"A good photograph is knowing where to stand." ~ Ansel Adams

"It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer.  You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things.  But in photography everything is so ordinary;  it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary."

~ David Bailey

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine and fifty swans.

The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
Al suddenly mount
And scatter, wheeling, in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold,
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old'
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake
s edge or pool
Delight men's eyes, when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

William Butler Yeats

Oh for a book and a shady nook,
   Either indoor or out,
With the green leaves whispering overhead,
   Or the street cries all about.
Where I may read all at my ease,
    Both of the new and old,
For a jolly good book whereon to look
    Is better to me than gold.

~ John Wilson 1889

[My source doesn't ID the poet as John Wilson; however, seems logical.  If anyone can verify, please do.]

On Dylan Thomas ~

"'From the minute he saw daylight:  he had no choice but to write.'  All that seriously bothered him was the arrangement of patterns of words, 'and which particular word, out of his glorious riches of words, was the most apt.  That, and a continuous headache of debts.'*  Between money and muse, poverty and craft, Dylan's marriage skimped and bloomed.  Some money did somehow trickle in, from a poem here, a story there, from an occasional review, and even from the U.S., where James Laughlin of New Directions was persuaded to buy up the rights on Dylan's next five books for a reasonable sum in dollars, to be paid weekly in a form of allowance."
*Caitlin Thomas

Dylan on money:  "In London, because money lives and breeds there; in penury, because it doesn't; and in doubt as to whether I should continue as an outlaw or take my fate for a walk in the straight and bowler-treed paths."

~ DYLAN THOMAS POET OF HIS PEOPLE, Andrew Sinclair, Michael Joseph Ltd, 1975. 

Today:  In The Neat L'l Bookshop, 1:00 p.m.  TOPIC:  The Welsh poet & writer, Dylan Thomas.

Dylan Thomas' Writing Shed in Laugharne

"There is a story of the friend in the funeral parlour, who looked down at the poet's painted face, loud suit and carnation in his buttonhole, only to declare, "He would never have been seen dead in it."

"Dylan loves to shock, to wound, to kill, but he finds himself in the end a puritan, maimed in the gut, killed by his own boozing and indiscretions."

Quotations from Dylan Thomas Poet of His People* by Andrew Sinclair.

Join us in The Neat Little Bookshop on Thursday, September 18, 1:00 p.m. along with John Passfield and Neil Paul for a presentation on the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.

*Michael Joseph Ltd. 1975.
[Photo:  Wikipedia]

 

 

"Take the gentle path." ~ George Herbert