the temptation of falling

-words-

book pages and paper
dimensions variable
2016

Unrelated writing fragments come together to compose a new story, to write a new ending for a myth that symbolizes one of the driving forces of human nature.

Icarus. The boy who flew too high, lost his wings and fell. Or the boy who looked down from the heights and fell seduced by the ground.

Dissolve,
thaw,
melt,
meld,
fade,
evaporate.

The temptation of falling as a seductive alternative choice with the power to disrupt and invert the linear storytelling of success. A fiction where falling outweighs ascension and looking down displaces looking up.



QUOTES

O! that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.
—William Shakespeare, “Hamlet”


So let us melt, and make no noise,
—John Donne, “A Valediction: forbidding mourning”


Wild nature as cosmetic afterthought
—Richard Mabey, “The lowly weed has its day”



SOURCES

“The Best of John Donne”, The Classic Poet Series, 47 pages, 2016, 14”x8-1/2”

“The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne, The Modern Library”, edited by Charles M. Coffin, 697 pages, 2001, 9”x5-5/8”

“Songs and Sonnets”, Tradition Classics, 95 pages, 2006, 11-3/4”x7”

“John Donne Selected Poems”, Dover Thrift Edition, 77 pages, 1993, 11-3/4”x6-1/4”

“John Donne, The Major Works”, edited by John Corey, Oxford World’s Classics, 488 pages, 2000, 9”x5-3/4”

“John Donne, The Complete English Poems”, edited by A.J. Smith, Penguin Classics, 678 pages, 1996, 11-1/2”x6”

“Donne, Poems and Prose”, Alfred A. Knopf, Every- man’s Library, Pocket Poems, 256 pages, 1995, 9”x5-1/2”

“The Love Poems of John Donne”, A Digireads.com Book, 97 pages, 2009, 14”x8-7/8”

“The Love Poems of John Donne”, edited and introduced by Charles Fowkes, St. Martin’s Press, 100 pages, 2009, 11”x5-1/4”

“Hamlet”, The Riverside Press, 1932, 17-1/8”x14”

“The Lowly Weed has its Day”, Richard Mabey, 112 pages, TATE ETC. Issue 22, Summer 2011