FEEDBACK FROM READERS OF INTERTWINE

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TN

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I like the colorful imagery very much.  Leaves a lot to the imagination.  

Very provocative and thought provoking.  

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LR

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Such a force of words, descriptive and emotional. In sonnet form as well. Well done!

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JC

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Why? Why? Why? It certainly imprinted a dark picture in my pure white brain...
Maybe the world has been in the same shape ever since human beings were created.  Yet we don't want to face the truth...just bury our heads in ashes of dreams, the music from churches, the power of pens...some people are really lucky...

 

GKC

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It's an amazing poem full of charades and twists. Suddenly a surreal, colorful human face comes into my view, etched by time, feeling the hurt and suffering from the grind. Am I watching a Weeping Lady by Picasso in 1937?

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PH

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Which painting did you refer to or hint at?

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MY ANSWER

 

“Weeping Woman” was painted by Picasso in 1937, a couple weeks after he finished his historical masterpiece, “Guernica.” Along with “Mona Lisa,” “The Last Super” and “The Starry Night,” “Guernica” is often listed as one of the top ten paintings of all time.

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The poem “Intertwine” was written 8 years ago. To be honest, I forget which painting I was reacting to. It could be “Weeping Woman,” or another. In the era of cubism, surrealism…lost generation…it seems everything was wasted (The Wasteland), lost, naked, distorted…

 

So the poem could be triggered by a combination of many disfigured paintings, or maybe at the end, the poem morphed into its own twisting.

 

“History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” (Mark Twain).

Pandemic, Ukraine war, and now the A.I. arms race, Mr. Twain is busily working to find the rhyming words for wasted, lost, naked, distorted…

 

Buckle up, my friend.

Livingston

 

 

NN

 

Strong poem, Livingston! “the grief is on fire” - I hear THAT! Strong ending too!!

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SA

 

I especially like the third stanza and the phrase “the grief is on fire.” Wow!

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DW

 

Interesting. I didn’t realize that you were portraying a particular painting. I was putting together a picture as I read through your words, turning, and twisting. It was fun. 

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FYI 

 

The artist/painter and poet often share the same struggle. They all have to overcome the huddle of locating the right expression. Color, line, space, scope…for painter; syllable, word, rhythm, form…for poet. That is why ekphrastic poetry and the word ekphrasis, have been around since the oldest times! “Shield on Achilles” (from the “Iliad” by Homer, 8th century BC), was an example of ekphrastic poetry. And the descriptive subject could be real or imagined. Historically, there were so many well-known poets who were also great artists/painters: William Blake, Rabindranath, Tagore, e e Cummings, Derek Walcott…and even more poets expressed profound influence of paintings to their poetry: Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Frank O’Hara…
The study of poetry and painting is a lifetime learning process. I know superficially by taking some courses on Cubism, Surrealism…
 

GK

 

I really liked the imagery, accompanied by emotions, that morphed and flowed verse to verse.  Your last two lines are very palpable and revealing…so often it’s easier to ignore the ugly painful truth.