Paintings Inspired by Mere Poetry
Or, why do poets deserve more enamor
Poems are a different art build than painting. Poetry comes in words and painting in colors. Where painting meets a set image, poetry expands a feeling. Painting is about.. reality. And poetry can grasp anything unseen. Both are quintessential examples of being in touch with the soul.
Poets underestimate themselves.
There are platforms I visit to read poems. I’ve had the pleasure of reading incredible, soulful poems on topics others wouldn’t dare touch. Such as grief. Now, when I congratulate the writers, they call themselves ‘eh, average’. There is a bar they have set. And they say, ‘that’s how good I am. I am alright ‘
It is frightening to say I write amazingly because there are questions. For who? Do they understand it? Do they like it? And the meter stays solely the same because poetry is solitary. So all our judges don’t even understand us.
There is a statement here. The truth of paintings being inspired by mere poetry. Poetry so beautiful that a painter wanted his share of the poet’s idea. They said to one another, let’s give it another life form.
INSPIRATION IN MANY FORMS
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colors gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care heat she,
The Lady of Shalott.
And moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot;
And sometimes through the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two.
She hath no loyal Knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up;
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes,
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element; but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
Stranger to love and the benevolent hand of age
History has recorded on our papery hearts
By the reed And each partition of the reed
Complains of the Masnavi of our groans
The lines in your hands
Is familiar to my eye.
Believe me
The lines in your hand Are more familiar to me than my own lines
Ah O friend
They buried us together in the grave A thousand years ago
To say how much I’ve missed you, I offer this,
at most mist, at least assorted letters, lists,
numbers I insist tell stories. I kissed you
last, Dad, in the casket in which you passed on,
to some next place, but last listened for your voice
last night, these long years after, will listen next
when next oppressed by blue-gray, as I am now,
as I, thus lost, am always by your absence.
Final Notes
I think it’s only appropriate to close this piece with joy. Being an artist, of any measurement, is something to be proud of. There is talent. There is magic. When an idea comes to us, something real fed it to grow. Inspiration in all forms is real. And what a nice sympathy that is. To know that we are all connected in this way.
