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The Poem, Film, Song, Painting Series
Monday, September 2, 2024
Issue No. 3
POEM
Lover
By Ada Limón
Easy light storms in through the window, soft
edges of the world, smudged by mist, a squirrel’s
nest rigged high in the maple. I’ve got a bone
to pick with whomever is in charge. All year,
I’ve said, You know what’s funny? and then,
Nothing, nothing is funny. Which makes me laugh
in an oblivion-is-coming sort of way. A friend
writes the word lover in a note and I am strangely
excited for the word lover to come back. Come back
lover, come back to the five and dime. I could
squeal with the idea of blissful release, oh lover,
what a word, what a world, this gray waiting. In me,
a need to nestle deep into the safe-keeping of sky.
I am too used to nostalgia now, a sweet escape
of age. Centuries of pleasure before us and after
us, still right now, a softness like the worn fabric of a nightshirt
and what I do not say is, I trust the world to come back.
Return like a word, long forgotten and maligned
for all its gross tenderness, a joke told in a sun beam,
the world walking in, ready to be ravaged, open for business.
– Copyright © 2021 by Ada Limón. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 4, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
FILM
Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
Jim Jarmusch's 2003 black and white flick COFFEE AND CIGARETTES consists of 11 short stories in which two people, though disagreeing completely, still manage to share coffee and cigarettes as friends.
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Writer: Jim Jarmusch
Language: English
Cinematography: Frederick Elmes ASC, Ellen Kuras ASC, Robby Müller, Tom Dicillo
Distributed by: MGM Distribution Co.
SONG
Song of the Lake (2024)
Album: Wild God (2024)
Nick Cave: “I hope the album has the effect on listeners that it’s had on me. It bursts out of the speaker, and I get swept up with it. It’s a complicated record, but it’s also deeply and joyously infectious. There is never a masterplan when we make a record. The records rather reflect back the emotional state of the writers and musicians who played them. Listening to this, I don’t know, it seems we’re happy.”
Across ten tracks, the band dance between convention and experimentation, taking left-turns and detours that heighten the rich imagery and emotion in Cave’s soul-stirring narratives. It is the sound of a group emboldened by reconnection and taking flight. There are moments that touch fondly upon the Bad Seeds’ past but they are fleeting, and serve only to imbue the relentless and restless forward motion of the band.
Produced by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, and mixed by David Fridmann, Nick Cave began writing the album on New Year’s Day 2023. With sessions at Miraval in Provence and Soundtree in London, the Bad Seeds added their unique alchemy, with additional performances from Colin Greenwood (bass) and Luis Almau (nylon string guitar, acoustic guitar).
PAINTING
10 am is When You Come to Me
YEAR: 2006
MEDIUM: 20 etchings with watercolour, pencil and gouache on paper
DIMENSIONS: image, each: 380 × 910 mm frame, each: 478 × 1006 × 40 mm
COLLECTION: ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Lent by Artist Rooms Foundation 2013, on long term loan
© The Easton Foundation