Category Archives: Poetry

Heartfelt

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digital collage + textThe time that passes, like a heart,
ticks on, clicks on with pulsing beat,
and with the future in retreat,
returns our spirits to the start,
reborn; we open up our eyes
and see tomorrow and the past
entwined;
the shadows that we cast
today will fall on ancient skies
and too, on stars not named
as yet—             as distant as
new stars can get
from where the human world
was framed—
All this, because we know, we care
we love and hold deep in our souls
the faintest embers, banked like coals,
of sensing, taking all we share
in lineage, in land, in ties:
ancestry, marriage,
friendship, bonds—in every gene pool
and its ponds,   in seas of learning,
truth and lies—
The last imagined second’s hum,
in passing, will remind us all
that only love
makes evening fall
and makes another morning come . . .

What’s in Store

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Sometimes even a partial notion will do!

mixed media painting

I told you recently that I was preparing to offer some of my work for sale online, and it’s time for the first revelation. I know that so many of you who read and converse with me here are also artists, writers and other creative people, and thus virtually by default are also (a) somewhat challenged by the technology and know-how of operating in businesslike fashion, promoting and marketing and selling your work; and (b) not exceedingly wealthy, as a result. So I did what I know a few of you, and many other people nowadays do, and turned to an existing, established production/marketing mechanism online and am going to let Zazzle help me with the ‘dirty work’. It means I’ve made a few business choices already, and I will share my thinking with you here because we really are all in this together!

First of all, this is far from a get-rich-quick scheme, not only because this is work I’ve spent most of my life learning to do and producing, but because as a business model it’s even less remunerative than the 30%-off-the-top commission that’s fairly typical among artist representing galleries and agents I’ve known in the past. But I am willing to take a very small amount (in many cases, the standard 10% royalty fee) from a company that will cover the grunt work I’m not willing or able to do myself. That is, of course, if they prove they can and will do it. I chose Zazzle because they have a certain established reputation and track record, easy to use interfaces, and while they are not high-end and going to capture for me any exclusive and wealthy clientele, they produce a decent quality range of products and so far have been very responsive in our interactions. This also makes me feel confident in their interactions with anyone who would come to view and buy my work, and that I can price the work as low as possible so that people like me (many being of the aforementioned impecunious creative sort) can choose from a variety of items that they might actually be able to afford without horrific trials.

I have begun posting my designs to the store fairly recently, but have made an effort to put up a reasonable representation from different sorts of my work: photography, drawing, painting and mixed-media images, and a fair range of topics from the abstract to absurdist, from factual to fantastical. There are a small few images with text (prose or poetry) on them, and many of those offered as prints can be purchased not only in different sizes but on different kinds of paper or even as stretched, ‘gallery style’ canvases, that is, with the image wrapping the sides so that the pieces can be framed but do not require a frame for hanging. I have offered a few of the designs as T-shirts, too, because it’s generally considered a good thing to wear clothes, and if we require clothes, then why not wear ones that aren’t terribly expensive? T-shirts are a pretty affordable option. But I’ve never been fond of wearing anything that advertised someone or some Thing (object or cause or concept)–if I want to promote a cause, I’d rather do it with my own words and my actions than with worn signage. So you will find very few slogans or words at all on the T-shirts, just pictures for the most part. I have made a number of them simple black-and-white images, often using my pen-and-ink line drawings, and I would encourage those who like color to consider getting a set of fabric coloring pens and having a good old time coloring the T-shirts like coloring book pages to suit taste and need. Might be a very fun thing to do with children, in fact, as the T-shirts can be ordered not only in a range of adult sizes and styles but many children’s ones as well.

I’ve configured most designs as the largest print version for which I think they’re suited, but most can be scaled smaller for your smaller space or to be more affordable. As it is, there are a great many prints under $20 a piece, and quite a few under $10, so I hope that a larger number of people can afford them without feeling a terrible pinch. There are a whole lot of other designers and artists represented in Zazzle stores, and a really wide array of objects and items that can be customized with your, my, or others’ designs and images, and I will see if and when I’m ready to branch out further with my own. For now, you should know that there is lots of work posted to Zazzle by someone under the name of ‘artspark’–pretty nice stuff, from the look of it–that’s not mine; I tried a huge number of store name options before finding one Zazzle accepted as not already in use, so I’ll just stick with this one even if it’s a bit close. I titled each of my designs KIW Sparks: [Title] to differentiate a little, hoping that helps.

ArtSparks

Even if you have no interest in–or money for–buying anything, I invite you to spend a little time visiting my work at Zazzle. It can serve, in part, as my online gallery for now, where you can see many of the works I’ve used to illustrate my blog posts, as well as a few artworks you’ve not seen here before, and I am eager to share them all with you. I hope that you, too, are finding the courage to ‘put yourself out there’ artistically and creatively because we have this fine forum among friends in the blog-world and online businesses, because even though it’s generally a tough way to make a living, financially speaking, it’s a glorious way to make a Life.

graphite drawing

I don't know if I can claim to have accomplished anything yet, but I'm at least underway in the process of taming the dragon that is my fear of the business side of the creative life. Hopefully, having chosen Zazzle as my squire, I'll figure out how to battle my way through the whole process more successfully over time!

As the Evening Blooms

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There are moments when one simple thing–the appearance of its shadow under a boat in a clear lake, kids on the playground chanting a silly song, the smell of potatoes roasting in the oven as you walk in the door at the end of the day–stops you in your tracks with a pang of intense gratitude. You’re filled with wonder that something you may have seen or heard or felt a thousand times before can suddenly arrest you and fill you with such an unmitigated thrill. Your internal sky clears, and you remember how it felt to believe without question in today, in tomorrow.

digital imageOne of the situations that is most able to evoke such potent magic for me is that sweet transitional time when dusk is just about to fall. I’ll be going along the road on the way home, and the peculiar slant of the light makes every color twice as brilliant and saturated as it ought to be, and the clarity of the view seems to intensify so that I feel certain if I looked I could see individual grass-leaves at a hundred yards, maybe even the gossamer lacewing perched on a single blade. I open the window of the car and think that the robin warbling its evensong could be two miles distant and I would hear it just as sharply in its unimpeded clarity, maybe even a hundred miles. Have I fallen into a miracle myself? Become some sort of supernal being?digital painting

No, but at this hour and in this light, the new, dense tapestry of wild spring greens lining the side of the road becomes a moment closer to the perfection of heaven’s glow and I feel as though I myself might just take wing. As the evening starts to fall, this glow is rich with grace and filled with dreams of coming good and present hope. And along with every little else, I know that this beautiful glorious nothing of a thing will happen another time, and not when it will come or what it means, only that life is loaded up with marvelous moments of sweet and poignant joy.

Fantasia on Color Theory

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digitally doctored acrylic on canvas painting

Color Infusions

Velour of the lawn is deep, deep green,

sun breaking sideways grey

or silvery-white, like the moon of night

pulled over the edge of day–

The mirroring water Caribbean blue

on the patio table and chair

to reflect the sky or the azure eye

of a hoverer in the air–

So winter to spring is giving ground

by violet margins and rose,

to erase from sight the black and white

of the season’s reticent clothes.digitally doctored acrylic on canvas painting

Flying Colors

On the horizon I spotted a kite

That swung in the wind to the left and the right

And splashed all its colors, exuberant paint

To swirl in the sky with a dip and a feint

Toward the grass, toward the sun, to a hill, to a tree,

A brilliant kaleidoscope there just for me

And the child whose hand guided the string of the kite

As it painted our world with new colors and light

Dollar Signs on My Mind

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While I am busy preparing to open an online store to offer some of my creative output for sale as prints, T-shirts, book material, and so forth, naturally my brain is calculating how many itty bitty royalty payments it will take to, say, pay off an eensy-weensy portion of the hours-days-years spent producing said items. Fortunately for me, y’all know I’m a terrible mathematician, so there’s obviously no point in delving so very far or seriously into that topic or tragedy will surely ensue. I’m not fishing for compliments here, just stating the cold hard facts of the rarity of cold hard cash when it comes to art. Many of you friends of mine are fellow artists, so I know that you know just what I mean. Nothing particularly fishy about it. So instead of whimpering needlessly, I will just share one of my silly little verses with you and call it a day. A much cheerier way to close St. Patrick’s Day than worrying about the Bankin’ o’ the Green. Goodnight, my fine friends! Smooth sailing ahead for all of us!digital artwork

The Gifts of True Love

In lieu of parties, holidays

And feasts and fests, vacation days

And celebrations—rather, heck,

Than all together—send a cheque!

A party lasts mere days or hours

And Wilts like last September’s flowers–

Festive events and gifts all fade—

No joy compares to getting paid!

So if you want to be recalled

And loved as one who has enthralled,

Forget the cakes, balloons and flash—

Just send me some heartwarming cash!

Lily of the Valley

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photoOne of the rituals of fending off the dregs of winter’s chill is to linger in the hothouses and aisles of flower shops and every place that stocks us up with ideas and plants as we rejuvenate the landscape for the year. A splash of heated color draws the eye; the flash and gleam of leaves caught in each little draft pulls us in, from some pale-margined broad-leafed plant off to some lacy other. The faint sound of their fluttering evokes both sylvan breeze and birdsong and reminds us, beyond those, of springs and fountains drawn to life as winter thaws.

Perhaps the most evocative and pleasing sense that spring and summer lie in wait somewhere not far at all: perfume–the heady redolence that wafts from hyacinths and jasmine blooms, from sweet Viola odorata, from each little honeyed heart that says that life will soon return to earth. One of my favorites for sheer intensity and unstained loveliness of scent is Lily of the Valley–those clean, brilliant bells that cloister in the moss and keep their meditative calm a little secret ’til I’m close enough to catch their drift and see their whiteness glinting in the green. It may be, too, that breathing that intensity of air when these petite white satin blooms nod in the breeze calls up an atavistic searching in my blood. I start to hear that most beloved of Swedish songs (forgive me, my Norwegian forebears–but we were still ‘run’ by our cousins the Swedes until we parted ways in the early 20th century) resonating somewhere in the distance of earth’s slow axial turn, tolling in a sweetly sorrowful voice the tale of the grieving Lily King. Spring is like that–pierced with the lingering poignancy of winter’s deadly grip, but with an insistent, gorgeous urge to let earth be reborn; no matter the loss, the sorrow and the bygone things, to carry forward with what perfumed sweetness it can find.

The Romantic Nationalism that has periodically gripped the music world and produced such pleasures as David Wikander’s exquisite melody for poet Gustav Fröding’s Kung Liljekonvalje is that way too: longing for the old, but wanting something new raised up in it, like the rebirth that comes with spring. Sorrow and joy can mingle then, glowing with possibility and pain, with hesitation and with hope.

The text is sorrowful but evocative, I think, of the intensely bittersweet beauty of the Lily of the Valley; it isn’t hard to see how this must have captured the dark imaginings of many a Northerner in a Romantic frame of mind. I’ve included a translation of my own, meant not as a literal one but rather an attempt to understand something more of the character of the tale and perhaps, indeed, how it grew out of dreaming over the bowing bells of a tiny blooming thing, searching in its ice-white blossoms for promises of better and brighter things.

Kung Liljekonvalje                                  King Lily of the Valley

Kung Liljekonvalje av dungen                  King Lily-of-the-Valley’s in the green-wood,
Kung Liljekonvalje är vit som snö             King Lily-of-the-Valley, who is white as snow,
Nu sörjer unga kungen                            The young king now mourning his maiden,
Prinsessan liljekonvalje mö                      Princess Lily-of-the-Valley, in woe

Kung liljekonvalje han sänker                  King Lily-of-the-Valley now lowers                  
Sitt sorgsna huvud så tungt och vekt      His heavy head so burdened with grief
Och silverhjälmen blanker                       And on his silver helm gleams the sunset,
I sommerskymningen blekt                      Pale dusk that can bring no relief

Kring bårens spindelvävar                       Round her cold bier the cobwebs are woven,
Från rökelsekaren med blomsterstoft       And hang from censers flow’r-filled & spent,
En virak sakta svävar                               Their frankincense drifting down slowly,
All skogen är full av doft                          The forest all filled with the scent

Från björkens gungande krona                From birches’ swaying crowns to their bases,
Från vindens vaggande gröna hus          From winds that rock the green-wood’s home
Små sorgevisor tona                                Small tunes, songs of sadness and mourning
All skogen är uppfylld av sus                   Fill all of the woods as they roam

Det susar ett bud genom dälden             And rustle as wind through the glen; find
Om kungssorg bland viskande blad       The King all cloaked in whispering leaves
I skogens vida välden                              As full sorrow falls on the wood-world,
Från liljekonvaljernas huvudstad             The whole of the Valley still grieves . . .P&I drawing

It’s Good to be Otherworldly

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At times, time should just stop. Hold its breath, keep confidence with every secretive thing because some little happening occurs, a tiny treasured thing appears, as small as dust in air perhaps but so perfect in its lack of discipline as to be solace beyond words, a wonder like a young child’s hair lit by a momentary ray of sunlight to become more beautiful than all the votive flames that ever lit the night, like a killdeer’s evening call fluting out from where it hides in the tall grass.

graphite drawing

. . . an hour in which enforced quiet time in a waiting room is transformed into time for invention in the sketchbook . . .

Let the treasury of life be honored by our awed obeisance, however brief, as we take our meditative pause to contemplate those little motes of sweetness that make up, in total, something so ethereal and grand–the sharp, resinous perfume rising from a path through piny woods on a sun-baked day; that bright mercurial flash of a school of tiny fry all turning in the shoals at once, glinting; an amorous bird showing off its vocal flashiness from a leafy grove across the way . . .

graphite drawing

. . . a piece of rustic dark bread with butter melting into it . . . .

May we never forget to stop, if only for that little moment, to absorb the pleasurable surprise of living in the midst of millions of small miracles each night and every day, even if they’re often lost to us as too minute to catch our notice. The air we breathe is redolent with them–each step we take can draw us further into that precise great incident of wonder that should startle every heart into eternal admiration.

It’s All Downhill from Here

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colored pencilGhoulish Delight

I rustle my hands in taloned glee

Because the deadly recipe

From neither pots nor spoons nor pans

But sort of cauldron-cooked began

To boil and burble, burn and bake

And make a horrid bellyache

In which I openly rejoice

From the bottom of my heart at the top of my voice

Since it eats at the spot whence woe betides

I mean, my enemy’s insides

I hate to admit that it drives me nuts

How I loathe the cretin’s creepy guts

So I will make like a fleet of moles

And bore them full of a flock of holes

Filling me full of ironic glee

And comeuppance for him who so bores me

Since that’s why I really stayed in school

To grow up and be a bad little ghoul

And lest you forget yourself, sneer or scoff

Be nice to me or I’ll bump you offcolored pencil

So Soon Begins the End

Upon my word! This is a fix

I never thought to find me in–

at least not find for five or six

more decades, when my hair’d grown thin

and belly fat, and joints grown weak

and brain grown mushier than it had

been yet, but I age as we speak–

so rapidly–why, this is Bad!

I never dreamed that I would age

before a hundred years or so,

and then, at most, to turn more sage;

oh, this is a grubby way to go!

Art Imitates Life Imitating Art

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A little ditty I wrote when teaching drawing classes . . . graphite on black paperAye of the Beholder

Teacher mustn’t be too choosy,

Guiding student artists through

Projects in which they redo

The works of masters from Brancusi

to Vermeer or Frankenthaler

Or da Vinci; every student

Has a vision of what’s prudent

And what fails, as artist-scholar;

Though they may have witticisms

And have skill and wisdom plenty

As artistic cognoscenti,

Few have true twin criticisms–

Expectation must diminish,

Open-mindedness then flourish,

So the student brain can nourish

New great art from start to finish;

This is what the child of three meant

When she said no one had told her

That the Eye of the Beholder

Never met complete agreement:

Genius art is the dominion

Of the Artist, true; and yet, it

Is the critics, I regret it,

Who know Genius is opinion.digital drawing image

The Inexplicable Explained

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digitally doctored photoWhy She Does It

The able cataloguer’ll

Produce the worst of doggerel

Because strict order suits her taste,

The free or random seeming waste

To such refined and organized

Beliefs. Add that it’s hypnotized

Her not into the orthodox

Approach to meter; no, what shocks

Us is that rather than to hone

The wealth of poems to a bone-

Sharp, artful edge, she deigns to vent

Her verse as tidy excrement.digitally doctored photo

Thing that Does Things

 

There is a wonderful machine that’s spiffy, neat, and super-keen

 

Because its functions are so grand and great, but on the other hand,

 

It’s hard to fix when it’s abuzz, malfunctioning, or conked, because

 

It is so arcane, intricate and complicated, that we get

 

Bamboozled trying to describe what’s wrong, and end in diatribe,

 

For truthfully, we’ve not a clue just what this fine machine can do,

 

Or what its actual functions are, for it’s so complex and bizarre

 

That we, in our benighted state, prefer to simply think it great

 

And know that if we could have guessed

 

          what it is, we’d sure be impressed.