Black tie noose encircles me, keeping me yet farther from you.
The cool air arrives like a horse, rushing,
Galloping, the night surrounds us.
But the heat beneath my canvas cage,
Removes the frost from the night air.
My heart bellows, yearning for what cannot,
Should not be.
I hold you, our bodies melting together in the shadows,
But I still I am alone.
The blood red wall behind reflects my agony.
On this long train of suffocating silence,
My heart is the last car, the boxcar,
The last hope.
And the train speeds off into the night.
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Our A190 class is here to get our hands all muddy in paint and poems, poems that are inspired by art, art that responds to poetry. We're ecstatic to be here and we'll be ekphrastic all semester long.
Kandinsky's "Improvisation"
Blog Archive
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2009
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May
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- The Train
- Come Away
- The Affair
- A Prickly Secret
- Silence
- Trapped
- One Night
- Secret Passion
- I Wonder
- A Picture of Our Torn Up Praise
- We're Not Strangers... for Tonight.
- House of Cards
- Arrangement
- Coexistence
- Suffocation
- Strangers
- Passion
- Reverence
- Obsession
- This won’t hurt a bit. I don’t want anything from ...
- Aren't They a Lovely Couple?
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May
(21)
5 comments:
I can not pin what it is exactly that makes me so attached to your poem. I like the way you talk about the red wall in the background and how your poem reflects similar thoughts that I had about the piece: a feeling of being alone. I feel that loneliness is portrayed well here even with the line about their bodies melting together. I liked the line about sufocating silence and and being in agony. That's exactly what I was feeling when I was "entering" the painting.
Jumping from Caitlyn's platform; what I like about the poem is exactly the fact that it is hard to pin down. It's not simply about two people that make a couple, it's about one person's relationship with the "atmosphere" of love or fear or sadness or hope. This emotional "atmosphere" is the speaker's mate, not the other person. I really liked the early couplet about the "galloping night" and how it "arrives like a horse." This shows that the "atmosphere"/night/emotional state is a strong, powerful, imposing creature. Ashley did a very good job of making the required vocabulary work for her: the application doesn't seem forced. On the line, "But I still I am alone:" It may have been a typo, but I like the playful interpretations it brings. The reader asks "does 'still' mean 'yet' or 'unmoving'? 'I am still...I am alone...our bodies are together and yet I am alone...I hold you, but you do not hold me...I am still alone'..." Even if the wording was accidental, it forces the mind to find more layers in the poem.
I really enjoyed reading your poem. I thought it was well thought out as well as creative. I felt like it was a journey, as if it was a ride on a train. I liked how you incorporated the title within the poem. I did not particularly have a single favorite part, rather, I liked the whole poem. I really pictured the scenario and your wording really helped me to experience this painting, great job.
I like the "forbidden" love your poem describes. From the descriptive details, I can almost feel the passion as well as the hurt from knowing they should not be together. It leaves much open to interpretation, about being alone even though the person in the poem is experiencing such emotion with another person. I like this about the poem. Great!
Ashley ~
There are some fabulous lines, images, and metaphors here! The poem is full of motion, which creates momentum for the reader -- from the rushing "horse" of the air, to the bellowing heart, to the final wonderful image of the train speeding off (which leaves the reader looking after it, pushing the reader back into the poem), you've done a brilliant job of creating intensity in the poem. Your verbs are doing a lot of work! Great work, too, with layering color -- the black tie (made into a noose!), the shadows, the canvas, and the red wall contrast with each other, making each more vivid and also adding to the atmosphere of the poem, which is dark and a little scary and sad. And that line -- "my heart is the last car, the boxcar" -- is fantastic.
Keep working on using that fresh language that you've already got, and keep thinking (during revision -- not while writing the first draft) how you might make that language even fresher. For example, something like "the night surrounds us" is pretty interesting, but the line before it is so powerful -- "a horse, rushing, galloping" -- that it kind of overpowers the second image.
Great job, Ashley!
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