The Stafford Challenge, Day 26

Another ekphrastic poem on a Grant Wood artwork. I'm giving a Zoom presentation to the Grant Wood Country Forum tonight on my poems about Grant Wood paintings and prints (I now have 10). I'm also this year's judge for the Grant Wood section of the Iowa Poetry Association's annual contest. This is a curtal sonnet, with decasyllabic lines (10 syllables). Interesting rhyming device in lines 1 and 4 . . . some enjambed rhyme: bachelor/M and porn. Confirmed Bachelor After Sultry Night by Grant Wood (1939) Grant Wood was called a confirmed bachelor, mistakenly married, mostly living with sister Nan. His litho Sultry Night banned by the US Post Office as porn: a farm hand heaving a bucket, pouring water on his nude torso, phallus right there out front. Magnificent. Then, “confirmed bachelor,” that’s polite code, not saying “queer” or worse, though surely outsiders thought worse. Wood outwardly seemed like just a farm                                             boy, but loved men inside. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Grant Wood, Sultry Night (1939) Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Ingat, everyone.  ヅ