Archive for the ‘art’ Category
of lilies
Today 9th June of the year 1939
dollop of syrup
frizzing her hair
like feathers
in the middle of the fried egg
smelling of her song
of lilies
poem and painting: mother and child on the beach – picasso
huntress
O weary hearts! O slumbering eyes!
O drooping souls, whose destinies
Are fraught with fear and pain,
Ye shall be loved again!
No one is so accursed by fate,
No one so utterly desolate,
But some heart, though unknown,
Responds unto his own.
Responds,–as if with unseen wings,
An angel touched its quivering strings;
And whispers, in its song,
“‘Where hast thou stayed so long?”
poem: endymion – henry wadsworth longfellow
image: Diana the huntress, fresco. Pompeii, Italy. 1st century A.D.
monsters
A woman in the shape of a monster
a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of them
image: Virgin and Child with the Milk Soup, Gerard David
poem: planetarium, adrienne rich
and something i missed: her obituary
for a time, I rest
“When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
― Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community
— image: here
its burden and greatness
My only advice for you is this. Go within yourself and probe the depths from which your life springs, and there at its source you’ll find the answer to the question of whether you must write. Accept this answer, just as you hear it, without hesitation. It may be revealed that you are called to be an artist. Then take this lot upon you, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without asking for any external reward. For the creative artist must be a world for himself, and find everything within himself—and in nature, to which he is devoted.
Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Painting: the sphinx by Helene Knoop
the baby kicks
And then it was over, this world we had grown to love
for its sweet grasses, for the many-colored horses
and fishes, for the shimmering possibilities
while dreaming.
But then there were the seeds to plant and the babies
who needed milk and comforting, and someone
picked up a guitar or ukulele from the rubble
and began to sing about the light flutter
the kick beneath the skin of the earth
we felt there, beneath us
a warm animal
a song being born between the legs of her;
a poem.
image via old lawrence
joy harjo poem: when the world ended as we knew it
the shape of what you lived
You think of lands you journeyed through,
of paintings and a dress once worn
by a woman you never found again.
And suddenly you know: that was enough.
You rise and there appears before you
in all its longings and hesitations
the shape of what you lived.
painting: picasso’s seated nude woman
poem: remembering, rainer maria rilke
in yourself you stretch
To be in love
Is to touch with a lighter hand.
In yourself you stretch, you are well.
painting: Jenny Saville, Study for Pentimenti I by way of marvelous kiddo
from poem: to be in love by gwendolyn brooks
what shall we cook tonight?
The woman wore a floral apron around her neck,
that woman from my mother’s village
with a sharp cleaver in her hand.
She said, “What shall we cook tonight?
Perhaps these six tiny squid
lined up so perfectly on the block?”
She wiped her hand on the apron,
pierced the blade into the first.
There was no resistance,
no blood, only cartilage
soft as a child’s nose. A last
iota of ink made us wince.
Suddenly, the aroma of ginger and scallion fogged our senses,
and we absolved her for that moment’s barbarism.
Then, she, an elder of the tribe,
without formal headdress, without elegance,
deigned to teach the younger
about the Asian plight.
And although we have traveled far
we would never forget that primal lesson
—on patience, courage, forbearance,
on how to love squid despite squid,>
how to honor the village, the tribe,
that floral apron.
