One Evening
One evening
a little yellow
approaching
green
Swooped
in.Roosts
on a blue.
"Never seen you here before,"
purple drawls, reinvents a
register
in
the
key
of magenta.
"Now let's see..."
"what we can
see," cerulean
mutters, meanders past
red.
Comments
In the painting I see bloody crepuscular bits. The sqaure in the middle looks like whale blubber.
The poem had me until "plop." I really loved the begining and your format. I think without "plop" the poem is perfect. I love it that the colors are personas. You even have sound: key of magenta and cerulean mutters brilliant piece Renee. Plop just makes me think of the bathroom, which almost put me off this delicious piece. Thanks.
how about "swooped in and landed on a blue...I also see tense problems here. You alternate between past and present tense. I think either would be good as long as there is consistency. Present is more of an action poem and past you can have regrets in...
Purple is suspiciously southern belle in the way she drawls. Fun poem Renee. Thanks.
Lucy
Hi Lucy, I think the bloodiness you observed in the painting has to do with it's very intimate/anatomical nature...
I'm not sure why I chose the painting except for the fact that Phaedra Robinson, the artist, is one of my contemporaries from Detroit and I wanted to bring her to light. Now I think of the saying "anything goes," and Ezra Pound who said "it all coheres."
As for the poem, I was intentionally playing with tense the way Simone Weil does in her poetry, albeit not as philosophically or as seamlessly. Weil's switching of verb tenses mid-poem fascinates me because it indicates something about Time, that Time is relative, and something else I can't put my finger on...
Renee
"To talk about the 'color red' is almost a pleonasm. Red is the color par excellence, [...] the first of all colors."
«Parler de couleur rouge est presque un pléonasme.
Red was in the news recently: it is the color banned from women's clothing at the polygamist compound in Texas, because the cult believes that red belongs to Jesus.
Fragment poems are often some of the hardest ones to do well. It's easy to lack theme and throw form (or lack therof) to stand in for it. In this case, you executed finely and your lines are masterful.
I actually cheered that you got out of that piece alive. (Not that I ever worried...)