Poets on Art

http://ameiavoz.blog.terra.com.br

2008-04-18T10:58:00.000-07:00

Autumn in the Village

Marc Chagall (Belarus, 1887-1985)

NOTES FOR MARC CHAGALL

Under the kissing trees

boys and purple chickens

run through old dandelions

(a world of grandmothers).

The town clock sports a red face

and a mouth full of grapes.

Midnight: tents are being pitched

beyond cornfields and castles.

Restless in warm vineyards,

between black bread houses,

peasant girls with circus thighs

cry in the wings of lilies.

Dave Etter (American)

Go Read the River

Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1966

You can also find me at:

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2008-04-17T06:15:00.000-07:00

Pietà, 1498-99
Michelangelo (Italy 1475 -1564)
Marble, 174 cm x 195 cm
Basilica di San Pietro
Vatican

PIETA

Michelangelo:

How could you have known that day

The boulder before you

Held such Glory?

How could you tell

That from that single block

What was there waiting?

Did your eyes see where others failed?

Did your hammer know where to strike?

Did your chisel tremble just a little

Before the fisrt blow?

How could you know

That, from hidden deep within,

They would appear to you;

That you alone could release Them

For the world to worship?

Nancy Bradberry (American)

Saint Andrews Review, n. 36, 1989

Laurinsburg, NC

You can also find me at:

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2008-04-16T11:09:00.000-07:00

Portrait of a Man (believed to be a self-portrait)

Andrea del Sarto (Itália, 1486 - 1531)

THE MASTER HAND

Written before Andrea del Sarto's Portrait of Himself

The master hand lifted the brush, and lo,

-- Colour and light took form at his command,

When Death struck down with an immortal blow

-- - -- -- -- -- - The master hand.

A heap of clay becomes a heap of sand,

-- The mad, tumultuous centuries bestow

Laurel and dust to sweeten Death's demand.

Dust chills desire, and laurel lieth low,

-- But art's eternal hills triumphant stand --

Whose summits feel in one long afterglow

-- - -- -- -- -- - The master hand.

Ellen Glascow (American 1874-1945)

The freeman and other poems

New York, 1902, Doubleday

You can also find me at:

http://www.metmuseum.org/

2008-04-15T08:49:00.000-07:00

Ma Yuan (China 1190-1129)

Metropolitan Museum, New York City

- BEFORE A PAINTING BY MA YUAN

Caught in an eternal moment, they move serenely through time

Two sages gazing at the wonder of morning.

Aware of themselves, of spray on their faces, cloud and sun intermingling.

Sound of water falling without ceasing,

As words of their verses fall into the cadence of their mood.

As the air holds fragrance of earth, fern, pine and flower.

They do not see me as I stand on their terraced mountain,

Feeling the cold, cloudy mist from the waterfall,

Knowing the hidden stream below, that receives

The rushing waters in the rockbound gorge,

Listening to birsong bright as the glittering drops that sprinkle

The stones of the terrace: yet I see the very texture of their garments,

Breathe the sweet odor of pungent pine.

The massive white stem sends out dark branches,

Throws at my feet its polished purple seeds, pagoda-shaped.

Vibrant and free, the fragile bamboo delicately waves...

Is it in the wind of my arrival?

When will the teacher turn his grave glance upon me?

In what age shall I share the thoughts of his pure heart?

I shall wait here forever

Until the sage bids me approach and listen.

In this scene I have a part.

Mary Kennedy (American)

Ride into Morning: poems

New York, 1969, Gotham Book Mart

For more information on Ma Yuan:

You can also find me at:

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http://biography.jrank.org/pages/2452/Danner-Margaret-Esse.html

2008-04-14T14:24:00.000-07:00

Lascaux, cave painting

THE ROCK-WALL AND THE MEADOW
(complete text)
-
Lascaux
-------------------------------------------
-
-
I. Dead Bird-man and Dying Bison
-
Thin body that had imperious enthusiasm,
Now perpendicular to the wounded Brute.
-
O killed without any pity!
Killed by what was all and, reconciled, is dying;
He, the abyss sancer, spirit, yet to be born,
Bird and perverse fruit of magics, cruelly saved.
-
-
II. The Black Stag
-
The waters spoke on into the sky's ear.
Stag, you and you and you have crossed millennia, the space
From rock darkness to the air's caresses.
-
The hunter driving you, the genius seeking you --
How, from my broad shore, I love their passions!
And if their eyes were mine, at the instant when I hope?
-
-
III. The Beast Not To Be Named
-
The beast not to be named closes the march of the dainty
- - herd, like a comic Cyclops.
Eight jibes make up her finery, share out her folly.
The beast belches a prayer into the country air.
Her stuffed and sagging flanks are hurting, will
- - soon rid themselves of their bigness.
From her hooves to her vain tusks she is muffled in stench.
-
This is how, in the Lascaux frieze, to me appears,
- - mother in fantastical disguise,
Wisdom with her eyes full of tears.
-
-
-----
René Char (France, 1907-1988)
Poems of René Char
translated and annnoted,
Mary Ann Claws and Jonathan Griffin
Princeton, 1976, Princeton University Press
-------

For more information:

On René Char: http://www.poemhunter.com/ren-char/biography/
On the translator, Mary Ann Caws: http://www.maryanncaws.com/index.php
On Lascaux Cave paintings: http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/lascaux/en/

You can also find me at:

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2008-04-13T11:09:00.000-07:00

-
-
Raphael Sanzio (Italian, 1483-1520)
The Sistine Madonna, 1513-1514
The Sistine Chapel
Vatican City
Rome

-
-
-
ON FIRST SEEING THE SISTINE MADONNA
-
-
As gentle rain that has been long delayed
Blesses with priestly hands the sickly earth,
Giving to tree and flower the new birth
For which a pious peasantry had prayed;
While in ourselves an evil dust is laid,
And on the heart that suffers drought and dearth
A shower falls, and life regains its worth,
As all vexations of the spirit fade:
So, Virgin with the vision in your eyes
And all of human kindness in your arms,
At sight of you my worldly worry dies
And vain imaginings are my alarms.
You come to me with healing in your wings,
And I too dream unutterable things.

-
-

Donald Parson (American)
Glass Flowers
Boston, John W. Luce, 1936
-
-
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For more information on the Sistine Chapel:

http://mv.vatican.va/

2008-02-09T07:46:00.000-08:00

The Letter 1865-70

Jean Baptiste Camille Corot (French, 1796-1875)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

-
-
The Letter
-
She sits, the letter hovers on her hand.
-
-
Her dress, like her arm, is young and feminine.
She gentles the garden air that she breathes in.
Silence so dominates that it subdues
Even the glowing pigments of the paint.
-
-
The ribbon in her hair is a red flutter.
-
-
Her head is bent, her eyes bend toward the letter,
But do not read it, merely see the whole
Page in its presence, gleaming from his hand.
-
-
Is there a dark anguish in that page's whiteness?
-
-
The letter perches. Will it fly away?
-
-
(Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, 1796-1875)
-
-
Paul Engle (American 1908-1991)
A Woman Unashamed and Other Poems
New York, 1965, Random House
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-
For more information on this painting:
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http://www.metmuseum.org
http://www.impressioniste.net/corot.htm
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-
For more information on this poet:
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http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/MSC/ToMsc550/MsC514/msc514.html
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You can also find me at:
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http://livinginthepostcard.blog.terra.com.br
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http://ameiavoz.blog.terra.com.br
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http://fotolog.com/binkawest
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2008-02-08T06:06:00.000-08:00

Benin Bell, n/d

Yoruba, Nigeria

The Small Bells of Benin

Here in a Chicago museum, these small bells of Benin,

without ringing, are bringing their charm to a foreign scene.

The concave cilindrical draping of some

is as prim as the poise of a Quaker maid.

While the rare quadrangular forms of the rest

with their molded latticed designs, suggest

the iron fences displayed.

In New Orleans, and who can escape

the quaint, spellbound, gargoyle-like

bronze faces that stare from their settings

of thin metal lace?

I wish I could obtain one of these bells

or even a facsimile, but the formula

to their deft mouldings was lost

and hasn't been quite reproduced or found.

Margaret Danner (American - 1915-1984)

Impressions of African Art Forms

[no city], Broadside Press, 1968

For more information on the poet:

You can also find me at:

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http://ameiavoz.blog.terra.com.br

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http://fotolog.com/binkawest

2008-02-06T23:39:00.000-08:00

The Rape of the Sabine Women, 1581-82

Giovanni da Bologna [Jean de Boulogne] Flemish (1529-1608)

Marble Height: 13' 6"

Loggia della Signoria, Florence

Giovanni's RAPE OF THE SABINE WOMEN AT WILDENSTEIN'S

Showing the girl

On the shoulder of the warrior, calling

Behind her in the young body's triumph

With its despairing arms aloft

And the men violent,

being violent

In a strange village. The dust

Settles into village clarity

Among the villagers, a difficult

Song

Full of treason.

Sing?

To one's fellows?

To old men? in the villages,

The dwindling heritage

The heart will shrivel in

Sometime -- But the statue!

Spiriling its drama

In the stair well

Of the gallery ... Useless!

Useless! Thick witted,

Thick carpeted, exhilarated by the stylish

Or the opulent, the blind and deaf. There was a child

The girl was:

Seeking like a child the eyes

Of the animals

To promise

Everything that matters, shelter

From the winds

The winds that lie

In the mind,

The ruinous winds

'Powerless to affect

The intensity of what is' --

'It has been good to us,'

However. The nights

At sea, and what

We sailed in, the large

Loose sphere of it

Visible the force in it

Moving the little boat.

Only that it changes! Perhaps one is himself

Beyond the heart, the center of the thing

And cannot praise it

As he would want us to, with the light in it, feeling the long helplessness

Of those who will remain in it

And the losses. If this is treason

To the artists, make the most of it; one needs such faith,

Such faith in it

In the whole thing, more than I,

Or they, have had in songs.

George Oppen, American (1908-1984)

Collected Poems

New York, 1975, New Directions

For more information on:

Wildenstein Gallery:

http://www.wildenstein.com

On the poet:

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/oppen/oppen.htm

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http://ameiavoz.blog.terra.com.br
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http://livinginthepostcard.blog.terra.com.br

2008-02-06T11:35:00.000-08:00

The Great Venus Victrix, 1914

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (France 1841-1919)

Bronze Height: 1.80 m

The Sixth Color of the Afternoon

--Not long from the sea, Venus

Steps forward to her rock,

In a garden of rainbow flowers.

These elements: a broad-based

Body -- statue aslant

But balanced -- in one hand holding

A half-furled wave, her robe, its rough

Profusion widening,

The golden apple she had won

From Paris fecund in her palm.

--At that moment of change

To the fourth color of the afternoon

The apple sun had blazed, the garden

Flowers brimmed with light. The old man,

Hand tied to its wand, pointed to faults

Which faded with each gesture, as at creation

Adam was thought and formed.

--All art

Lies in that hair-headdress, crowning the naked

Woman, rippling, classic, curling

Back to the knot, one scroll escaping;

The bird-wing mouth, inward eye secure.

--At the sixth color of the afternoon,

We range about her as a mirror --

Her symbol -- and she exists inside our eyes,

Morning star at evening. To the old man

She meant: "This is as it should be. I am here."

----Written for the presentation of the first casting of Renoir's "Venus" to the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Barbara Howes, American (1915-1996)
A Private Signal: poems new and selected
Middletown, Conn., 1977, Washington University Press.

------

For more information this work:

http://www.renoir.org.yu
http://www.clarkart.edu

For information on the poet:

http://query.nytimes.com/fullpage.html?res=9F03E1D6039F936A15751C0A960958260

----

You can also find me at:

http://ameiavoz.blog.terra.com.br

http://fotolog.com/binkawest

2008-01-09T04:58:00.000-08:00

Around the fish, 1926

Paul Klee, German, (1879-1940)

Museum of Modern Art, New York

-

Around the Fish: After Paul Klee

1

The mind from nature, divorced by love,
Stunned into being by the running wave,
Swims backward always. Around the fish,
Unreasoning sensation made a wish.
Parsley, persevering in a tree,
Maturely withers in the alchemy
Of elms and willows. So with us
The elementary is most serious.
-

2

Wishing, the Fisher King sat down
(Bait was his body, but his catch a crown!)
Incarnate fish sood rose again,
Hooked to the level of his flawless line;
The sea stirred; sunlight's mica hurled
Aroma of the fish around the world;
Darwin breathed it on another shore,
Gasping the less than liquid air.

Swimmers, crying inthe undertow,
A water blinds us where we go;
The whirpool of the inner eye
Has wet ambitions, casts its fly
On sightless water; baited, fed,
Its fishing pole hangs by a thread.
But Christ lies on the blue plate, still.
The spawnless salmon strike to kill!
-
-

Howard Moss, American, (1922-1987)
Selected Poems
New York, 1971, Atheneum

For more information on this painting:

http://moma.org
-

For more information on this poet:

http://nybooks.com/authors/2491 -

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You can also find me at:

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2008-01-08T05:11:00.000-08:00

Portrait of Mrs. Thomas Eakins, 1876

Thomas Eakins, American (1844-1916)

Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.

THE COLOR THAT NEVER FADES: THOMAS EAKINS

In a texture sculpted

in a tightly drawn

somewhat tilted light

Eakins is so real

he can give his wife

my mother's eyes

and conjure in a canvas

an aching feel for faces

stripped of skin and

shown from within

to bare the heart's

clear cutting edge

where pain is color

that never fades

and never fails to leave

blood on the artist's hands

Chuck Sullivan, American, (1943)

Vanishing Species

Charlotte, 1975, Red Clay Books

For more information on this painting:

http://hirshhorn.si.edu

For more information on the poet:

http://www.chucksullivanpoet.com

You can also find me at:

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http://ameiavoz.blog.terra.com.br

http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/

2008-01-07T04:50:00.000-08:00

Venetian Concert, 1792

Francesco de Guardi, Italian (1712-1793)

Alte Pinakothek, Munich

-
Ballroom Scene (after Francesco de Guardi)
-
The world's turned cold.
Naked for the mind
And the eye to be-
-
hold its solitary light
-
As truth once told,
- disenchanted;
-
Touch defined,
Crystalled light the
Mind as glass
-
To its cause, insuf-
- ficiently.

--
-
David Jaffin, American ( 1937 -)
In the Glass of Winter
London, 1975, Abelard-Schuman
-
-
For more information on this painting:
http://www.pinakothek.de/alte-pinakothek
-
-
For more information on the poet:
http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=1826

You can also find me at:
http://livinginthepostcard.blog.terra.com.br
http://ameiavoz.blog.terra.com.br
http://fotolog.com/binkawest
-

2008-01-06T14:29:00.000-08:00

Le Concert Champêtre, 1508

Titian, but also attributed to Giorgione.

The Louvre, Paris

--
--

On the Concert

--

When first this canvas felt Giorgione's hand,
From out his soul's intensity he drew
In lines most acrid yet superbly few
A man, -- a soul, whose water at command
Of pain had stiffened to ice, whom grief had banned,
Till music even and harmony's rich dew
Fell fruitless. Poised, defiant and calm he threw
To the earth that wronged him his life's reprimand.
Yet, as he drew, a wind mellow with dole
Of past life as of sea-coast pine did rise
And warm the rigour of the painter's soul.
For his tear-moistened fingers warmed the frore
Hard colours of the cheek, and in the eyes
Set the large stare of Sorrow's Nevermore.

[1895]

--
--
Trumbull Stickney ( 1874-1904)
The Poems of Trumbull Stickney
Ed. Amberys R. Whittle
New York, 1972, Farrar Strauss & Giroux
--
..
For more information on this painting:

http://www.louvre.fr/

--
--
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2008-01-05T04:31:00.000-08:00

---

The Forest, 1927

Max Ernst, German, (1891 -1976)

Peggy Guggenheim Collection

The Guggenheim Museum, New York

---
---
---
CEMETERY OF BIRDS

--

for Max Ernst*

Beyond the forest

the skyscrapers -- Mies van der Rohe´s

visions --

tower

with the optimism

of a war's first days

the forest itself -- an inferno

in the atavistic mind --

simply threatens

to come alive

two survivors

are trapped

on the no man's land between:

bird creatures with useless wings

refugees

from the human

they stare at us -- their blank faces

ontological mirrors

silvered

with the void

*After Max Ernst's 1927 "forest", Der Vogelfriedhof

---

TOM JONES, No Prisoners, Santa Barbara, 1976, Skeptic Magazine Press

---

For more information on this painting:

You can also find me at:

http://www.tinhouse.com/mag/back_issues/archive/issues/issue_11/27_night_sonnets.html

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2008-01-04T06:15:00.000-08:00

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----

Burial of Count Orgaz, 1586

EL GRECO, ( 1541- 1614), born in Crete, Greece.

Church of San Tomé, Toledo, Spain.

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----

EL GRECO´S BURIAL OF COUNT ORGAZ

---

------

Yesterday took a white and ivory black

------rose madder, yellow ocher

------safron

------cinnabar

-----

----

Hands of Domingo Theotocopouli

-----this morning on the wall

-----of San Tomé

-----eyes of him

----

---

Color clothed below, unclothed above

-----if seeing were believing

-----hands

-----eyes

for Richard O'Connell

------

Eliott Coleman (1908-1980)

American

-------

Elliott Coleman, Broken Death, Baltimore, 1977, Linden Press

---

For more information on this poet:]

---

You can also find me at:
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----
http://ameiavoz.blog.terra.com.br/
----
http://fotolog.com/binkawest
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2007-12-14T10:50:00.000-08:00

The Sleeper, 1897

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

oil on canvas

Oskar Reinhart Museum, Switzerland

----------------------

-----------------------

----------------------

RENOIR GIRL

-------------

Breasts high and open, with

the curving belly, to the sun --

legs and arms neverthelessly

sprawed on the knowll.

---------------------

Eyelids lightly closed,

lips relaxed in enigmatic smiling

at whatever daydream itches

slowly in her mind.

-------------------

It doesn´t matter that the frame

couples her with desultory clouds,

a frond of bush curving

above the round thigh like a never

quite caressing hand.

--------------------

No touch can break

the budding flesh´s perpetual

summer, nor wake

death from this sunshiny dream.

-------------------------------

------------------------------

Bariss Mills

Domestic Fables

New Rochelle, NY, 1971, The Elizabeth Press

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For more information on the painting:

http://www.museumoskarreinhart.ch/

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You can also find me at:

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http://livinginthepostcard.blog.terra.com.br

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2007-12-12T07:44:00.000-08:00

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

The Blindman's Meal, 1903
Oil on canvas
95.25 x 94.62 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

--------------------------------------------

COMMUNION

-------------------------------

--------------------------------

(After seeing Picasso´s "The Blind Man´s Meal")

----------------------------------------------------------

The blue translucence bodies forth his world´s dim monotone

Upon the anonymous square of table the sightless meal

The napkin spread beside the empty plate.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

The face portrays the hunger´s hum

The blind and reaching lips move toward the smell

The blind neck turns to lean

Stretched and unnourished like the eyes.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

One hand caresses broken bread

One hand stretched out, the fingers feeling for the wine

Elbows and forearms, firm on the table

Balance the blind silence

Give direction to the mute unguided dark.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

The blind man´s lips commune with guessed-at wine

Murmuring his soul´s need

Loved voices at the table´s loneliness.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

There is no calloused line in this whole face

Resigned, he sits his unmolesting bitterness

His tamed profile, his uncounting heart.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Hy Sobiloff ( 1912-1970)

In the Deepest Aquarium

New York, 1959 Dial Press

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For more information on this painting: http://www.metmuseum.org

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You can also find me at:

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http://ameiavoz.blog.terra.com.br

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2007-12-11T11:29:00.000-08:00

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

The Pensive Harlequin, 1917

oil on canvas

Museu Picasso, Barcelona

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**************************************************************

PICASSO'S HARLEQUIN

-------------------------------

Surrounded by

suitcases

and cigar smoke,

----------------

the traveler sits

in suit

and stare

----------

of Picasso's

pensive

harlequin,

----------

watching the bus

depot clock

measure the night.

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-------------------

-------------------------------------

---------------------

James Magorian

Distances

Chicago, 1972, The Ibis Press

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--------------------------------

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For more information on the painting: http://www.museupicasso.bcn.es

For more information on the poet: http://www.mockingbird.creighton.edu/Ncw/magorian.htm

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You can also find me at:

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http://www.livinginthepostcard.blog.terra.com.br/

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