53---> thomas & baudelaire

À une passante

La rue assourdissante autour de moi hurlait.
Longue, mince, en grand deuil, douleur majestueuse,
Une femme passa, d'une main fastueuse
Soulevant, balançant le feston et l'ourlet;

Agile et noble, avec sa jambe de statue.
Moi, je buvais, crispé comme un extravagant,
Dans son oeil, ciel livide où germe l'ouragan,
La douceur qui fascine et le plaisir qui tue.

Un éclair... puis la nuit! — Fugitive beauté 
Dont le regard m'a fait soudainement renaître,
Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité?

Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici! trop tard! jamais peut-être!
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais!

— Charles Baudelaire

Thomas Baas sur son dessin après le poème "À une passante" de Charles Baudelaire:

C’est un instant, un moment aussi fugace qu’intense. Chaque vers résonne comme le pas de la passante. À peine le poème est lu, la femme à déjà disparue. Capter l’instantané, figer la puissance des impressions—cette entreprise admirablement mise en œuvre par Baudelaie est celle, souvent, de nombreux artistes; que ce soit en dessin, photo, musique. Saisir l’impalpable et l’éphémère est de l’offrir à une contemplation éternelle. (1)

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Thomas Baas intègre la section illustration de l’École supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg en 1994. Diplômé en 2000, il travaille pour l’édition et la presse jeunesse. Il a publié chez de nombreux éditeurs, comme Actes Sud Junior ou Flammarion, et travaille aussi régulièrement comme affichiste (Rock en Seine, RATP, etc.). (2)

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Traduit du français par Carrie Chappell/ Translated from French to English by Carrie Chappell

(1) This is an instant, a moment as fleeting as it is intense. Each verse resonates like the step of the passerby. No sooner is the poem read than the woman has already vanished. To capture the instantaneous, to transfix the power of impressions—this undertaking admirably put into practice by Baudelaire is often the venture of many artists ; be it in drawing, photography, music. To grasp the impalpable and the ephemeral is to offer it to eternal contemplation.

(2) Thomas Baas was accepted into the illustration program of the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg in 1994. He graduated in 2000 and works for children and young adult publishing houses. He has illustrated with numerous publishers, such as Actes Sud Junior or Flammarion, and also works regularly as a poster artist (Rock en Seine, RATP, etc.).

46---> katie & sandburg

Name: Katie Thompson

Hometown: Montgomery, Alabama 

Current City: Birmingham, Alabama

Occupation: Art Director by day, Visual Artist by night

What does poetry mean to you?

Poetry is difficult. It's difficult to write, it's difficult to read. Difficult to talk about. I believe poetry reflects our own inability to be absolute in the communication of our thoughts. We've created this incredibly difficult thing that holds as much meaning in between the words as it holds within the words themselves. Poetry is as indescribable as the human condition. 

Favorite poem/favorite poet, & why?

I'll share what has interested me lately: The People, Yes by Carl Sandburg. He wrote it in 1936 in America—so at the height of the Great Depression. I've been fascinated with this era of American history because I think it mirrors some of the anxiety that is currently buzzing here. The whole (book length) poem dives into the existential questions that all human societies tend to cycle through. I'll note that it's largely more optimistic than I am, especially when he approaches any notion of American exceptionalism. It's an interesting exercise to think what this poem would look like, if it could even exist, if Sandburg was writing in 2017 when optimism in America is not as easy to come by.

Here's an excerpt:

The people yes

The people will live on.

The learning and blundering people will live on.

    They will be tricked and sold and again sold

And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,

    The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,

    You can't laugh off their capacity to take it.

The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas.

The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,

is a vast huddle with many units saying:

    "I earn my living.

    I make enough to get by

    and it takes all my time.

    If I had more time

    I could do more for myself

    and maybe for others.

    I could read and study

    and talk things over

    and find out about things.

    It takes time.

    I wish I had the time."

The people is a tragic and comic two-face: hero and hoodlum:

phantom and gorilla twisting to moan with a gargoyle mouth:

"They buy me and sell me...it's a game...sometime I'll

break loose..."

    Once having marched

Over the margins of animal necessity,

Over the grim line of sheer subsistence

    Then man came

To the deeper rituals of his bones,

To the lights lighter than any bones,

To the time for thinking things over,

To the dance, the song, the story,

Or the hours given over to dreaming,

    Once having so marched.

Between the finite limitations of the five senses

and the endless yearnings of man for the beyond

the people hold to the humdrum bidding of work and food

while reaching out when it comes their way

for lights beyond the prison of the five senses,

for keepsakes lasting beyond any hunger or death.

    This reaching is alive.

The panderers and liars have violated and smutted it.

    Yet this reaching is alive yet

    for lights and keepsakes.

    The people know the salt of the sea

    and the strength of the winds

    lashing the corners of the earth.

    The people take the earth

    as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope.

    Who else speaks for the Family of Man?

    They are in tune and step

    with constellations of universal law.

    The people is a polychrome,

    a spectrum and a prism

    held in a moving monolith,

    a console organ of changing themes,

    a clavilux of color poems

    wherein the sea offers fog

    and the fog moves off in rain

    and the labrador sunset shortens

    to a nocturne of clear stars

    serene over the shot spray

    of northern lights.

    The steel mill sky is alive.

    The fire breaks white and zigzag

    shot on a gun-metal gloaming.

    Man is a long time coming.

    Man will yet win.

    Brother may yet line up with brother:

This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.

    There are men who can't be bought.

    The fireborn are at home in fire.

    The stars make no noise,

    You can't hinder the wind from blowing.

    Time is a great teacher.

    Who can live without hope?

In the darkness with a great bundle of grief

    the people march.

In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people

march:

    "Where to? what next?"

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Katie Thompson is a designer and artist living in Birmingham, AL. Currently, she serves as Artistic Director at Studio By The Tracks, a non-profit organization that provides art guidance and materials to emotionally conflicted children and adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder or other mental illnesses.