Rothko rewrite

[morkhenderson]

Thanks for the comments. Here's a rewrite:

Twice a day I find myself
walking aimlessly around this field
as my labrador snouts the corners
in olfactory delirium.

There is a game I play
as I pace through the drizzle,
headphones snug in my ears,
music on random shuffle:
If this song was an artwork,
what kind of artwork would it be?

A paint-encrusted room-size canvas?
Outsider art penned obsessively
on the inside of a matchbox?
A crazily balanced kinetic sculpture?

So, Just by Radiohead
is a dark modern canvas,
a field of almost-black
attacked by stabs and jags of muddy colour.

Hank Williams is American Gothic,
figurative and ironic,
of its time and always,
laced with a stoic humour
and traces of a quiet mid-Western joie de vivre.

And Parklife is a Stanley Spencer diorama,
naïvely painted in a storybook style:
a man feeding plump pigeons;
some red-faced, middle-aged joggers
going round, and round, and round...

But a Rothko is like no sound I will ever hear --
the weathered breathing of a sleeping giant;
the hum of a magnetic field,
altering the pressure of my inner ear;
the dreamsong of a mythic whale,
moving its bulk through Arctic waters
like a great, primal Zeppelin.

The vision of an artist,
transmitted through three thousand miles of space
and sixty years of of time
at a wavelength matching my pulse,
bringing it down, down, down.


____________
Original version:

Twice a day I find myself
walking aimlessly around this field
as my Labrador snouts the corners
in olfactory delirium.

There is a thought-game
I play as I pace through the drizzle,
headphones snug in my ears,
my music on random shuffle:
'If this song was an artwork,
what kind of artwork would it be?'.

A paint-encrusted room-size canvas?
Outsider art penned obsessively
on the inside of a matchbox?
A crazily balanced kinetic sculpture?

So, Just by Radiohead
would be a dark modern canvas,
a field of almost-black
attacked by stabs and jags of muddy colour.

Hank Williams is always American Gothic,
figurative and ironic,
of its time and always,
laced with a stoic humour
and traces of a quiet mid-Western joie de vivre.

And Parklife is a Stanley Spencer diorama,
with flattened perspective
naïvely painted in a storybook style:
here is a man feeding plump pigeons;
and here are some red-faced, middle-aged joggers;
in the corner, bin men heave,
and the circular park path goes round, and round, and round...

But now I stand before a Rothko
and it is like no sound I will ever hear.
It is the weathered breathing
of a sleeping giant;
it is the hum of a magnetic field,
altering the pressure of my inner ear;
it is the dreamsong of a mythical whale,
moving its bulk
through the Arctic waters
like a great, primal Zeppelin.

It is the mind of an artist,
heavy with vision,
transmitted through 3000 miles of space
and 60 years of of time
at a wavelength that matches my pulse,
and brings it down, down, down.

[FranktheFrank]

Interesting name for a dog, and of course it refers to an artists, a modern artists who paints in fascinating colour. It is an educated man's poem, instructive, educating, and poems should do that, yes? It has so much details and tells us that a dogs has 220 million olfactory receptors in the nose whereas a human has just three million. It doesn't say that but shows us with a load of detail somewhat overpowering at times.

There is no doubt of the cleverness of the poet, myself I wonder if the presentation is too much, could it be cut back a little in places.

Good poem nevertheless.

[Michael (MV)]

Hi, morkhenderson, and Welcome to the Writer's Block!


here at writer's block
we are a location
not a hang-up


Since you posted this late in the month of February, and since it did not receive a workshop comment until this month March 7,

how about - hopefully - this imaginative poem will receive more comment

and perhaps you will workshop it

and perhaps, maybe, it will

- with your permission and if you aren't going to have a poem already committed to represent another board in the upcoming April IBPC -

maybe it will be considered to represent the Writer's Block.


I realize it is still early in the month, but I see potential in your poem,

and the Writer's Block needs to consider a fresh voice representing, in addition to the regular core.


I'm in accord with Frank re streamlining.

I'm workshop suggesting for example, in stanza 7:

Now a Rothko is like no sound I will ever hear --
the weathered breathing of a sleeping giant
the hum of a magnetic field,
altering the pressure of my inner ear;
rising from the canvas,
the dreamsong of a mythic whale,
moving its bulk through Arctic waters
like a great, primal Zeppelin.


and then, in the last stanza:

The vision of an artist,
transmitted through 3000 miles of space
and 60 years of of time
at a wavelength matching my pulse,
bringing it down, down, down.


I like the opening, esp the "olfactory delirium." - and then the poem goes on to explore & celebrate how we as humans do this with our aesthetic sensibility engaging in ekphrasis.

^^ and hearing John Keats - "O for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts" - that brings me to suggest "There is a thought-game" as There is an imagine-game

or simply:

There is a game
I play as I pace through the drizzle,
headphones snug in my ears,
my music on random shuffle:
If this song was an artwork,
what kind of artwork would it be?


and that might be streamlined to more immediate without the 1st line:

I play as I pace through the drizzle,
headphones snug in my ears,
my music on random shuffle:
If this song was an artwork,
what kind of artwork would it be?


An epigraph from Tolkien that might occur before that 1st stanza:

"Not all those who wander are lost."



I close for now by saying
that Imagination is not a game

Imagination is genuine
for being visionary

^^ and that in association with the last stanza of this poem Rothko

and why this poem appeals to me




Michael (MV)

[morkhenderson]

Thanks both for the comments, which are very helpful. Firstly, a confession: I never saw that the dog was a metaphor for sensory perception. But it works well, and I claim that for my subconscious!

I'll work on trimming the poem. I like some of Michael's rewrite suggestions, and agree that it could be tighter.

Thanks again, and I'll repost when I've had a chance to rework it.