Darkened was the life of faith,
another age which rewarded faith with a voucher
redeemable for one martyr’s crown,
and swords unsheathed to fight for peace.
Sebastian slumps, indifferent to the world
of chiaroscuro doctrines, as four spigots
drip nourishment onto a seedling church,
his arms still made fast by rope and oak,
tied by the hands he once trained for war.
Mr. Honthorst, you forgot the halo,
five are needed, one for each arrow
destined for glory, enveloped in gold,
a relic of devotion, and one for the tired man
whose flesh was yielding, his faith, firm.
Peculiar, is it not? Sebastian, wreathed in chains
so inspired his captors that they converted,
an age where to die meant gain;
yet times pass as men, so that soon
the converted cast the chains and killed,
burning their brothers with fires of refinement,
before picking up the pieces,
clavicle, humorous, patella,
poking through the ash and embers.
Returning then, to our subject, dear Sebastian,
his future was very bright, not dying
for several days, nursed and healed,
strengthened for a trip to shout denouncements
at the emperor who ordered his death,
and receive his finals gift,
a thunderous ovation as he passed
beneath a shower of stones.
I am sure this has occured to you already, but why not create poetry off of other forms of art, like music? It's something you seem to be passionate about. You could start with a rich and sonorous Bach sonata. I have to admit I felt a little unsure about what was going on in this poem. I'm not sure what made it lack clarity for me--perhaps it's simply because an encounter with art is such a deeply personal experience and you need to work on expressing your experience in more personal terms that your readers can grasp. I'll read it a few more times and maybe get back to you.
ReplyDeleteAnon, thanks so much for your opinion, I truly appreciate it. The answer to why I don't write musical ekphrasis is that I already do, and it frustrates me. Visual art is the medium that impacts me the least (actually, dance is lower, but let's not quibble), whereas music is the medium that speaks to me at the deepest level, far deeper than literature and language. I struggle to give language to visual art, where I can see something, imagine the immense difficulty of writing about something as subjective and amorphous as music. My former professor, David Wright, does a lot of musical ekphrasis, and he's really good at it. He sent me a manuscript of his collection of poems about Bach, and I'm studying them to get better at musical ekphrasis. It's tough, but it's the sort of challenge I like.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you said this confused you, I really struggled to integrate the two themes I wanted to communicate, and I wrote about 20 different poems on different themes about this painting before settling on this. I have a lot of revision to do on this, and I'm sure that my final poem will be quite different from this one.
And, again, thanks for taking the time to chime in! It's hard to try and create and craft when no one responds to tell you what effect your having.
Hmmm. Doesn't music ever make you want to dance? :)
ReplyDeleteWell, I do know what you mean about music being beyond words. Perhaps this is because it is an abstract thing, but I think that more accurately in my experience that it affects the soul so profoundly that it falls almost in the category of words of worship, which our human language doesn't cover.
Some ideas for you:
Start with writing memoirs or essays about your experiences with music you love--like maybe your memory of first hearing a piece, or what kind of associations it has and why. I have done this and have literally hundreds of small essays (not just about music, about everything that matters to me) that I someday want to compile into a book and give to my grandchildren or something. It is easier to write about music when you aren't worrying about form or rhythm as much. Perhaps learning to write about music isn't high on your priority list, but I personally believe that poetry is best when you can tell the poet put a lot of themself into it. Their passions, griefs, experiences, anything that humans experience--these are the things that connect us to the rest of humanity and I think poetry needs to be a celebration of connection (either to the self or to others or to nature or all of the above.)
Suggestion two: try writing a hymn. Pick your favorite one and write another verse for it, or an entirely separate set of verses on a different theme to the same tune, or just pick a hymn meter and knock yourself out. I'd be curious to see the results.
Well I guess thats enough for now, I don't want to talk your ear off.