poetry

The Aspiration of The Artist

English:

English: “The Moselle near Schengen at the Drailännereck”, oil painting by Luxembourg artist Nico Klopp, 1924. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From a deep well comes a certain longing.  It is for a distant horizon, dimly remembered, portending a certain clarity.  The striving for a transcendental, gives flesh and meaning to the concreteness of everyday reality.  For the artist is always seeking something more, be it in a painting, a song, or a poem.

What is the aspiration of the artist?   This question is as old as the hills, and as new as the as the latest blog post.  Timeless in form, yet essential in delineation, the artist strives to enter into the conversation of life, the river of connection that daily engulfs our lives.  Connection is key, for the moment dialogue is engaged, the artist enters into her element, and the creative flow arises naturally.  This is a given.

Perhaps in this new year, 2015, we can assess the realities before us.  A fact is still a fact, yet a dramatization can yield rich metaphors of meaning.  Hence, a realm of poetry is entered, a landscape of vivid portrayal, giving fresh impetus to the artist’s innate desire to create.  Yet, it is the conversation that gives meaning, the open knowledge that someone has seen our work, and that someone understands and appreciates it.

This is why, we at Lavender Turquois, curate the best, most interesting and liveliest of the vast offerings present to us in the WordPress domain.  This is our calling, and we hope your enjoy our effort.  For it is entering into the conversation, the element of mutual appreciation and dialog that comes with sincere effort, that is the true aspiration of the artist.

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Beholdment

English: John Keats by Joseph Severn 1819. Oil...

English: John Keats by Joseph Severn 1819. Oil on ivory miniature, 105×79 mm Deutsch: John Keats, gemalt von Joseph Severn, 1819 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,-that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need
to know.” These are the final lines from the poem, Ode to a Grecian Urn by John Keats.

Balthasar says: We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it. Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, a she wil not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance. We can be sure that who ever sneers at her name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past-wheather he admits it or not-can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love” (from, the Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 1.)

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Chopin

Albert Bloch, Munich

Albert Bloch, Munich (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Waif of that elder world of space and glamour

Outcast within this other world’s confine,

You fashioned from its chaos and its clamour

Your  world of wonder, leaving it to shine

Pale radiance on the world, and to draw near it

Those whose wild laughter, muted to a smile

Wan-broken, wakes to tears when you beguile

With your immortal waywardness their spirit.

Singer of numb despair and mad release,

Always the sun throbs through your melancholy,

Always the rain sobs through your gayest folly-

You who knew never peace bring always peace.

     And solace always to my bleakest mood

     And benediction on my solitude.

 This sonnet to Chopin appears in Portraits and People and was composed by Albert Bloch

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Aisthetic

English: By Rembrandt.

English: By Rembrandt. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

These ideas are taken from an article by Stefanie Knauss on the theology of the senses. I was happy to find a name for what I have come to know intuitively. I also know that I have prayed in this way all my life. I feel the direct contact with beauty is a way to know God. Stefanie calls this aisthetic theology. In the encounter with the arts, with the beautiful  our focus is on the sensory experience of the works and overcomes the tendency to intellectualize the aesthetic experience. It broadens the horizon of aesthetic theology by showing that theologically relevant  sensory experiences can be made not only through high art (Mozart‘s, operas, Rembrandt’s paintings, etc.) but there are many more forms of art that address the senses in manifold ways: taste in the art of cooking, smell in the art of perfumery, or touch in the art of textiles and design. I refer you to Brent Plate’s work  “The Skin of Religion”. This theology, inspired by the senses and inspiring the senses, can then make God be tasted and smelled,” for your love is better than wine, your anointing oils are fragrant, your name is perfume poured out, therefore the maidens love you” (Cant1,2-3)

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A Blessing Before Beginning

English: Seascape Polski: Krajobraz morski

English: Seascape Polski: Krajobraz morski (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is a blessing of  Macrina Wiederkehr

O  colors of earth, anoint me and robe me with all the attributes I need for my life work: purple for wisdom, meditation , transformation, and spirituality.  Red for passion, energy and courage. Blues and greens for calm restfulness, balance, healing, hope, serenity, and contemplation.  Golden yellows for optimism and joy, lucidity, compassion and illumination, and orange for animation, creativity and enthusiasm.  Black and white for death and life, power and innocence, mysticism and truth.

All of nature  send your mystical energy upon  my work. Rocks, precious stones, pebbles, air, wind, breezes, storms, earth, flowers, trees, plants, water lakes, ponds, rivers oceans, streams, brooks, fire, moon and stars, sun  volcanoes, bonfires, burning candles, quiet lights, and bright lights

O let everything that is good bless my work.

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Painting Poems With Jazz

Saxophonist and composer Sam Sdigursky was born 1979 and grew up in Los Angeles. His CDs include  poetry – related recordings: The Words Project (2007), Words Project II (2008) and Words Project III: Miniature (2010), all issued by New Amsterdam Records; Words Project IV (2013) available through digital download. http://www.samsadigursky.com

He caught my interest in an interview in a Jazz – Poetry Journal. He began by reading the poetry Milosz, a poet I love. I like the idea of painting a poem with Jazz.

Echo Park in Los Angeles, United States (North...

Echo Park in Los Angeles, United States (North America) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Going Inside the Melody

English: A portrait of John Coltrane by Paolo ...

English: A portrait of John Coltrane by Paolo Steffan (amateur painter, Wikipedia user), 2007. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is another offering from the Journal of Poetry and Jazz. Maybe listen to some Coltrane while reading it. The author is Cheryl Whithead and is from a poem called Impressions.

On the nights I’m loneliest, I listen to a recording of Coltrane and Dolphy

playing a concert in Copenhagen with Jones,

Workman and Tyner. After a false start,

Trane speaks to the audience. thank you very kindly,

ladies and gentlemen, he says, and the South

pours over the stage floor like a river cresting its banks.

When the applause stops, he starts to play__

slightly arching his back, he looms, tall

and wide-bodied, tenor in his hands.

Through that horn, he calls to Eric D.,

who answers him note for note  on the alto,

the knot on his forehead bulging like a root

pushing at muddy ground.

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“Elegy Indigo”

Trumpet with paper straight mute inserted; bel...

Trumpet with paper straight mute inserted; below are (left to right) straight, wah-wah (Harmon), and cup mutes. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Jazz at the Plaza

Jazz at the Plaza (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is a poem found in a journal of Jazz and Literature called “Brilliant Corners”. The author of the poem is Joel Dias-Porter I put in ( ) what scripture it suggested to me

“Did Miles mute his horn, because

a breeze can carry kites a gust might mutilate?”

(He did not even bend a reed)

Call him poet, professor. Call me shaky grasper of the chisel,

caught in a run-on rush to hammer it all.

(I ran a good race, to the end)

Finally, finally, I come to believe in loss as a way of knowing.

(I consider all loss as gain)

How long does it take to hear what silence can say?

(Be still and know)

I stand at a stoplight, waiting for the colors to change.

At forty-five one has to deal with eyesight fading.

(I see dimly through a glass)

Not fading like blue from the knees of your favorite jeans

or lights on a stage above a silenced microphone,

but like a goateed poet in a stingy brim hat

covering the bets of a hooded man with holes for eyes

and blades of scythes where his fingernails should be.

Finally, finally, I come to believe in  loss as a way of knowing.

If the Blues is a river, doesn’t it carry in and wash  away?

(What have you come here to see)

LEDs are replacing halogen and incandescent lamps,

so the headlights of some approaching cars are slightly blues

as his velvet tone joins the voices of all my fallen fathers.

(Father forgive them)

And I tremble ever so softly,  softly, like a kite in a breeze

or the reed in a Harmon mute during a note’s last linger.

(All these things will pass but love will remain)

Finally, finally… I come to believe in loss as  a way of knowing

(follow him)

Finely, finally.

Sacred and Beautiful

English: The Virgin of Montserrat (La Moreneta...

English: The Virgin of Montserrat (La Moreneta). on Nov. 11, 2004. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Thus beauty reveals  inwardness through outer form. A shining radiates outward into

the world.”

____ Rudolf Steiner

“To the poet all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all

men divine.”

______ Ignatian spirituality of poetry

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Teannalach

The surface of a freshwater lake

The surface of a freshwater lake (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This may be a new word to paint your word pictures with. I hope so. It is given me by Joho O’Donohue. I live be side the lake and I always hear the ripple of the waters and the sound of the wind. Sometimes you would not even know that great expanse of fresh water is out there because of the stillness. That is when I hear Teannalach. It means awareness. The awareness that is seven layers deep. It is the attention to the unheard music of the lake. It is the language of the lake. The lake beneath the lake. It only reveals itself when the mind’s attention is finely tuned.

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