Pictures Worth a Thousand Words
I thought it was time to start a column. One with provocative pictures and stimulating poems.
Art and Poetry, go hand in hand. Images inspire words and words inspire
images, it never fails
Since I've been a painter for 40 years and a poet for only 4, I've felt a bit guilty
about pawning my brushes for a keyboard. So I decided to mess up the place a little.
Can you smell the oils?
There will be more than a single theme in these weekly offerings but the one we'll
start with and the one we'll come back to often is, word from image, poetry from art.
Berryman and Brueghel, now that's a hell of a team but they came together in this one
Take a look and read...
and
Winter Landscape
John Berryman
The three men coming down the winter hill
In brown, with tall poles and a pack of hounds
At heel, through the arrangement of the trees,
Past the five figures at the burning straw,
Returning cold and silent to their town,
Returning to the drifted snow, the rink
Lively with children, to the older men,
The long companions they can never reach,
The blue light, men with ladders, by the church
The sledge and shadow in the twilit street,
Are not aware that in the sandy time
To come, the evil waste of history
Outstretched, they will be seen upon the brow
Of that same hill: when all their company
Will have been irrecoverably lost,
These men, this particular three in brown
Witnessed by birds will keep the scene and say
By their configuration with the trees,
The small bridge, the red houses and the fire,
What place, what time, what morning occasion
Sent them into the wood, a pack of hounds
At heel and the tall poles upon their shoulders,
Thence to return as now we see them and
Ankle-deep in snow down the winter hill
Descend, while three birds watch and the fourth flies.
Pieter Brueghel, Hunters in the Snow (1565)
Oil on canvas, 46 inches x 63.75 inches.
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
part of a series showing village life, season to season
I really like Berryman and I worship at Brueghels long dead feet. Berryman is dead too, threw himself
off a bridge in '72. but Pete beat him by 400 years or so.
A side note on the painting. Pieter Brueghel the Elder (his son the Younger, became a terrific flower painter)
was one of the few Flemish artists at this time to journey outside of Flanders. He made at least
one trip to Italy and although the simplified idealistic side of Italian art did not rub off on him
one legacy of his trip can be seen in this painting. In the background are Alpine mountains.
There are no mountains in Flanders, it's flat as a pancake.
~
Here's a small effort of mine
Brueghel what you mean by that
those jagged peaks the likes of which
we never seen before
and them poor hunters with their mangy dogs
don't look like they got nothin much to brag about
I'd stop if it was me and see what they was
BBQ'n. Maybe they'd like to spit and roast
these sorry, broke down hounds of ours
~
Feel free to comment or even play with John B. and me as we try to find the words the painting speaks
~
Art of the week!...just because
These are images that appeal to me for one reason or another.
Renee Magritte, Son of Man
Somehow I've always seen myself this way. I love Magritte. Dali with a sense of humor.
oh, if you have a mind to submit a poem inspired by this, I won't object and in fact will slip 100 points to those I like. On the sly of course. This is not a contest, just a reward.
~
Hope you liked this first effort. Give me some feedback and therte will be another next week.
Ariosto
artist in the closet
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