Jason - Painting

On the writing:

This week's writing was pretty enjoyable.  Blank verse is a challenge because the rhythm is important, but with no rhyme it is easy to select the exact words you are looking for.  To add to that fun this week, I have selected a painting with is fairly well known and the plan is to let you guess.  If you send me a guess I will let you know if you have guessed the painting correctly.  If you don't want to play the game, I hope you still enjoy the writing.

Mystery Painting

Obsidian and terra-cotta strokes
Lift dark tongues to celestial arcade.
The tenebrous column divides the fore
And conjures deep questions of what is real.
The valley floor is paved in crooked walls
With lighted panes of glass and leaning doors.
Uneven tiny houses gathering
Around the pitched empty unlit parish.
Sapphire flourish, chaotic wealds embrace,
A barrier between the men and peaks.
As waves about to roll into the trough
And crickets silence mournful harmonies.
Above the trees the shadow giants roam.
Cerulean summits slow lumbering
In front of darkly painted beryl buttes
Which form the slumberous horizon’s crease.
This vision blurs then fades as eyes take flight
To stars in eddies, joy’s hypnotic dance.
So bright the splendor blemished rings appear
And sleepless sight becomes the Muse’s gift.
The yellow crescent curves a bit too deep.
A lunar guardian to over watch
By spinning beams much greater than the stars.

She looks away and frees you from the frame.

Justin - Painting

About the Writing

This is about an actual event, though somewhat romanticized. There is, or was, a large portrait of a woman in a green velvet dress in the 19th century European art wing of the Detroit Institute of Arts. This is by far my favorite wing of the museum because this is where Monet and Degas and Van Gogh and all of those guys are, or at least some of their work. This painting is not by one of them. I actually don’t know the title or the artist, but I did spend entirely too long looking at it one afternoon, if one can actually spend too long examining a piece of art. It is hyper realistic and I found it captivating. It is not my favorite painting. It’s not even my favorite in that wing of that museum. But we shared a moment and that is what this is about.

A Woman in Green Velvet

I know I’m standing much too close to her
And staring at each detail of her dress
The velvet of it calls out to be touched
Temptation that I must fight to resist
And so I search in hopes to find a flaw
An unmasked brushstroke that might break the spell
Hard lines to show the velvet is not plush
A hint of something false within her eyes
To make it clear that she’s not looking too
I know she’s just a painting on the wall
Of oil on canvas is the velvet made
But still I cannot help but think that if
I did reach out the velvet I would feel
And if I touched her hand her gaze would shift
To see what impertinent one would dare
I carefully examine every inch
I wait for her to ask me not to stare
I wait for her to tire and sit down
I know she’s waiting ‘til my gaze has left
She will not yield as long as I still watch
I cannot leave until I know for sure
And so resigned I know that I must act
I have to break her spell that keeps me here
I check to see that we are here alone
And lift my hand to touch the dress’s hem
Extend one finger towards the velvet goal
And feel the roughness of stretched canvas there
Her spell is broken I can leave her now
But still she’ll haunt me with what might have been

Jason - Happiness

On the writing:

I picked the topic,happiness, this week. It seems so broad it should be easy to write on, but at this moment, if I am being honest, it is not. I could write something about cotton candy and rainbows, but there is nothing genuine about that. Every happiness right now is a complex bundle of happy and sad and guilt and loss. So, as best as I am able, I have tried to capture that in the acrostic below.  Overall, I would say I am happy with the result, but I have tried the change the ending to sound a little less trite, but this is the best I have gotten it to.

Happiness

“How are you doing?” is said so free,
Abscinding thoughts, exposing me.
Painting memories inside my mind
Pairing the past to present time.
“I had a quite successful day!”
No more than that, need I to say.
Except of course when good news came,
So did the dark which clouds my brain.
Sharing the joy I had inside
For her I always did provide.
Only there now comes no response,
Until the grief do I ensconce.
Now regard I the empty plate,
Despite the loss, my life is great!

Justin - Happiness

About the writing

I picked the form of acrostic this week, and have regretted it. Not really, but this was pretty hard. I am comfortable with the constraints of rhyme and meter that exist in traditional poetic forms; it seems much more cumbersome to me to have a fixed first letter that, if I decide to change, it means possibly changing a whole section. I fought this one quite a bit. In the end, because I did not want to change the acrostic, I sacrificed both meter and voice at times. By voice I mean that the language is at times very modern and common and other times more formal. I started knowing that I wanted to examine the pursuit of happiness versus contentment and so planned a transition from hopelessness to hope. Content wise, I like the result. I would have liked to have made the transition earlier in the piece, but I think it works well with the hope/contentment section being shorter.

While writing this I was thinking of 1 Timothy 6:6

Happiness

Happiness, you devil fleetly running,
A taunting dancer just outside of reach;
Pursuit takes the greatest wits and cunning,
Perchance the dream’s defenses for to breach.
In knowing that the hunted thing cannot
Negate the longing of the discontent;
Even capture brings not the joy it aught
(Searching for more, as more, more want ferments.)
Still we chase in greedy hopes of capture
Ideals of what we think that life should be,
Silencing all evidence which fracture
Belief in what we hope that we might see.
Enjoying not all with which we are blessed,
Instead pursuing foolishly fraught gains.
Never finding peace, never finding rest,
Going still for more regardless of the pains.
Could we instead look at all that we’ve got?
Or of the ways our needs have all been met?
Not looking for that mythical gold pot,
To joy in simple things we’ve earned with sweat.
Enjoying what we have pursuit may cease,
No more to chase a taunting devil running,
To be content in happiness and peace.

Jason - Atonement

About the writing

The combination of a poem with the topic of atonement at first I expected to be quite challenging. As it turned out, much of this week's writing cam pretty easy. It could have been the number of poems I seem to have written lately, or it could just be the enjoyment of writing about this topic. I am not sure. What ever it is, I knew I did not want to write about the atonement of man to God directly, so instead I wrote about a not so simple craftsman. That being said, I hope the message is not lost.

Atonement

Surrounded by some splendored things
A magnificent craftsman stood.
With perfect light he lit each one.
To display his works were good,

The faceted ruby vessels
With depth of color and design
Had value beyond appearance.
Purpose basic and divine.

Within that state of paradise
The crystal shelves began to shake.
Then one by one they toppled down
To chip and crack and break.

No longer made by just his hands,
Their captivation now was gone.
Edges to cut at every touch.
Like a night without a dawn.

Then where the sharp had split the skin
Blood dropped from hand to crimson bowl.
It pooled at first beneath the rim
Filled the cracks and made it whole.

The master knew the price to pay.
Thoughts of redemption did enthrall.
So give he did until his death.
One by one he fixed them all.

An untrained eye might just see works
Which his sacrifice had righted.
Not just revived, but made alive
As art and life united.

Justin - Atonement

About the writing

The form of quatrain was a bit vague. The term literally means four lines. There is no required meter or rhyme structure, which in some ways can be quite daunting. I decided to pay little mind to meter and actually considered having no rhyme structure either, but decided on a simple and common ABAB. In brief discussion about the form, it was said that the poem could be of any length provided it was organized in four line stanzas, quatrains. I started with two parallels that I thought of stretching for a couple of quatrains each. These two ended up being my middle two stanzas. The first and last were added in a thought to express Augustine’s view on human nature in its fourfold state. I deviated from this by making the third stanza about Christ. Regardless, I ended up writing four parallels that I decided to limit to one quatrain each, partially for time and partially because I like the simplicity.

Usually in here I talk about liking or not liking the piece. Technique plays a huge role in how I end up feeling about it and I am quite happy with the technical aspects as far as flow and balance. I am also pleased with the concept and execution thereof. The greatest difficulty in this was in balancing theology and artistic expression, which in the end I am also pleased with. It is no great piece, but I accomplished what I intended, which in the end is usually what I hope for with each project.

Adunatio

Innocent head, heart, hands born of the dust
The image bearer free in thought, word, deed
God’s one command would be a broken trust
And all earth’s progeny be left in need

Broken head, heart, hands born unto death
Thought, word, deed each red with sin’s dark stain
In need of God’s resuscitating breath
All attempts at righteousness in vain

Righteous head, heart, hands born here to die
Thought, word, deed examples how to love
Head, heart, hands all pierced now to buy
Our debt of sin and through blood to forgive

Mended head, heart, hands of water born
Thought, word, deed are captive now to light
Two natures fighting await the glorious morn
When God restores the earth and ends the night

Jason - Childhood

On the writing:

There is a challenge in this week's writing that was not exactly what I expected. A soliloquy is a monologue, so a simple one person speech, but it is not simple. It is written in such a way that the speaker is talking to himself and at the same time, he is talking to the audience. Additionally, the writing is usually the deep thought of contemplation. Philosophies. Now, combine this with a childhood memory and you need to find a story the has some mystery or resonates deeply. Death? Love? What was there in my childhood to draw from? I considered this for a few days before I could even begin the writing.


The story I settled on was one in which Justin and I were playing in the basement and we stumbled into our stash of gifts.  The style is written a little bit stream of consciousness and a little bit with the Shakespearean punctuation, which is a bit poetic and capitalizing every line.  Here is an example: http://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/quotes/what-light-through-yonder-window-breaks/

Guarding Surprise

 

Confused, my heart both lept and sunk.
Was this fortune, or misfortune?
Certainly unexpected. This collision of two games of hide and seek,
Like worlds crashing into each other in the vast dark of space,
But not as imagined, not the mutual fiery destruction of equals.
No, this was one giant swallowing another.
The past, tiny and eroded with age, was the egg being cracked.
Drawn suddenly and violently into the enormity of the now.
Never as my parents slid the coveted box into the dark,
As their fingers slid over the futuristic numbers “2600”,
Into a forgotten crevice of the deep basement did they imagine this.
Who could foretell that a hider would find that which was already hidden?
No tea leaves or soothsayer. No. There was none.
In that dark place the unprepared guardian of this prepared delight was unceremoniously me.
This was not the me with pen in hand, but rather a school aged and naive boy.
How could I rescue the moment imagined?
What skills were at my disposal? How to contend with the distraction of excitement?
So, I fell back on the time honored skill of prevarication.
Did you see the way he looked at the box his legs had bumped into?
Did you see the flicker of recognition on my brothers face?
“You have every right to be excited I started, these are gifts we have stumbled into.”
This was the sugary truth in which to wrap my deceit.
“But, the box is misleading, it is just a box used to wrap other things.”
How could I be so dumb?
What sadistic parents would wrap the socks and underwear in an Atari box.
That is how matricide happens.
“Let’s go play something else, somewhere else.”
Did he take believe me?
Would he be moved on to something else?
Was that a nod of understanding?
Did he know?
Alas, we moved from the space, but at the same time a portion of me remains there.