Annie, by Aleister Crowley

Léon Perrault - Petite fille au bouquet de fleurs
Léon Jean Bazile Perrault – Petite fille au bouquet de fleurs (1896)

Rosa Mundi, and other love-songs is a collection of 28 numbered poems, first published in 1905. It starts with a very long poem, itself called “Rosa Mundi.” Poems numbered 4 to 13 are titled by names of girls. The most charming is the fourth, where a boy secretly offers three flowers to a girl, but in return she has only one secret flower to offer him. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

L’influençable, par Minou Drouet

Roger-Viollet - Minou Drouet
Roger-Viollet – Minou Drouet (1957) – provient de Paris en Images

Dans ce poème dédié à Lucette Descaves, son professeur de piano qu’elle appelait « mon Amour », Minou Drouet lui retourne avec beaucoup d’humour le reproche que cette dernière lui avait fait d’être influençable. En fait, dit-elle, toute la nature est influençable, comme la mer qui porte le reflet du soleil. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

The two Nude Virgins, by Alfred Edgar Coppard

Today I present a mysterious poem from Hips & haws. The poet does not dare to go into the moonlight, fearing some unspecified “infinite thing” that could “enwrap” him. The title mentions two virgins, but the text tells only about one, Diana, the virgin goddess of the hunt, the moon, and nature in Roman mythology. There seem to be hidden things or people, Diana “cannot hear them though she stands whitely among them,” and “she has no fear.” CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

Petite morte, par Gérard d’Houville (Marie de Heredia)

Photographie post-mortem de l'époque Victorienne
Photographie post-mortem de l’époque Victorienne – Ebay

Marie Louise Antoinette de Heredia, la deuxième des trois filles de l’homme de lettres d’origine cubaine José-Maria de Heredia, naquit le 20 décembre 1875 à Paris. Elle épousa Henri de Régnier, puis devient la maîtresse de Pierre Louÿs, tous deux poètes et romanciers. Sous le nom de plume Gérard d’Houville, elle est l’auteure de romans et de poésies. Elle mourut le 6 février 1963 à Suresnes. Elle est enterrée au cimetière du Père-Lachaise. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

Marjory Fleming’s love of “well made Bucks”

Marjory Fleming - National Library of Scotland
Marjory Fleming – National Library of Scotland

Marjory Fleming was not a really beautiful girl. In her first journal of spring and summer 1810 (when she was 7 years old), she wrote:

—I am very strong & robust & not of the delicate sex nor of the fair but of the deficient in look People who are deficient in looks can make up for it by virtue.

In a letter to Marjory’s sister Isabella, dated April 1, 1811, her cousin Isabella Keith wrote: CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…