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From Santa Monica, New Orleans, New Mexico, to the Netherlands, South Africa, Congo, Italy, France, Brazil, Russia — and all around the world

“Stand By Me” (© Ben E. King, Jerry Lieber, Mike Stoller); inspired by the spiritual, “Lord, Stand By Me”

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Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)

La Beauté

Je suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre,
Et mon sein, où chacun s’est meurtri tour à tour,
Est fait pour inspirer au poète un amour
Eternel et muet ainsi que la matière.

 Je trône dans l’azur comme un sphinx incompris;
J’unis un coeur de neige à la blancheur des cygnes;
Je hais le mouvement qui déplace les lignes,
Et jamais je ne pleure et jamais je ne ris.

 Les poètes, devant mes grandes attitudes,
Que j’ai l’air d’emprunter aux plus fiers monuments,
Consumeront leurs jours en d’austères études;

Car j’ai, pour fasciner ces dociles amants,
De purs miroirs qui font toutes choses plus belles:
Mes yeux, mes larges yeux aux clartés éternelles!

Beauty

 I’m beautiful, mortals, like a dream of stone
And my breast, where each man shatters,
Inspires in poets, one by one,
A love eternal and mute as matter.

I’m enthroned in the blue, like a sphinx of enigmas—
Heart of snow to the swan’s sheer whiteness I keep,
Hate movement, in which lines amass,
Never laugh, never weep.

Poets before my grand attitudes
(Which I take from the proudest monuments)
Wear out their days in studious moods.
I keep those lovers submissive, bent

With my eyes, my bright eyes, those mirrors changing
All to beauty, and in beauty ranging.

© Jack Foley

JACK FOLEY’S NOTE TO AL YOUNG

This link will get you the French and some English versions of Baudelaire’s terrific poem, “La Beauté”:

http://fleursdumal.org/poem/116

Hard to match Baudelaire’s wonderful opening line, “Je suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre,” with its rhyme of “belle” and “mortels”: “I am beautiful, O mortals! like a dream of stone.” The translations offered at the website (including the first, literal one) seemed clumsy and, when rhymed, contained a lot of inverted language. I decided to make an effort too and wrote this version this morning.

*

 Earlier today, I bought a sandwich at Noah’s. The clerk there told me that, when she wasn’t clerking, she worked with a troupe of fire eaters! Circus stuff. I told her I was a poet: it was my job to keep as much fire in my mouth as I could.

April 3, 2013

  Vu

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 Listen to ‘Have We Met Before?’– the story of Québec photographer François Brunelle’s ‘Look-Alikes’ project
© 2013 NPR | ‘All Things Considered’

  © François Brunelle

Rudi Kistler and Maurus Oehmann | Mannheim, Germany 2012

PROJECT ‘I’M NOT A LOOK-ALIKE!’
(Projêt Je ne suis pas un sosie!)

I’m not a look-alike! is a project  to make 200 photos of couples or look-alikes (doubles, doppelgängers) around the world and to create an international exhibit and a book with them. The photos are in black and white.

© François Brunelle

Donmar Williams and Martine Chase | Weehawken, NJ USA 2011

© François Brunelle

Elisa Berst and Corinne Barois | Paris, France 2010

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François Brunelle interviewed at CBC Television

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sssssssssssss …

  Anita Endrezze

“The snazziest concrete poem I’ve read this year.”
— Al Young

  Anita Endrezze

“meka sleepy on my computer” [Anita Endrezze in a Facebook message]

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MEKA’S DREAM

sssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

ssssssssssssssssssssssssss

sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

sssssssssssssssssssssssss

ssssssssssssssssssss“““““““

““““““““““““`

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“My cat wrote this as she tried to sleep with paws on computer.”
— Anita Endrezze

PS:

She’s only a year old and already a famous poet!

She started sleeping next to my computer vent (where it’s warm) when she was so small. And now she’s almost too big to fit on table edge where I sit and not cover my computer. In the other photo, she sits up on top of the kitchen cabinet when I’m working in the kitchen. She was so proud of herself when she managed to get up there about 6 months ago. We got her when she was 9 weeks old. She had been abandoned with her brother at a rest stop, rescued by a lady trucker, and then taken to a pet sanctuary to get ready for adoption.

Maybe she was dreaming of the sssssss sound tires make on wet pavement.

Visit author/artist Anita Endrezze’s website

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  “Nica’s Dream” (Horace Silver, composer) | Hank Jones Trio | Hank Jones, piano; George Mraz, bass; Billy Kilson, drums | Tokyo Jazz Festival 2008

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Neither the Maya Calendar–nor the World–Ends on December 21, 2012

This year’s doomsday angst owes much to public ignorance about pre-Columbian civilizations

By Erik Vance

© Scientific American | June 6, 2012

Images: Flickr/Joseph A. Ferris III (Aztec stone of the sun, left)
|  Amaury Laporte (Maya statue, right)

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This year, 2012, December has 5 Saturdays, 5 Sundays and 5 Mondays.

This happens once every 824 years.

AlYoung.org asks: True or False?

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