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Posts Tagged ‘Poetry’

An Irish Trio

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 17, 2025| 2 Comments »

Paul Henry- The Fairy Thorn (1936)

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

— William Butler Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree (1888)

St. Patrick’s Day 2025.  No commentary today, just a simple triad of Irish imagery, song and verse.

The painting at the top is from Paul Henry, who spent his life painting his native Ireland from 1877 until his death in 1958. He was perhaps the best-known painter in Ireland through the first half of the 20th century though many of us here in the States may not recognize the name. I didn’t know his work until a decade or so ago, but had an affinity for it instantly, seeing a familiarity between his work and my own, in the stark manner in which the landscape and tree was portrayed.

Most of Henry’s landscapes were set in the west of Ireland, in the Connemara district, an area described by Oscar Wilde as “a savage beauty.”  For many, Henry’s landscapes represent the idealized image of the Irish countryside with simple white cottages set among stark, barren hills and rolling green fields. But his greens are not that bright Kelly green so often used in depicting Ireland. No, Henry often chose blue and brown tints in his work.  He used a very distinct and deceptively cool palette in his painting which enhances the earthy coolness and solitary nature of the landscapes.

The poem, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, is from the great W.B. Yeats and may well be the most famous piece of Irish verse. It has been set to music by numerous artists, referenced in film and television, and is even printed on the Irish passport. I find it’s transcendent tone captivating, a mood much like that which I try to find in my work.

For the song, I am going with Carrickfergus from the collaborative effort between the Chieftains and Van Morrison. This may be my favorite version of this folk tune that feels like it is much older than its actual age, coming as it does from the 1960’s. That old feel may come from the fact that musical scholars have deduced that its melody is a combination of two much older Celtic folk tunes.

Whatever the case, I think it is a lovely fit this morning with the words of Yeats and the painting from Henry.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow…

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Preferences and Possibilities

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on February 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Completeness— At West End Gallery

We do not belong to those who only get their thought from books, or at the prompting of books, — it is our custom to think in the open air, walking, leaping, climbing, or dancing on lonesome mountains by preference, or close to the sea, where even the paths become thoughtful.

–Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882)

Below is a poem from the late Nobel Prize-winning Polish poetess Wislawa Szymborska (1923–2012) called Possibilities. I featured it here back in 2015 but it struck my fancy this morning and I thought I’d share it again and maybe add a bit to the original blogpost. 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? Do we rely solely on these preferences in making the choices that we face in this life? Or do we sometimes make choices that do not align with our own preferences?

There are a lot of Symborska’s preferences that strike a chord with me. For instance:  I prefer myself liking people to myself loving mankind. That certainly has been my preference for most of my conscious life.

Then there’s: I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems. Like writing poetry, painting can often seem like an absurd thing to do. I often find myself asking why I am alone in the woods smearing paint on surfaces. Is there a purpose or meaning in it?

But I have known the other side of that coin, living a life where I wasn’t painting, and that existence was far more absurd for me. Absurd to an unsustainable degree.

And that final line says it all: I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility that existence has its own reason for being. We may never know whether there is a reason for our being but that should not take away from the life we have here.

If this is all we get, live by the possibility of your own preferences and not those of any other.

Live as you are. As you want to be.

You might not agree with some of her preferences. That’s okay– they’re not yours to determine. She is simply giving us a loose outline of her individual nature, her humanity. And there’s poetry in that for any of us.

I am also including a song which was a favorite of Symborska, who requested that the version below from Ella Fitzgerald be played at her funeral. The song is Black Coffee and since being written in 1948 by Sonny Burke it has been covered by some of the great vocalists of our times– Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee, k.d. lang and so forth. You could pick any as your preference and they are all special. It’s that kind of song. But this version from the great and grand Ella Fitzgerald is extra special.

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.

–Wislawa Szymborska

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Nonno’s Poem

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 22, 2025| 2 Comments »

O Courage, could you not as well
Select a second place to dwell,
Not only in that golden tree
But in the frightened heart of me?

— Tennessee Williams, Night of the Iguana

The 1964 film Night of the Iguana was on TCM yesterday and I listened along as I painted yesterday. Based on the 1961 Tennessee Williams play, the film is one that has slowly become a favorite of mine.

By that, I mean it was hardly a favorite when I first saw it many years ago. Not sure I even watched the whole thing then. It felt grim to the younger me who wanted a neater and tidier story with sharply defined protagonists and an ending that tied up all the loose ends in a satisfying way. The younger me didn’t see any of that in this film then.

But with age, you realize that life is never neat and tidy, try as you might to make it so. The brokenness of the main characters in this film that once turned me off now seemed more pertinent to the world I now know, taking on a much deeper reality and meaning for me. Like much of the work from Tennessee Williams, it deals with broken people trying to make their way through this world. His work is seldom an easy thing to take in. But it is usually worth trying and over the years, I have myself growing into this film. 

I am not going to go into the story or the film here this morning. Nor am I endorsing this film for you. It is certainly art and is therefore subjective. Where I see light or hope in it, you might see darkness and despair. 

That’s art for you. As it should be.

I only mention the film this morning because I wanted to share the poem from the old poet, Nonno, who has ended up at the seedy Mexican resort where this takes place with his middle-aged granddaughter, who is an itinerant painter. She is played by Deborah Kerr who is an absolute favorite of mine. They have been traveling for a long time as he attempts to complete a poem that he has long labored over, one that deals with having a feeling heart in a corrupt world. 

The final version, in the video at the top of the page, delivered beautifully by Nonno, portrayed by Cyril Delevanti, is a wonderful scene and I thought it deserved to be shared. I also added the text of the poem below as well as a song, Night of the Iguana, from Joni Mitchell.

How calmly does the olive branch
Observe the sky begin to blanch
Without a cry, without a prayer,
With no betrayal of despair,

Sometime while night obscures the tree
The zenith of its life will be
Gone past forever, and from thence
A second history will commence.

A chronicle no longer gold,
A bargaining with mist and mould,
And finally the broken stem
The plummeting to earth; and then

An intercourse not well designed
For beings of a golden kind
Whose native green must arch above
The earth’s obscene, corrupting love.

And still the ripe fruit and the branch
Observe the sky begin to blanch
Without a cry, without a prayer,
With no betrayal of despair.

O Courage, could you not as well
Select a second place to dwell,
Not only in that golden tree
But in the frightened heart of me?

— Tennessee Williams, Night of the Iguana

 

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Cloud Flyer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 30, 2025| 2 Comments »

Cloud Flyer– At West End Gallery

In a time of sceptic moths and cynic rusts,
And fattened lives that of their sweetness tire
In a world of flying loves and fading lusts,
It is something to be sure of a desire.

Lo, blessed are our ears for they have heard;
Yea, blessed are our eyes for they have seen:
Let the thunder break on man and beast and bird
And the lightning. It is something to have been.


–G. K. Chesterton, The Great Minimum (1917)

The new small painting at the top is titled Cloud Flyer and is now at the West End Gallery as part of their annual Little Gems exhibit. I showed my work for the first time ever at their first Little Gems show back in 1995. The show has proven to be one of their most popular shows every year since. I know it’s one of mine, both in painting for it and seeing the small work of the other artists.

It seems to go against logic but there seems to be something freeing in painting on a small scale. Maybe it’s because it feels less daunting facing a small unintimidating surface than being confronted with the broad blankness of a large canvas.

Or maybe because of the size there is only one take, to use a movie term. There are no preliminary sketches or studies. I know many artists who work in a 3-step process of first creating a small loose study then transfer it to a slightly larger version that is a bit tighter in its painting. They then attempt to transfer everything they have gleaned from the first two studies to a large and totally finished final painting. With few exceptions, when I get to see all the stages of a painting done in this way, the first sketch is generally the most alive of the three. It is fresh and free and, unlike the later stages, not trying to recapture something that may have been unintended when it emerged. The final painting often ends up feeling like a copy of something else other than what it is.

I don’t work that way. My belief has been that every painting ends up being a rehearsal for the next. Therefore, you should strive to paint each piece, no matter its size or significance, in the same manner. I think it creates consistency in the quality of the work, something that transcends its size. I feel that every small piece I have done for all the Little Gems shows over the years is a work unto its own.

That’s certainly how I feel about this small painting. It has things in it that I know I would be hard-pressed to recreate it on a larger scale and still maintain the original unique feel of this one. An angle here or there would be off, the composition and colors would be altered in some way, and it might feel a little stilted. Contrived. It wouldn’t be the same. And for me, that’s the way it should be.

This piece has its own life and a sense of freshness. This was one of the first pieces I worked on for this show and I can’t tell you how much I springboarded off the energy this little guy provided. It was like a little jolt of lightning hitting me at a time when I needed it.

That’s the reason I chose the section from the G.K. Chesterton poem, The Great Minimum, at the top. That final line– And the lightning. It is something to have been. — just kills me. The rest of the poem, as I read it, is about the small joys of being alive, how each small thing brings value to this world, and nothing is insignificant.

Little things mean a lot.

Of course, I could be wrong. We all read things differently with our own set of filters and desires for what we want to see and hear. 

For me, it fits this painting. And this exhibit.

Below is a version of the poem performed as a song by the Nicole Ensing Band. I liked this better than some of the dryer straight recitals of it. They do a nice job with it. Below that is the whole poem if you would like to read along.

The Great Minimum

It is something to have wept as we have wept,
It is something to have done as we have done,
It is something to have watched when all men slept,
And seen the stars which never see the sun.

It is something to have smelt the mystic rose,
Although it break and leave the thorny rods,
It is something to have hungered once as those
Must hunger who have ate the bread of gods.

To have seen you and your unforgotten face,
Brave as a blast of trumpets for the fray,
Pure as white lilies in a watery space,
It were something, though you went from me today.

To have known the things that from the weak are furled,
Perilous ancient passions, strange and high;
It is something to be wiser than the world,
It is something to be older than the sky.

In a time of sceptic moths and cynic rusts,
And fatted lives that of their sweetness tire,
In a world of flying loves and fading lusts,
It is something to be sure of a desire.

Lo, blessed are our ears for they have heard;
Yea, blessed are our eyes for they have seen:
Let thunder break on man and beast and bird
And the lightning. It is something to have been.

— G.K. Chesterton

 

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Of the Empire/ Mary Oliver

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 24, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Blue Moon Calls– At West End Gallery

Of The Empire

We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

–Mary Oliver, Red Bird (2008)

The question is: When the collective heart of a people has become small, and hard, and full of meanness, can a person keep their own heart from becoming the same?

Or maybe it should be: Is the condition of the collective heart, now small, and hard, and full of meanness, terminal? Can it ever be reversed so that one day in the future it will be said that we were a people whose heart was large, and soft, and filled with warmth and kindness?

Of course, only time will reveal the answers to these questions.

Time is, after all, the ultimate revelator.

On that note, here’s one of my all-time favorite songs, The Revelator, from Gillian Welch. When I worked in my first and much more rustic studio (no phone, TV, internet, or other distraction) up in the woods in the early 2000’s, this song was in heavy rotation on my playlist.

I imagine most of you know who Mary Oliver (1935-2019) was but for those of you not familiar, she was perhaps the best known and bestselling contemporary American poet in recent times. I have featured her work, including her best-known poem Wild Geese, several times in the past.

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Sea of the Six Moons

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on January 23, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Sea of the Six Moons– At West End Gallery

But the principal failing occurred in the sailing,
And the Bellman, perplexed and distressed,
Said he had hoped, at least, when the wind blew due East,
That the ship would not travel due West!

–Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark (1876)

I think the takeaway from this new small painting for me is that we sometimes find ourselves sailing on seas that don’t make sense.

The bearings that once guided our navigation have changed in ways that confuse us. The winds blow and the waves break in ways we have never seen before and don’t quite understand. Where there was one moon and recognizable constellations by which we could set a course, we find ourselves under a starless sky with six moons, some rising, some falling, some moving sideways.

And a familiar shoreline is nowhere to be found. And the only map we have is like the Bellman’s map in Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark— a blank sheet of paper!

Lost sailors on strange seas with the only things we have at hand are ourselves, our imagination, a bit of courage, and the willpower to survive.

A dire situation, indeed. But we are still afloat and our sails intact. That is job one. We can do this.

Now that is my reading of this piece this morning at this particular moment in history. I have looked at this piece many times since I completed it a few weeks ago and saw it in more whimsical terms.  Less ominous and less fraught with peril. But either way, as a frightening allegory or as a flight of fancy, it satisfies me greatly. And that’s all I can ask of my work.

This piece is 8″ by 8′ on panel and is now at the West End Gallery in Corning. It will be included in their 31st annual Little Gems exhibit that opens February 7. The show is going up on the walls beginning today if you would like to stop in for a preview.

Here’s a song that leans heavily to the whimsical interpretation of this painting. It’s a version of a favorite Little Feat song, Sailin’ Shoes, performed by mandolinist Sam Bush, who is a big kahuna in the world of progressive bluegrass. Always good stuff and a good take on this song.

Now, to which moon do I set my course? There’s a snark out there somewhere to be found, for sure.

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It Makes No Difference

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 22, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Winterglide— At West End Gallery

“In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.”

Came out the door this morning and was met with -7°. Everything creaks differently at those temperatures, me included. I think part of my brain froze on the walk over to the studio so, instead of fumbling with that, I thought I’d share a post from 2019 that has been getting a lot of views here recently. The poem from Milosz is powerful and seems timely, especially that third stanza.

Struggle echoes and history rhymes…

I also added a song at the bottom, It Makes No Difference, from the Band. Their last living member, Garth Hudson, died yesterday at age 87. Hard to believe they are all gone.

But on the day the world ends their music will no doubt play on.

[From 2019]

I found that these intriguing words from the late Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz that came from his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980. But while researching this quote, I came across this poem that really spoke to me. I thought I would share this as well. It was written in Warsaw, Poland in 1944 in the midst of the Nazi’s destruction of that city.

Basically, he is saying that though the world might seem to be in chaotic and deadly turmoil, that some will see that the world as they knew it is obviously ending, there are those who will not notice. The sun is shining as it always does and the moon will rise soon after as it, too, always does. Birds sing and fish swim as they always do. People go about their days, working and playing, as they always do.

How can this be the end of the world if such things go on unaffected? How can atrocity exist side-by-side with the mundane?

But the end he may be describing may not be the actual end of the world, though for some it surely does. The world is always changing sometimes in small ways and sometimes in large swipes. Every change means the end of one world and the beginning of another. Perhaps, while he is surely pointing to an actual ending of worlds for his neighbors in WW II Warsaw, he is also referencing a symbolic ending to worlds of innocence, of worlds of gentleness, replaced with worlds of violence and treachery.

I don’t know for sure but that is how I am reading it. Take a look and decide for yourself.

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

A Song on the End of the World

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
No other end of the world will there be,
No other end of the world will there be.

–Czeslaw Milosz   (1911-2004)

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A Matter of Degrees?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on December 29, 2024| 8 Comments »

To the Main Road
At West End Gallery

I have been thinking about the difference between our highs and lows, between those times when we feel on top of the world and those times when we feel as though we are in an abyss. It’s a typical holiday theme for me, when such contrasts seem to stand out among so many people, including myself.

I wonder what it is in an individual that makes them swing one way or the other, high or low. Is it a massive difference in circumstance and perception between these people?

Or is it just matter of degrees? Could it be that there are times when we only feel 51% positive about everything but that is enough to swing us to what feels like a high point?  And could there be other times when we are only feeling 51% gloomy but that tips the scales enough so that we feel as though the bottom has dropped out on one’s life? 

It seems plausible, given how quickly these swings can shift. But maybe that’s just me. I don’t know, of course. Just thinking out loud. Actually, this thought came after coming across the post below from four years back where the poet Maggie Smith (not the wonderful British actress who we lost this past year) described life as at least fifty percent terrible. Made me think of things in matter of degrees and what is entailed in shifting those the balance one way or the other. I would really like to know.

At the very bottom, I have added this week’s Sunday Morning Music. It’s Superstar from the Carpenters, the brother-sister duo that I never shared here before. Probably because I wasn’t a fan when I was kid and they were everywhere, constantly on the radio and TV. You couldn’t flip on a variety show back then without seeing the two. But over the years, I came to truly appreciate them, especially the glorious tone of Karen Carpenter‘s voice. Her voice seldom fails to provoke a response within me. That would have been a shock to the 12-year-old me back in the day.

But I made the choice of this song not only because it is beautifully written (Leon Russell wrote it with singer Bonnie Bramlett of Delaney & Bonnie), arranged, and performed, but because Karen Carpenter knew more than a little about living a life of shifting degrees. Give a listen and be thankful if you’re seeing the world at least 51% positive today.

GOOD BONES/ by Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

I came across this 2016 poem from American poet Maggie Smith very early this morning and it really struck a chord. 

We all want things right now, want them to be complete and perfect. Move in ready. But things are seldom that way. It requires imagination and desire to see the potential that things hold. And hard work and determination to reach that potential.

“This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.”

Indeed.

I had never seen or heard this poem but it is quite well known. It has been read and published around the world and Maggie Smith is often asked to read it at events. She calls it her Freebird, which is quite a funny line.

It was written in the aftermath of the 2016 shooting at the Pulse nightclub that killed 49 people. Its popularity was maintained through the momentous 2016 elections here and in the UK –it was called “Official Poem of 2016” by the BBC/Public Radio International— and has continuously popped up throughout the past four years as folks to try to maintain optimism in the dark atmosphere that has marked this era.

I somehow missed it until about 5:30 this morning. Always late to the dance.

But I imagine that this poem will remain popular because, as she points out, the world is at least fifty percent terrible and will no doubt remain so. It will always require plenty of imagination, desire, determination — and throw in loads of blood, sweat and tears– to overcome the awfulness that resides side-by-side with us in this world so that we can make it into that perfect home we all dream of for ourselves.

“This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.”

Indeed.

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The Things We Dare Not Tell

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 23, 2024| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Archaeology- Déjà Vu sm

Archaeology: Déjà Vu— At Principle Gallery, Alexandria, VA

The fields are fair in autumn yet, and the sun’s still shining there,
But we bow our heads and we brood and fret, because of the masks we wear;
Or we nod and smile the social while, and we say we’re doing well,
But we break our hearts, oh, we break our hearts! for the things we must not tell

— The Things We Dare Not Tell, Henry Lawson (1867-1922)

A video for this poem popped up in my YouTube feed for some algorithmic reason I can’t comprehend. I am glad it did.

I first encountered the Australian writer Henry Lawson (1867-1922) a few years back when I stumbled across a poem of his, The Wander-Light, that I shared here. It has been a pretty popular post, receiving a number of views on a daily basis. Doing some research back then, I found that Lawson is an Australian icon, considered to be perhaps the country’s greatest poet and short story writer.  He was a brilliant writer and storyteller but struggled with alcoholism and mental illness for much of his life until dying at the relatively young age of 55 from a cerebral hemorrhage.

Watching the reading of the poem below, I began to think about the secrets we all carry. Oh, we may claim or attempt to be transparent, but we all maintain words and deeds and beliefs that we share with no one. Some we don’t share because, to be honest, they are things nobody would care to hear. Some are too shameful or painful or embarrassing to release from our grip.

I probably share too much here and in my talks. More than most. Mainly because I believe that transparency has a liberating effect. But even so, there are things that will no doubt go unshared to my grave. Well, that is, if I ever decide to die. If I don’t, I might break my silence in a couple of hundred years or so.

It makes me wonder what secret things others will carry to their graves, the good and the bad. Will they ever reveal themselves to some future archaeologist or researcher? Are they hidden somewhere, like one of the artifacts in the Archaeology piece at the top, waiting to be unearthed then put together like a strange and wonderful jigsaw puzzle? Small bits that together tell a bigger story?

The other thing that comes to mind is the one line in Lawson’s poem that resonated most with me:

Oh, the world would be such a kindly world if all men’s hearts lay bare!

I believe it but wonder if that is true. Do secrets keep us apart? Would revelation of all things hidden somehow bring us together?

I don’t know the answer. My lack of answers is no secret, that’s for sure.

Maybe we need those secret things just to maintain that feeling of mystery that comes with not knowing everything about everyone. 

Might that mystery be the thing that drives all types of creativity?

Could be. I don’t really know.

Okay, got to run. I have secrets waiting to be buried as well as some to be shared. It’s the sorting out that counts.

Here’s the poem from Henry Lawson along with the whole poem below it.

The Things We Dare Not Tell

The fields are fair in autumn yet, and the sun’s still shining there,
But we bow our heads and we brood and fret, because of the masks we wear;
Or we nod and smile the social while, and we say we’re doing well,
But we break our hearts, oh, we break our hearts! for the things we must not tell.

There’s the old love wronged ere the new was won, there’s the light of long ago;
There’s the cruel lie that we suffer for, and the public must not know.
So we go through life with a ghastly mask, and we’re doing fairly well,
While they break our hearts, oh, they kill our hearts! do the things we must not tell.

We see but pride in a selfish breast, while a heart is breaking there;
Oh, the world would be such a kindly world if all men’s hearts lay bare!
We live and share the living lie, we are doing very well,
While they eat our hearts as the years go by, do the things we dare not tell.

We bow us down to a dusty shrine, or a temple in the East,
Or we stand and drink to the world-old creed, with the coffins at the feast;
We fight it down, and we live it down, or we bear it bravely well,
But the best men die of a broken heart for the things they cannot tell.

— Henry Lawson

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A Small Volcano

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 5, 2024| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- On the Blue Side 2024

On the Blue Side— At the West End Gallery

Poetic power is great, strong as a primitive instinct; it has its own unyielding rhythms in itself and breaks out as out of mountains.

–Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters toa Young Poet

The line above from Rilke has been translated a couple of different ways. This is an abridged version that omits any reference to the subject, a German poet, who Rilke was describing in his letter. This version becomes only about poetic power. This is the version you will mainly see quoted today.

The original version was a direct reference to Richard Dehmel, a German poet who died in 1920 from injuries sustained in WW I. Dehmel was an influential poet in Germany in the pre-war years, his verse considered very rhythmic. It was a favorite among popular composers of that era– Richard Strauss, Carl Orff, and Kurt Weill, for examples–who regularly set his poetry to their music. He is best known for his work that was strongly sexual in nature, so much so that he faced obscenity charges several times.

The original line is at the end of a paragraph where Rilke writes about his admiration for the beauty of Dehmel’s work as well as his concern that he sometimes went beyond the prevailing accepted levels of decency of that era. The original line:

His poetic strength is great and as powerful as primal instinct; it has its own relentless rhythms within, and explodes from him like a volcano.

It wasn’t changed that much actually, mainly keeping a direct reference to Dehmel and using the explosive nature of a volcano instead of breaks out as out of mountains.

I know this is not of much interest to anyone, but I only mention it because the original made me think of the Red Tree in some of my paintings as a sort of small volcanic explosion. I had never thought of them in this way and it intrigued me. It gave them a new dimension.

I can definitely see this in the painting at the top, On the Blue Side, which is at the West End Gallery. The Red Tree here has a feel of released energy, as though it is exploding from the earth. Maybe trees and everything springing from the earth is a small volcano, a bursting eruption of energy? I don’t know but I like the idea.

Hmm….

Here’s a song that is about mountains in a way. This is Remember the Mountain Bed, another favorite from Mermaid Avenue, the Wilco/Billy Bragg collaboration where they composed music for the unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics. Good stuff.

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