“The spring, April sunshine, / It’s a blessing; it’s a blessing.”
— Jackie Kay, from Bantam: Poems; “April Sunshine,”
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;
I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want
to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.
— Mary Oliver, from “Starlings in Winter”
“Tuesday night: November 5 Brief note: to self. Time to take myself in hand. I have been staggering about lugubrious, black, bleak, sick. Now to build into myself, to give myself backbone, however much I fail. If I get through this year, no matter how badly, it will be the biggest victory I’ve ever done.”
— The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath,
APPENDIX 13,
Journal Fragment 5 November 1957
Still Life with Coffee Pot and Flowers
Vincent van Gogh - 1887
Von Der Heydt Museum - Wuppertal (Germany)
Painting - oil on canvas
Height: 41 cm (16.14 in.), Width: 38 cm (14.96 in.)
I’d say this is easily Van Gogh’s most impressionistic painting; clearly inspired by the palettes and styles of Renoir, Monet, Pissarro, and Sisley.
“The moon was a golden petal…”
— D.H. Lawrence, from Some Imagist Poets: An Anthology; “Green”
