungry, discontent ghosts are let out to roam the human realm #鬼月 #中元普渡
[Spirit Traces 仙跡, Yeh Wei-li 葉偉立, 2019 at Taipei MOCA - photos of
ghostly, abandoned places]
[Spirit Traces 仙跡, Yeh Wei-li 葉偉立, 2019 at Taipei MOCA - photos of
ghostly, abandoned places]
Ghost Festival #鬼節 always fascinated me as a kid: the idea that, while one honored and fed respectful ghost elders on Qingming (Tomb Sweeping, in April), one needed to appease and avoid hungry, abandoned ghosts in August. The edict against swimming was the hardest to obey.
#七夕 : 7th night of the 7th lunar month is, in legend, the one night a year that the separated lovers may meet one another by means of a bridge of magpies in the skies
Tonight is their night: a thread of poems
[📷 Yamamoto Masao]
Tonight is their night: a thread of poems
[📷 Yamamoto Masao]
should a love meant to last beyond time
begrudge mere nights and days
apart?
兩情若是久長時
又豈在
朝朝暮暮
Closing lines from the ci 鵲橋仙 ‘Immortals by the Magpie Bridge,’ by Northern Song Dynasty poet Qin Guan 秦觀 (1049-1100)
#everynightapoem #七夕
begrudge mere nights and days
apart?
兩情若是久長時
又豈在
朝朝暮暮
Closing lines from the ci 鵲橋仙 ‘Immortals by the Magpie Bridge,’ by Northern Song Dynasty poet Qin Guan 秦觀 (1049-1100)
#everynightapoem #七夕
十五始展眉，願同塵與灰
常存抱柱信，豈上望夫台
-Li Bo 李白 (701-62) 長干行
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever
(and Ezra Pound’s fanciful, compelling translation, “The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter, after Rihaku”)
#everynightapoem #七夕
常存抱柱信，豈上望夫台
-Li Bo 李白 (701-62) 長干行
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever
(and Ezra Pound’s fanciful, compelling translation, “The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter, after Rihaku”)
#everynightapoem #七夕
Another woman artist - though not Chinese - whose self portraits I return to often is the German painter Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907). She died at age 31, shortly after giving birth.
My favorite:
"Self-Portrait on the sixth wedding anniversary" 1906.
My favorite:
"Self-Portrait on the sixth wedding anniversary" 1906.
We need, in love, to practice only this:
letting each other go. For holding on
comes easily; we do not need to learn it.
Rilke wrote "Requiem for a friend" over the course of 3 days alone in the Hotel Biron, mourning her death.
[PMB, Portrait of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1906]
letting each other go. For holding on
comes easily; we do not need to learn it.
Rilke wrote "Requiem for a friend" over the course of 3 days alone in the Hotel Biron, mourning her death.
[PMB, Portrait of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1906]
I can hardly think of any writing by Rilke that does not evoke intense love in me, or at least the remembrance of having loved it once, intensely.
But "Requiem for a Friend" is yet again, something else.
full text at @parisreview theparisreview.org/poetry/3205/re…
But "Requiem for a Friend" is yet again, something else.
full text at @parisreview theparisreview.org/poetry/3205/re…
On the fifth day of the fifth lunar month—#端午Duanwu—we commemorate the death of the poet-minister Qu Yuan 屈原.
Exiled from the kingdom of Chu for his fierce opposition to Qin (which did indeed demolish all, in its imperial ambition), he drowned himself in the Miluo River. 1/
Exiled from the kingdom of Chu for his fierce opposition to Qin (which did indeed demolish all, in its imperial ambition), he drowned himself in the Miluo River. 1/
Legend has it that fishing boats set out looking for the much-beloved Qu Yuan. When he could not be found, food was thrown into the river to prevent fish from consuming his corpse.
Hence Duanwu is also known as the #DragonBoatFestival & sticky rice packets (zongzi) are eaten. 2/
Hence Duanwu is also known as the #DragonBoatFestival & sticky rice packets (zongzi) are eaten. 2/
'The Songs of Chu' 楚辭, attributed to Qu Yuan (but more likely by multiple authors) are densively allusive poetic laments dating from the 3rd c BCE collapse of the Chu kingdom.
To quote David Hawkes, Chuci 楚辭are the poetry of tristia and itineria —the laments of exile. 3/
To quote David Hawkes, Chuci 楚辭are the poetry of tristia and itineria —the laments of exile. 3/
離人無語月無聲
明月有光人有情
別後相思人似月
雲間水上到層城
唐。李冶 Li Ye (Tang dynasty)
#everynightapoem #moon #中秋節
[Qi Baishi, Moon in Dream, detail]
明月有光人有情
別後相思人似月
雲間水上到層城
唐。李冶 Li Ye (Tang dynasty)
#everynightapoem #moon #中秋節
[Qi Baishi, Moon in Dream, detail]
The Tang woman poet Li Ye 李冶 (730?-784)’s father darkly predicted that she would be a “unruly woman” from her precocious poems, and thus dispatched her off at age 11 to a Taoist nunnery.
Li Ye embraced her unruliness and became known for her poetic output and her love affairs
Li Ye embraced her unruliness and became known for her poetic output and her love affairs
Only 16 Li Ye poems are extant, but traces of her exist in literary anecdotes & others’ love poems.
At the height of her reknown she was offered an imperial consort title, though she did not stay long at court. In 784 she was put to death for writing poems criticizing the Tang.
At the height of her reknown she was offered an imperial consort title, though she did not stay long at court. In 784 she was put to death for writing poems criticizing the Tang.
