Happy Sunday!

...and a design (my interpretation of it) from my upcoming adult coloring book "Stressful Day, Melt Away!"

Ear

KO UN

TRANSLATED BY SUJI KWOCK KIM AND SUNJA KIM KWOCK

Someone’s coming

from the other world.

Hiss of night rain.

Someone’s going there now.

The two are sure to meet.

Korean poet, writer, and activist Ko Un was born in Gunsan-si, Jeollabuk-do. He was drawn to poetry after discovering the early work of Han Ha-Un, a nomadic Korean poet with leprosy. After witnessing the devastation of the Korean War, Ko entered a monastery and became a Buddhist monk. He left the Buddhist community in 1962. 

“I am not here to write,” Walser said, “but to be mad.”

Never heard of Robert Walser.   

Described as similar in tone and expression with Max Blecher and Franz Kafka. 

The Lucky One

By Robert Walser, translated from the German by Daniele Pantano
August 1, 2010 in  GUERNICA

People have a gift for mouth and eye
and ear, and houses have doors, corridors,
windows, and in the alleys, in the halls there
was always a lucky one, who carried with him
the mistakes of others, what a burden
it must have been that pushed him down,
but he was pleased by all this pushing.
Once, by the way, he went to search
for something in a grand garden.
Someone had given him a difficult task
he couldn’t possibly hope to complete.
Dignified men and women stood
on the Altan, the terrace, that is,
and scrutinized him, a splendid
gathering, from which, like rockets,
emerged laughter, and on this substantial day
the stupid boy that he was broke a hand
painted cup, whereupon at once the scenery
was shifted. There was always something
important that remained strange to him,
he remained foolish, but of this something
one was perhaps rightly envious. He always
hauled the mistakes of many others
through life, and he was being pulled down
and up, he saw himself useful and useless,
lauded, blamed, and in pieces and whole.

Translated with friendly permission of Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main and the Robert Walser-Zentrum Zürich.

Robert Walser (1878-1956) left school at fourteen and led a wandering and precarious existence while producing poems, stories, essays, and three novels: The Tanners (1906), The Assistant (1908), and Jakob von Gunten (1909). In 1933 he abandoned writing and entered a sanatorium, where he remained for the rest of his life. “I am not here to write,” Walser said, “but to be mad.”

Daniele Pantano is a Swiss poet, translator, critic, and editor born of Sicilian and German parentage in Langenthal (Canton of Berne). His most recent works includeThe Possible is Monstrous: Selected Poems by Friedrich Dürrenmatt and The Oldest Hands in the World (both from Black Lawrence Press, 2010). His next books,Oppressive Light: Selected Poems by Robert Walser and The Collected Works of Georg Trakl, are forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press. For more information, please visit www.danielepantano.ch

A poem by Elizabeth Bishop

"The Shampoo"

by Elizabeth Bishop  

The still explosions on the rocks,
the lichens, grow
by spreading, gray, concentric shocks.
They have arranged
to meet the rings around the moon, although
within our memories they have not changed.
And since the heavens will attend
as long on us,
you've been, dear friend,
precipitate and pragmatical;
and look what happens. For Time is
nothing if not amenable.
The shooting stars in your black hair
in bright formation
are flocking where,
so straight, so soon?
--Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin,
battered and shiny like the moon.

Giveaway on Goodreads for "Focus your mind-coloring book"

I have a giveaway on Goodreads for my coloring book, "Focus your mind", going on right now.

It's on for a few more day, so now is the time to apply!

Here is the link, "Focus your mind-coloring book" giveaways

My book for colorists is out! "Focus your mind" is all about beautiful shapes and whimsical designs!

I had a LOT of fun doing this book and although it was so much work I enjoyed every minute of it.  Every shape was  a discovery and there is nothing more wonderful that to see lines morphing under your hands into something unexpected, playful and gracious.

Check it out!

Head, Heart- by Lydia Davis

Heart weeps.
Head tries to help heart.
Head tells heart how it is again
You will lose the ones you love.  They will all go.  But even the earth will go, someday.
Heart feels better, then.
But the words of head do not remain long in the ears of heart.
Heart is so new to this.
I want them back, says heart.
Head is all heart has.
Help, head.  Help heart.

(Paris Review, 213, Spring 2015, page 194)