2023 NaPM 18 April

[RiverNotch]

This is the last of my favourites from 2016, originally posted 5 April.

Rules: Write a poem for national poetry month on the topic or form described. Each poem should appear as a separate reply to this thread. The goal is to, at the end of the month have written 30 poems for National Poetry Month. 

Topic 05: Write an "ekphrastic" poem - a poem inspired by a piece of artwork. Provide a link to the artwork if you can.

Form: any
Line requirements: 8 lines or more

[Mark A Becker]

Bird

On the
left is a
vertical
splotch
of blue
positioned
over a thick horizontal splotch of red.

Though
abstract,
it is easy
to imagine
that it is a bluebird perched on a branch.

What’s harder
to imagine
is that this
was painted
by a gorilla
named Koko.



https://www.koko.org/shop/gorilla-art/bird-by-koko/

[dukealien]

Defeat and Victory


Great painting whether meaning
size or quality,
treasured for its action, composition
or sheer beauty,
view “Defeat of the Floating Batteries”
(from a distance
so as to take it in whole).

Leftward, chaos–
drowning men, sinking ships,
fire-lit clouds worthy of Bosch;
rightward, posed (though not quite poised),
red coats, cocked hats
and one imperious finger pointing
toward destruction.

Yet - and this is the third greatness -
the British Governor-General is not
pointing to the massacre he wrought
but, victory assured,
commanding his own startled troops
now to save their erstwhile enemies
and so defeat contempt in victory.

Perhaps this painting does not jibe
with current sensibilities
nor even current war of snipers,
knives in darkness, Hellfire missiles.
But it is great indeed: in size,
in art,
and most of all, in heart.

[TranquillityBase]

https://www.artic.edu/artworks/20684/par...-rainy-day


A gentle rain
quietens the streets
and makes conversation
unnecessary, even blasphemous,
as we carefully make our way
to our next destination.

[CRNDLSM]

He's jiminy Cranberry
Anything imaginary
Always changing temporary
Can be scary, sweet and merry,
Basic, extraordinary,
His head is very dense and airy
Make it make sense if you care
He's everywhere, he's jiminy cranberry

[Video: https://youtu.be/VAhtt9mkcGA]

[Quixilated]

Ego and Id

This is me.
Every time I look at it,
my mind says
“This is me,
us. We are like this.”

This is me.
I don’t know why exactly.
I’ve tried to explain it once or twice,
but I don’t know if they understood.

They are both me.
A self at war.
The girl is me, her weary struggle.
The cow is me, the stubborn stationary stance.
The broken rope, always taut between the two.

They are trapped there
inside that postcard
inside the original painting too
a petrified struggle.

With both sets of feet planted firmly,
they will neither of them get
where they want to go.

Looking at it is comforting,
like having a friend who understands:
This is me.




(“In the Pasture” 1883 by Julien Dupré.
I don’t know if I can figure out how to post a link to an image of it.)

edited a chunk out. Probably won’t put it back, but just waiting a bit. 

I first saw it in the museum
then bought the postcard 
from the gift shop.

The rest of my postcard collection 
rest in a box in the basement 
but this one, for years,
decades almost,
has been out in the open
taped to the fridge.

[brynmawr1]

Springtime at Giverny

As you lay in the quiet
of your cot did you dream
of her reborn at the spring
waking from the sanctuary 
of her long winter sleep?
 
Hope she rose like the daffodil
with a green stretch and a yellow yawn
ready to don her bonnet; shrugging the dark 
earth from the purple of her shoulders,
unfurling her petals with the crocus?  
 
Then walk the garden to the fragrance
of first cut grass, her touching
the stable bloom of dogwood,
wild-white and cultured-pink, hearing
the breath of your young lover’s sigh
like the early bird song heard
on a dawn’s breeze through the cottage window.
 
But she was fragile
as the magnolia bloom with beauty
unable to survive beyond
the mildest spring storm.
 
Now she is only a memory lost
in the corner of a dusty dream
dreamt from beyond the grave.

[Semicircle]

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b4/39/ca/...03bce1.jpg


Pulse width

The few traces retained
accumulate into the 
lump of clay you are,
echoes still ringing out
from the bang.
The world changing shape-
tiny hooks hang onto
infinitely smaller increments,
always ending with a bang.

[Mark A Becker]

Springtime at Giverny

Very evocative imagery in your poem Steve.
Good one

By the way, Brynmar is a town outside of Philly. Ya?

[TranquillityBase]

Ego and Id

This is me.
Every time I look at it,
my mind says
“This is me,
us. We are like this.”

This is me.
I don’t know why exactly.
I’ve tried to explain it once or twice,
but I don’t know if they understood.

They are both me.
A self at war.
The girl is me, her weary struggle.
The cow is me, the stubborn stationary stance.
The broken rope, always taut between the two.

They are trapped there
inside that postcard
inside the original painting too
a petrified struggle.

With both sets of feet planted firmly,
they will neither of them get
where they want to go.

Looking at it is comforting,
like having a friend who understands:
This is me.

Quix, so glad you are joining us.  This one is spectacular 

[Wjames]

https://www.winslowhomer.org/the-blue-boat.jsp

The canoe is moving,
rippling the water
reflecting white clouds
into a strobe,
passing the spruce
like a loon,
animating a scene
in one still moment.

[RiverNotch]

It's just a day's work
for the heroine here
to the point that disgust
doesn't show on her face

but for how she had to touch
the skin of this beast
in the shape of a man

or for how she had to lean
so close to his face
as to breathe the same breath

as him again---

See how the smile
of her servant wanes,

the joy of revenge
tempered by the network
of stains to be removed
from their best sheets,

or how the lighting
can seem so dramatic
when one's sleep
is so rudely interrupted.

See how the proud
Gentile gasps for air

before the righteous Jew.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c...GA8563.jpg

---

Edited.

It's just a day's work
for the heroine here,
to the point that disgust
doesn't show on her face

but for how she had to touch
the skin of this beast
in the shape of a man

or for how she had to lean
so close to his face
as to breathe the same breath

as him again---

See how the smile
of her servant wanes,

the joy of revenge
tempered by the network
of stains to be removed
from their best sheets,

or how the lighting
can seem so dramatic
when one's sleep
is so rudely
interrupted.

[brynmawr1]

Springtime at Giverny

Very evocative imagery in your poem Steve.
Good one

By the way, Brynmar is a town outside of Philly. Ya?

Hi Mark,

Thanks.
Yes it is, tho only people that grew up there know where it begins and ends.  Now all the Mainline towns run from one into the other.  When I was originally registering for this site it popped into the username slot so I went with it.
Take care,
steve

[TranquillityBase]

Defeat and Victory


Great painting whether meaning
size or quality,
treasured for its action, composition
or sheer beauty,
view “Defeat of the Floating Batteries”
(from a distance
so as to take it in whole).

Leftward, chaos–
drowning men, sinking ships,
fire-lit clouds worthy of Bosch;
rightward, posed (though not quite poised),
red coats, cocked hats
and one imperious finger pointing
toward destruction.

Yet - and this is the third greatness -
the British Governor-General is not
pointing to the massacre he wrought
but, victory assured,
commanding his own startled troops
now to save their erstwhile enemies
and so defeat contempt in victory.

Perhaps this painting does not jibe
with current sensibilities
nor even current war of snipers,
knives in darkness, Hellfire missiles.
But it is great indeed: in size,
in art,
and most of all, in heart.

Duke, your poem got me to reading about the seige of Gibraltar, in particular the battle involving the "floating batteries".  The British always found a way to thwart the Spanish.  I could only find one reference to the General's mercy, and it was not very enlightening, but anyway, enjoyed re-reading this with care after that.  

Have the Spanish had a good military idea since the Thirty Years War?

TqB

[dukealien]

Duke, your poem got me to reading about the seige of Gibraltar, in particular the battle involving the "floating batteries".  The British always found a way to thwart the Spanish.  I could only find one reference to the General's mercy, and it was not very enlightening, but anyway, enjoyed re-reading this with care after that.  

Have the Spanish had a good military idea since the Thirty Years War?

TqB

Not mercy, exactly, more like "fair play."

Taking the question seriously, the Spanish have, perhaps, tended to have good "big ideas" ahead of their time or with inadequate means of executing them.  For example, the floating batteries were meant to be impregnable and unsinkable, but remained flammable: they were wooden, though packed with earth to stop shot kinetically.  Coles' (British) Crimean War ironclad floating batteries protected their wooden structure with metal plates, solving the problem and producing a naval revolution when combined with steam propulsion, 60 years later.  The Tercios (up to the 30 Years' War) were tactical combined-arms forces which would flower, 400 years later, into Panzer divisions and US Combat Commands with operational-level capabilities... it's often forgotten that Panzer divisions contained a lot more than tanks.  A case can be made that 1800s Spain invented (or re-invented) guerilla warfare against Napoleon - they gave it its modern name, after all.  And Franco's mobile campaigns are not to be despised, militarily.

I guess you could say Spain suffered from a "land's end" situation:  fairly safe from invasion after defeating its African invaders, and after the burst of energy resulting from that subsided, with only dynastic interests elsewhere (Napoleon was a dynast).  There might be grounds for a comparison with China, but China's hinterlands are more porous than the Pyrenees... though not as close as France.