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Posts Tagged ‘Poetry’

Signet of Eternity/ Redux

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 24, 2015| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Signet of Eternity-smallI was driving yesterday morning on the highway that cuts across the lower part of western New York State, just above the Pennsylvania line.  It’s always a quiet ride with little if any traffic on the long stretches of the very rural and sparsely populated country.

It allows for the mind to wander a bit.  Sometimes, in those moments, I will take some time and look around, wondering: What is here that might stick with me if somewhere down the road today my life were to end?  I found myself taking in the beauty of the very human lines of the the  hilltops set against the blue sky  as the sun make the frost on the trees shimmer in silver.

Something very perfect in that simple but ethereal moment.  This morning this reminded me of a post from several years ago that dealt with just such moments, one that I am running again today:

This is a new piece [note: this was 2010] that I am calling Signet of Eternity, taken from a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, the great Indian writer/poet.  There’s a great sense of the eternal in this smallish ( a 4″ by 14′ image) painting on paper.  I find it very calming, very soothing, with its clear, cool colors and crisp line work.  There’s a simplicity and delicacy in this that hints at how fleeting and fragile are the the glimpses of eternal forces we are fortunate to witness in our lifetimes.

I know that sounds pretty metaphysical but I’m just talking about those moments when all the forces of the world present themself before you in an almost perfect harmony and there is a moment of stillness.  Clarity.  As though the world has chosen to reveal its purpose to you for those few precious seconds and in doing so has taken away all the weight of everyday life.

I thought about that yesterday as I trudged, head down, through the woods between my home and my studio.  I stopped on the path suddenly and looked around.  The trees were so graceful and  I caught sight of  the trunk of a tall shagbark hickory.  I let my eyes follow it upward to the powerful arms of branches that seemd to plead to the blue patch of sky above.  It was a grand moment and I thought about how often I traveled that path with eyes fixed on the ground before me.  How many times had I let the thoughts and worries in my head carry me without seeing past these things of beauty?  These signets of eternity.

Here is Tagore’s poem:

The day was when I did not keep myself in readiness for thee;
and entering my heart unbidden even as one of the common crowd,
unknown to me, my king, thou didst press the signet of eternity upon
many a fleeting moment of my life.

And today when by chance I light upon them and see thy signature,
I find they have lain scattered in the dust mixed with the memory of
joys and sorrows of my trivial days forgotten.

Thou didst not turn in contempt from my childish play among dust,
and the steps that I heard in my playroom
are the same that are echoing from star to star.

 

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Unafraid

Posted in Current Events, Painting, Poetry, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on November 19, 2015| 5 Comments »

GC Myers- Unafraid 2015There’s nothing I’m afraid of like scared people.

–Robert Frost,  A Hundred Collars

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I think those eight words above from the Robert Frost poem, A Hundred Collars, says it all for me at the moment.  I don’t find myself filled with the fear of ISIS or terrorists in general.  I certainly don’t fear  that someone, a small child or a widow,  who has entered themselves into a long and grueling process to come here will one day attack me.

No, I am more afraid of the panic of scared people who throw calm thought and rationality out the window.  People who allow the fear raised by others to dictate their response.  People who react in a knee-jerk manner that does nothing to alleviate their fears and sometimes does harm to themselves and others around them.  People who fear the darkness and shoot blindly into it.

Don’t get me wrong– it’s a scary moment in time.  It deserves our full attention, cautious observation and appropriate response.  But to react in a reactionary manner that alters our identity, the makeup of who we are as a people, is to fall prey to the will of the terrorists.

So, while you may have fears, be careful and be calm.  Breath.  Think.  Know the world around you and try to let those fears go for a time.

I think that last short paragraph applies to the piece at the top, a new painting, 3.5″ by 5.5″ on paper, that I am calling Unafraid.

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Bag of Tools

Posted in Motivation, Neat Stuff, Painting, Poetry, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , on October 20, 2015| 5 Comments »

GC Myers- Blocked 2015 smIsn’t it strange how princes and kings,
and clowns that caper in sawdust rings,
and common people, like you and me,
are builders for eternity?

Each is given a list of rules;
a shapeless mass; a bag of tools.
And each must fashion, ere life is flown,
A stumbling block, or a Stepping-Stone.

–R. L. Sharpe

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I came across the short poem, Bag of Tools, above recently and it caught my eye with its simple yet insightful message.  Looking deeper, into it, I found that it is often quoted and there are even videos of people reciting it, including one with Maggie Smith that was used in an ad for a large bank.

But who was the author , this R. L. Sharpe and when was it written?

There is little info on the poet and I have seen the poem dated 1890 as well as 1809, although I felt the earlier date was just a misinterpretation of the 1890. date.  So after a bit of digging, I came across  one little blurb on a forum that stated about the poet:

He was born in the 1870s and died in the 1950s.
For years he worked with his father, Edwin R. Sharpe,
who owned The Carrollton Free Press and a printing shop in Carrollton, Georgia.
In his later years he traveled a lot, mostly freelancing for magazines
of the ’20s and ’30s.

I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the info although I have seen a number of references from books of the early 20th century with attributions from an R’L. Sharpe in Carrolton , GA.  I wonder if he ever realized the possibility that his words would one day become so widespread?  He obviously fashioned a stepping-stone.

The painting at the top is a new piece, 8″ by 8″ on paper, that I call Blocked.  It seems to fit…

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I Lock My Door Upon Myself

Posted in Favorite Things, Poetry, Video, tagged , , , , , on August 4, 2015| 3 Comments »

Fernand Khnopff I Lock the Door Upon MyselfGod strengthen me to bear myself;
That heaviest weight of all to bear,
Inalienable weight of care.

All others are outside myself;
I lock my door and bar them out
The turmoil, tedium, gad-about.

I lock my door upon myself,
And bar them out; but who shall wall
Self from myself, most loathed of all?…

– Christina Rossetti

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The painting at the top, I Lock My Door Upon Myself,  is from Belgian Symbolist painter Fernand Khnopff who lived from 1858 until 1921.  The title is taken from a verse of a poem, Who Shall Deliver Me? (shown in part above), from Christina Rossetti, the pre-Raphaelite poetess whose brother,  Dante Rossetti, was an influence on the work of Khnopff.

It’s a haunting painting, one that always makes me stop a bit when I stumble across an image of it.  Perhaps it is the symbolist elements in it but for me it is probably the beautiful construction of forms and color that give the overall piece an almost abstract feel.  Just a great image in so many ways.

I came across a video from the free educational series Khan Academy that offers a short and insightful exploration of the painting’s symbolism.  Very interesting if you have five minutes or so.

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How to Be a Poet

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Poetry, tagged , , , , on May 13, 2015| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Trio:Three SquaresI came across this poem from author Wendell Berry on Maria Popova‘s wonderful site, Brain Pickings.  It’s a lovely rumination that could apply to any creative endeavor or to simply being a human being.  I particularly identified with the final verse that begins with the line: Accept what comes from silence.  I’ve always thought there was great wisdom and power in silence, a source of self-revelation.  Perhaps that is why so many of us shun the silence, fearing that it might reveal our true self to be something other than what we see in the mirror. Berry’s words very much sum up how I attempt to tap into silence with my work.

At the bottom is a recording of Wendell Berry reading the poem which gives it even a little more depth, hearing his words in that rural Kentucky voice.  It’s fairly short so take a moment and give a listen.

HOW TO BE A POET
(to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill — more of each
than you have — inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

—Wendell Berry

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Possibilities

Posted in Influences, Poetry, tagged , , , , on March 18, 2015| 7 Comments »

I was struggling this morning with the blog and was just about to say enough and just move on to my work when I came across the latest entry on BrainPickings.  It is a poem from the late Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska (July 2, 1923–February 1, 2012) called Possibilities.  It is basically a laundry list of her personal preferences.   Some are small and some significant but all contribute mightily to her wholeness as a person.  We are all the totality of our own laundry lists of preferences that define our character and personality  just as our DNA determines our physical characteristics.

It’s a simple yet thought-provokingly complex poem that leave me wondering about my own preferences, my own possibilities.  What are those small things that give you shape, make you who you are?

The poem is below but if you would prefer the spoken version there is a recording at read by performer Amanda Palmer.

POSSIBILITIES

I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love’s concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms’ fairy tales to the newspapers’ front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven’t mentioned here
to many things I’ve also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.

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Two Angels

Posted in Music, Poetry, tagged , , , , , , on February 14, 2015| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers Two Angels 2001It’s Valentine’s Day. I went back through the blog archives and discovered that I sometimes don’t post anything on this day or sometimes post something  off the subject of this day.  One year, it was baseball.  Well, I do love the game so maybe it was a Valentine of sorts.

I thought I would post something this year, a poem that I posted several years ago.  It’s an anonymous verse from India that strikes just the right chord of love and devotion for me without turning to pablum.

Although I Conquer All the Earth 

Although I conquer all the earth,

Yet for me there is only one city.

In that city there is for me only one house;

And in that house, one room only;

And in that room, a bed.

And one woman sleeps there,

The shining joy and jewel of all my kingdom.

    —Anonymous, Ancient India

Also, below is a song from Peter Case, Two Angels,  an elegantly simple song that is a favorite of mine and also on subject for the day.  Surprisingly, it is a fairly little known song though I understand it was used on an episode of True Blood.  If that doesn’t scream romance, I don’t know what does.

The painting above is an oil on panel, 10″ by 58″,  that I did back in 2001.  I cannot find or recall its title at the moment but am calling it Two Angels for today.

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Far Above It All

Posted in Painting, Poetry, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , on November 3, 2014| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- Far Above It All smThis is a new painting, a 20″ by 24″ canvas , that is called Above It All, part of the show opening December 5th at the Kada Gallery.  I felt from the time this painting was complete that with its intertwining tree set apart from the village below that it was about some form of love.  But what sort of love and how to describe it in words?
It seemed like a from of eternal love, one bound together through time, much like that in the myth of Baucis and Philemon that I have described here on  several occasions.  But I thought I would look to the words of someone else to perhaps give a new perspective on what I was seeing in this.

That brought me to the poems of Rupert Brooke, the British poet who was just in his ascension as a major poetic voice when he died at the age of 27 in 1915.  He was in the British naval forces of WW I on the way to Gallipoli  when he developed sepsis from an infected mosquito bite.   He was buried in an olive grove on the Greek island of Skyros.   An odd casualty of the war but still a casualty that deprived the world of what might have come from his hand.

The poem of Brooke’s that hit me the most fitting for this piece was one titled The Call, written when he was only about 20 years old.  It has the intensity of youthful love, like a flaming torch held high.  And that’s what I see in this painting.  So, if you can tolerate poetry, and I know some can’t, give a read to the verses below from Rupert Brooke.  It’s powerful and straightforward. And fitting, or so I think.

                      The Call

Out of the nothingness of sleep,
The slow dreams of Eternity,
There was a thunder on the deep:
I came, because you called to me.

I broke the Night’s primeval bars,
I dared the old abysmal curse,
And flashed through ranks of frightened stars
Suddenly on the universe!

The eternal silences were broken;
Hell became Heaven as I passed. —
What shall I give you as a token,
A sign that we have met, at last?

I’ll break and forge the stars anew,
Shatter the heavens with a song;
Immortal in my love for you,
Because I love you, very strong.

Your mouth shall mock the old and wise,
Your laugh shall fill the world with flame,
I’ll write upon the shrinking skies
The scarlet splendour of your name,

Till Heaven cracks, and Hell thereunder
Dies in her ultimate mad fire,
And darkness falls, with scornful thunder,
On dreams of men and men’s desire.

Then only in the empty spaces,
Death, walking very silently,
Shall fear the glory of our faces
Through all the dark infinity.

So, clothed about with perfect love,
   The eternal end shall find us one,
Alone above the Night, above
   The dust of the dead gods, alone.

            -Rupert Brooke

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Orphans/ Ode to Whitman

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, tagged , , , , , , on September 3, 2013| 2 Comments »

GC Myers-Ode to Whitman Orphans is the word I use to describe the paintings that don’t find a home.  I’ve been fortunate in my career that there haven’t really been that many so that the ones that do keep coming back to me take on a special significance, especially the ones that I felt were somehow special beforehand.  It may be the extra time I get to spend with them, examining them again and again to see if there is some inherent flaw or lack of fire that keeps someone from making it their own, that gives it this significance.  I spend much more time with these orphans than those paintings that quickly find a home.

Ode to Whitman is such an orphan, it being a piece has toured the country and has yet to find a home.  It saddens me a bit when I look at this painting because I do see the spirit of Walt Whitman in this piece, at least as he translates into my own psyche.  Though quiet in nature, the Red Tree here is celebrating its very being and could be embodying Whitman’s verse:

I too am not a bit tamed,

I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

These were words that were very influential in the formation of my artistic voice.  They dared me to stand apart.  They challenged me to reveal my inner self to the world, to let my light shine.  To let my yawp go free.

And that is what I see in this  piece.  It as though once the yawp has been released, even as the surrounding trees seem to be recoiling from its sound and fury, a placid pall has come into the center of its being.  It is calm now that it knows who it is, what it is.

As you can tell, I see and feel a lot in this simple painting.  I guess that is why it pulls at me to think of it as orphan.  That’s why I am going to give this piece a home and this is going to be the painting that will be given away at the Gallery Talk this coming Saturday at the Principle Gallery, which starts at 1 PM.  I know that it will find a good home in this way because someone who didn’t like my work would not spend an hour of their time listening to me talk about it.

So I hope you can make it  to the talk and that, if you’re the one who takes Ode to Whitman home , you realize the feeling that it carries with it.

Here’s another bit of Whitman that like, from the preface to his landmark Leaves of Grass:

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”

 

 

 

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Eakin’s Whitman

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Photography, Quote, tagged , , , on January 29, 2013| 2 Comments »

“Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.

It is not far, It is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know,
Perhaps it is every where on water and land.”

–Walt Whitman- Part of Song of Myself from Leaves of Grass. 1855

Walt Whitman- Thomas Eakins 1891

I’m in a bit of a hurry but really wanted to show this great photo of Walt Whitman.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a photo of him that wasn’t interesting but this one is special.  It’s taken by the great American painter Thomas Eakins in 1891, a year before Whitman’s death in 1892.  Eakins was also a pioneer in the use of photography in the art studio and an innovator in motion studies with film, among many other things.  I plan on writing more about his remarkable career in the future.  But for now, I just wanted to show this simple elegant photo of America’s voice.  At least to my ears.

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