Van Gogh in the Snow
After last night's wet snow (yes, snow) knocked down the daffodils, I woke today thinking about Van Gogh's flower paintings, especially his Irises. That led me to some old poems, and I found "Cornfields, Summer", written in 2001, revised this morning. I've always admired Van Gogh's work ethic, his perseverance, his gentleness. He would have walked out in the snow with his palette and brushes and painted the fallen daffodils.
CORNFIELDS, SUMMER
New light catches in the corn rows.
Hundreds of lovers are waiting to be born
in a single corncob.
The crickets talking near the cool roots
draw souls to the waiting
tassels and kernels.
Van Gogh's irises wait at the edge
of the field, calling the sun god
down from the heavens.
The sound of grief starts up
in the ripening fields. Then we hear
the wedding of separation, cloaked in lonely dew.
The cornshucks hide the harvest.
Only tough hands can find
the gold laid out in the solid rows of light.
(Copyright 2007, Allan Cooper)
CORNFIELDS, SUMMER
New light catches in the corn rows.
Hundreds of lovers are waiting to be born
in a single corncob.
The crickets talking near the cool roots
draw souls to the waiting
tassels and kernels.
Van Gogh's irises wait at the edge
of the field, calling the sun god
down from the heavens.
The sound of grief starts up
in the ripening fields. Then we hear
the wedding of separation, cloaked in lonely dew.
The cornshucks hide the harvest.
Only tough hands can find
the gold laid out in the solid rows of light.
(Copyright 2007, Allan Cooper)
Labels: Van Gogh in the snow
posted by Al Cooper at 7:50 AM
2 Comments:
Love your poem. Here's something Van Gogh-inspired maybe, as I've been working with fractals a bit, returning to pre-1980s poems I used to make using "continuation," which is a kind of unfolding where the sentences don't end abruptly but one modifier working on what it follows but also what follows it, so the poem unfolding, wandering maybe... Have you seen the Mandelbrot set presentation by Arthur C. Clarke where computer artists dramatized the progressions of plotting the visuals of this strange mathematical set that seems to unlock mysteries of creation. When we saw it, I thought it was a kind of metaphor for what an exploratory poem might do, one that uses fractals to explore shifts in perspective, frame, centering, and spirit... so, anyway, here's an unspiraling "fractal" excerpt from a piece called "A Billion More Faces in the Wind":
Sudden faces of the generations
shaking Midwest corn in the fields
flew past in West Coast store windows
& had been in the rain falling
like crow caws on a day of tractoring
like marmot hair tangled in moss
on gorge rocks, & still the rain falling
time balanced near an oily exit
the root never far from its flower
the hydraulics of open sky over corn
factories floating on their oil, with hieroglyphic
rustling sheet music paperwork
over loading docks, dusk bending
where a second shift’s working
the ultramagnetic day washing remnants of sleep
leaving behind soft patches if you walk
on ground, past faces flying in the corn again,
people yet to be born, as another
spring had entered the way a sparrow
could be heard suddenly nearby,
singing of the sun & beautiful sparrows.
And this is from a piece called right now "Waiting Room Fractals":
getting you in on the 27th is a miracle
the nurse finally announces, which would be
two weeks from now, & another man
has walked in with a unit, sitting
in the chair with his black umbrella,
a blue fishing cap, & a woman
behind the desk says, hi, Peter, he says
hi cloudy voiced, accompanied by a guy
who must be his son, if you look
at how the younger man attends
the older man, near two women
drifting slowly back from the desk
in the mid morning, the open space
of the room still’s filled by presence
of the people waiting, everyone keeping
down, to survive, to keep on
pursuing organic chemistry, where cells
& human bones are strings
of an instrument or operative move
breath circling as someone shifts
this part of a ship that carries further
into the end of oil, the slow-down
of speeding particulate Thursday
through which earth passes
whispering names in plants
names of those nobody here knows
which cannot be followed as they pass
through atoms of this town,
a guy finding balance, a hand on the walker
intellect on the ropes, looks like a son
with his father, a woman shuffling
her steps, walking alone now
back from the half-walled front desk
in the back rooms, brilliant physicians
wait for names to be called,
the ironworker’s records glowing
from the screen, the worry
with hip cracked down a hall,
the x-rays printed & snapped
onto the blank light board
as if Van Gogh were newly discovered
in a Parisian room in this city
the old moves still with the woman
seated, sweltering in post-bearing
heaviness, one at a time
each taken back, in time, me too
I hope the spacing works--in the comment box the line breaks aren't saved, but maybe when they appear on the page, they'll be okay. The idea is a kind of spiraling form...
good energy to you,
Jim
personal blog:
http://jgjgrab.wordpress.com
earth poem anthology:
http://earthpoemanthology.wordpress.com
PS Heck, the comments didn't preserve the line indentations. Basically, every other line is indented 12 spaces, creating a spiral effect, I think.
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