work on one poem (worshipping, presenting, offering, protecting, rejoicing, praising,mourning)

El Greco--"View of Toledo"


I've been working on the poem assignment from Aleta: she asked me to include "El Greco's icy blues, Egyptian profiles and repetitions, and a watercolor you sent me for my birthday"


Ilooked up Egyptian repetitions and I found the text that follows at this link: http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/publications/pdfs/egypt/egypt.pdf:
FORM IN EGYPTIAN ART
Clarity, Balance, and Stability

Egyptian artists developed ideal forms that became the standard, or conventional,
way of expressing desired meanings. The major figure of a composition,
for instance, was usually larger than the more subsidiary ones, and its poses(standing, walking, sitting, or kneeling) were the most stylized. Even for subsidiary
figures a limited number of arm and hand gestures were used to explain
what the figure was doing.

The following are commonly used poses and gestures:
worshipping: both arms extended forward with hands upraised

presenting: offering both arms extended forward with an object held in one or both palms ready to receive offerings seated with one or both arms resting on one's
lap, palms down

summoning: one arm extended forward with the palm open

protecting: both arms extended out to the sides with the palms facing forward

rejoicing: both arms extended out to the sides with palms turned away from the body

praising: crouched on one knee, one arm raised and the other held against the chest with clenched fist

mourning: arms raised with palms turned toward the face

Balanced forms and compositions, clear outlines, simplified shapes, and flat
areas of color were used to create order and clarity, and figures and scenes
were arranged in horizontal rows (called registers). Momentary, fleeting images
such as expressions of emotion or strenuous physical activity were not often
treated because they were transitory, not permanent features.


here is a small poem culled from all that! (i think i will make several poems from this assignment; i love the idea of putting poses ((like still dances))in poems.):::::


Poem (Emotions are not permanent)


Space and breath, the opening seeming to go on and on.
My root hangs down listening and is not yet emptiness.
It is intimate nutrition, the kind folded into the book of birth, the kind

One morning when I find myself in my body. There it is: the space
I’m not in, the low creating cry. Love birth emptiness.
The certain brown canoe making its way up a shallow muddy river.
Red oars. Up there is a town we love, with celebrations.

I stand, raise my arms up, and turn my palms toward my face.

kids in the apple orchard (f. & e.)

"But every day a beautiful morning
Falls like an egg into the hand
Of someone passing along the road"

from poem "June 10, 1936" by Robert Desnos
(trans. Wm. Kulik)

weekend essay (what we did)

big bowl of popcorn + friday night movie night pizza night (the secret of nimh!)= happiness

also painting with paints in the morning, good and fun:::::::::::

then the animal cookie backyard tent picnic teaparty under the walnut trees' canopy (really we need helmets so as to not get bonked with walnuts right on our noggins)::::::::::::;;

hey devonian fossil gorge head (day story)

a good day.
on labor day, we went to the devonian fossil gorge, explored, had a picnic: a truly beautiful timeless day, a day that has swirled off now and is a moon made of windows; one of those smooth unripplable days; the tiny frog we saw hopping amongst the ancient iowa sea remains took our day off into the grass with him and let it become an atmosphere; because it was just so ineluctable and that good. cheetos, apples, water, 375 million year old imprints, skipping stones, the moving clouds and solid blue sky, the kayakers we saw with red oars on the iowa river, the marigolds noam brought his mama as she gave birth to his little brother, a curve in the road where i dreamt of my iowa farm, hilly & different shades of green, in the morning we ate fresh homemade waffles, i don't even know what one million is.

story of our walk plus what you would've seen, walking around my house, a few days ago

finnegan and the walk.
today, going for our after dinner walk around the block--but the dusk caught up with us--days are shorter! we were in the dark and could see the beautiful half moon very well, after the trees got out of the way. we walked through the alley and peeked in people's yards; kid yards were by far the most interesting. this is the walk on which we established that we live on the earth, not the moon. also finn has houses all over the neighborhood. "that's my house, my own house" he'll say, pointing at a nondescript house. i tell him he has to live with me for a little while longer. i say that also someday we may get our very own house, with goats. who knows!

the happy apple eater

the return to a buried self

the following is from Amy King's interview with poet Arielle Greenberg; found here: http://vidaweb.org/gynocentric-anthems (it's annoying but i've never been able to figure out why the URL web paster thing on this blog doesn't work for me!). . .i guess i'm cut-n-pasting this here because of Greenberg's honesty, because of our lives, because of how much we all try to do and we can't do it all. we can't do it all. we're just livin'. . .and really what is it we want? what prize etc.? we want to have it all but we can't have it all. sorry! i'm thinking of the shock i felt when someone told me, "that's just what you want,you see. that's just a desire. you don't neccessarily get to have what you want. no, you don't get what you want."

and also really, maybe sometimes what we want isn't right, or is impossible. i think the dividness, the divided feeling, that's what i can't stand/ that's what drives me to anxiety, stress, unhappiness. when i'm divided in my minutes constantly, between mothering or creating, for one example. it's no good. really, i choose anything else, besides that dividness. yes. here's the thing:

AK: You have many proverbial irons in the fire: editing, teaching, writing, mothering, moderating, etc. Do you feel like you’re juggling too much sometimes? How do you get things done? What obstacles do you face and are you able to absorb or ignore them without feeling like you’re doing a disservice to your own work? What takes priority in relation to your assorted literary hats?

AG: Yes, I do feel like I’m juggling too much. Yes. All the time. Not sometimes: all the time. I cannot overstate how divided I feel, how much I wish I had more energy and time to devote to each aspect of my life, how hard I struggle with where and how to cut back, do less, be more present, simplify. This is the number one anxiety and reality for me these days. I could fill this interview with the banal details of this all-too-common struggle, which feels really charged and political and relevant to me despite its banality. (This very debate has been everywhere in the press lately, too: see the Boston Review’s July/August 2010 forum on feminism, work and family.) I feel like it’s important to say this very plainly and loudly here because I want to be honest with anyone reading this that, to resurrect an old Second Wave aphorism, I do not actually think it’s possible to “have it all.” I cannot figure out a way to be the mother I want to be, have the paying job I want to have, and do the unpaid creative and domestic and community work I want to do all at the same time with any modicum of serenity or contentment, nor do I see a way to combine these with the activism or friendships or other things that I desire. I try and fail; I keep trying and failing. I can’t see a way out.

Here comes the Too Much Information Department: I’ve been pregnant or breastfeeding for the last six years straight, which takes a huge emotional and physical toll. My youngest child turns one this Sunday, and it’s a fraught time for me spiritually. He is most likely my last baby and I am mourning the loss of that phase of my life, difficult as it is. At the same time, I’m sleep-deprived and still nursing and so hormonally, there are a lot of parts of myself that I haven’t been in touch with for a long time: my libido, my body, my dreamlife. And of course this has an impact on my relationship with my body, and with my partner, but I’ve realized what an enormous impact it also has on me as an artist: for example, without access to my dreams, I don’t think I can tap into my poetics. And I think my sex drive is related to my creative artistic drive: I’ve noticed that when my libido is awake, that’s when I get really interested in listening to music, seeing films, and all those things fuel my own creating. And of course there is just the reality of very little time to myself, very little time alone, very little time period. So mostly these days I feel like I am waiting for the return to a buried self I hope and pray is still within me somewhere. And yet, despite all this, I wish I could be an even more available, consistent, present mother than I am. I would not choose to mother less intensively, with more outside childcare or more time away from my children to write. That is not a choice that appeals to me.

So yes, I do feel like I’m doing an enormous disservice to my creative work. My family comes first, and then the obligations I do for pay (and though I am enormously fortunate to also care deeply about what I do for pay, that caring means more energy given away), and then the obligations I do for pleasure and fulfillment, and then, at the very very bottom, and often dropped entirely off the list, is my poetry. That’s the truth, Ruth.