Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day prompt: “[T]ake the phrase "New (blank)," replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles might include: 'New Moon,' 'New Car,' 'New Significant Other,' 'New World,' and/or 'New to This City.' And yes, it is totally fine to replace the word 'new"' with the word 'knew if that helps you get your poem out today!”
Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “W.H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” takes its inspiration from a very particular painting: Breughel’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.” Today we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem that describes a detail in a painting, and that begins, like Auden’s poem, with a grand, declarative statement.”
Here's my poem today, a curtal sonnet merging the two prompts . . . an ekphrastic poem again on yet one more Grant Wood painting. This is my sixth curtal sonnet this month.
New Road, Chickens, a Horse
after New Road by Grant Wood and
“Musée des Beaux Arts” by W. H. Auden
On country life, Grant Wood was never wrong.
This painting shows a new crossroad cut in
the old land, green and wooded. A farmstead
sits right on the new corner, a small throng
of chickens and a little white horse stand
undisturbed by the novel, modern road.
If Icarus were to fall out of the sky
with his newfangled wax wings and crashland
on the crossroad, would horse and chickens note
something amazing had just occurred? Why,
they’d never raise a head.
—Draft by Vince Gotera [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
Alan's poem today also involves Icarus, as we cover similar ground with two very different poems. Also, Alan is mashing up both prompts.
A New Look at Bruegel’s
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
In “Literary Explorations,” again I look
at Bruegel’s Fall of Icarus,
but this time, I’m assigned
to a new classroom—
it’s in the business department building—
and a smartboard as tall as me
displays the painting big as life
in ways I’ve never seen it before,
how the colors lure
in hues they never have
in textbooks’ glossy signatures
under fluorescent lights
and incidental shadows
of underclassmen penned in
shoulder to shoulder.
We are performing subversion,
meta-appreciation of art
in the university’s chapel of commerce,
the ekphrastic poem and its subject,
the artist and painter,
and newly humbled me
as I see how impossibly large
Icarus’ leg is,
larger than the red-capped figure sitting on the bank,
making the harbored ship seem displaced and small,
and I newly understand how the plowman’s focus
on the folding field before him
could keep his awe in check,
how the shepherd could look skyward
in the opposite direction of the faint splash,
how business can be made
distractingly beautiful
as its directors select where light can fall upon it.
—Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks!
Ingat, everyone. ヅ |
Posts
3 comments:
Ah, Vince, today I am preparing a lecture about Robert Burns' influence on Maurice Manning, one of my favorite contemporary poets, and it is just a pleasure to get lost in this work. However, I am completely serious about how much better teaching ekphrastic material would be if folks could just share a good view of the subject matter. Extra points for the "never wrong" allusion, btw--
Once again, two excellent poems. A nice one to add to what has become a series on Grant Wood, Vince. The painting does remind me a little of the Brueghel but less cluttered. (Breughel was always one of my favorites - I think it was William Carlos Williams who first got me interested in his work. And Alan, very astute observations on the the painting. I too love the daydreaming shepherd oblivious to Icarus' fall, and your closing observation about lighting is perfect. I actually wrote two today because I didn't combine the prompts.
Thanks! And he WAS never wrong!
Post a Comment