Greetings to all friends, poets and passersby! I am especially excited about the upcoming week because toads have committed to providing a prompt a day in April, in support of all bloggers who are attempting to complete the NaPoWriMo Challenge. This blogsite does not intend to set itself up in competition with any other site in this regard. Our motivation is to provide support and a platform for sharing the poems written by our members and followers. Our links are open to anyone, regardless of whether he or she may be a regular contributor or not. I see it as a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the love of poetry and personal commitment to writing with others who feel the same way.
Back to this week's Open Link: please link up a poem of your choice - if you missed an earlier challenge this week, OLM is the perfect opportunity to catch up. You are welcome to share pieces written for other memes, or to delve into your archives for an older poem. Anything goes... so long as it is poetry. I reiterate that posts with no poetry will be removed from the list below.
“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.” ― Roald Dahl
“People, I have discovered, are layers and layers of secrets. You believe you know them, that you understand them, but their motives are always hidden from you, buried in their own hearts.” ― Veronica Roth, Insurgent
“I thought about how there are two types of secrets: the kind you want to keep in, and the kind you don't dare to let out.” ― Ally Carter, Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover
Write something new, fiction, fact or fancy and link it up below.
Welcome to "Artistic Interpretations" with Margaret. For March's challenge, I ask you to contemplate the hidden and obvious nature of flowers. Delve into the mystery, mythology, astrology, symbols, and distinct personality of your favorite flower. Think about why it holds meaning for you. What would it be like to traverse inside of its petals, what does it say to you in those quiet, contemplative moments…
And below is a You Tube video I found of "A Bloom a Day" - A Fortune-Telling Birthday Book. I have it on my bookshelf and really enjoy it.
Did you know that in the Victorian era, flowers held hidden meanings, also knows as "floriograpy"? Even in medieval times, flowers had specific moral meanings. Believe it or not, there is a specific flower for every day of the year.
I adore the purple iris. I was thrilled no end the first time I saw them in their natural habitat - it was a gift of beauty and joy to see them beside a bog garden; dappled with light, huge trees hovering over them, quite defiant, something so delicate surrounded by the rough and tumble of thick weeds and tall grass.
The iris was named for the Greek goddess of the rainbow. Iris was the messenger of the gods and rode the rainbow to and from the Earth in her multi-colored robes. The iris stands for many things: honesty, devotion, sophistication, sensitivity, loyalty, a bit of passion, and more. The flour-de-lis is a stylized iris and is the symbol for royalty and a symbol of France.
Guidance
Faith I found
by the ol' bog garden
wrapped in a lavender gown.
A show-stopper she,
draped across trail's path,
nature's fleur-de-lis, displayed.
Sword-like guards
warned "Just admire",
so I sat and listened
to secrets softly shared
of truth-filled beauty,
promises of love
and spirituals gently sung.
Wisdom comes in many forms
and grateful I'll always be
to have happened upon
this rainbow's drop
beside still waters
of the ol' garden bog.
by Margaret Bednar, originally written June 15, 2013
The garden shed's window is wide open for interpretation. It is not required it be an entirely new poem - if you would like to take an older poem and rework it to meet this theme, please feel free to do so. You may use my images, but I encourage you to do so only if you have a connection to the type of flower it is.
Please link your specific post to "Mr. Linky" below and feel free to write to more than one image or about one flower. As we know, Friday is often a hectic day, so please feel free to submit late and remember, Monday is "Open Link" here in the Garden. I look forward to your artistic interpretations.
The Sun fighting the Moon: "The "conjunction of opposites", ormeetingof opposites represents theconjunctionof the conscious andthe unconscious(alchemical engraving fromAuroraconsurgensTreaty, 1500)." Public domain via wikipedia.fr
"Oursoul, asour body, is composed ofallelements thathave
existed inthe lineage of our ancestors.The"new" inthe individual soulis a recombination,
infinitely varied, of extremelyoldcomponents " - C.G.Jung
Greetings, Toads, Toadettes and Garden aficionados,
hedgewitch here. Those who've paid attention to my various ramblings over the
years know I've had a certain resistance to working from word lists, so it
may seem odd to see me in charge today of our Get Listed challenge. Gradually,
however, the creative persistence of our various Garden dwellers and followers
has drawn me into an exercise I've come to find very productive and rewarding.
I hope you will find it the same.
Note: I do tend to go on and on, people, so if you'd like to skip all the verbiage and cut to the chase, feel free to scroll down at any time to the bold text below titled The Challenge, where all the nuts and bolts are located.
So today it's my turn to present a list, and my source material is the world of
dreams and symbols, the unconscious mind, and its role in our creative process and
indeed our lives, as explored in the works of analytical psychologist and spiritual explorer, Carl Gustav Jung.
C.G. Jung, frontispiece, 1964 edition, Man and His Symbols
From wikipedia link above:
"Carl Gustav Jung (/26 July 1875 – 6 June
1961), often referred to as C. G. Jung, was a Swiss psychiatrist
and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology... the central
concept of ...[which]...is individuation—the psychological process of
integrating opposites, including the conscious with the unconscious, while
still maintaining their relative autonomy.... Jung proposed and developed [among others,] the
concepts of extraversion and introversion; archetypes, and the collective unconscious...
His work has been influential in psychiatry
and in the study of religion, philosophy, archeology,
anthropology, literature, and related fields. He was a prolific writer, many of
whose works were not published until after his death." ~wikipedia
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you
will call it fate.”
― C.G. Jung
Cover of 1964 edition The mandala is a frequently used spiritual symbol in many cultures.
“One book opens another.”
― C.G. Jung
I've always been fond of picture books, books that tell
their narrative with illustrations as much as words, especially
those that deal with myth, magic and history, so it's no surprise that one of
my favorites is Jung's enormous word-and-picture book Man and His Symbols. Our word list today is drawn from the first chapter of this literary project Jung worked on shortly before his
death in 1961: a presentation of his theories of psychological analysis, dreams, and components of the unconscious mind using extensive imagery. It was intended for a general
audience rather than the psychoanalytic specialist, and I recommend it to all who'd like to take a
visual and verbal trip down below our mental floorboards, where so much of
the material for our poetry and for art is found.
Below you will find some pictures and concepts drawn from the book to get us going:
This painting by Paul Gauguin (Two Tahitian Women, 1899) is used in Man and his Symbols to illustrate one stage of the anima, or female inside the male: the primal woman. Public domain via wikipaintings.org
SaintMichael fightingthedragon,Hoursof EtienneChevalier,illuminatedbyJeanFouquet. Innumerable symbols here: "The scene is inspired by chapter 12 of the Apocalypse which describes
the combat of St. Michael against the dragon, symbol of the forces of Evil. Assisted by the angels, one of whom holds his helmet and lance, Michael raises his sword against a monster of seven heads in front of
a mountainous and fantastic landscape. Below, the caves of hell
open where Satan oversees the torture of hearts. On the right, one
sees in the flames the dragon defeated by
the archangel." Public domain via wikipedia.fr
"Stones are frequent images of the Self (because they are complete--ie; 'unchanging'--and lasting)" ~quoted from Man & His Symbols, p. 207
Another illustration used in Man and His Symbols, George De La Tour's Repenting Magdalene, 1630, contains many universal symbols, including the skull, the candle flame, the book, the mirror and Mary Magdealene herself. Public Domain via wikipaintings.org
The Challenge:
“Words are animals, alive with a will of their own”
―C.G. Jung
Now, without any further incursions into the world of psychoanalysis and its complexities and jargon on my part, I'd like us to attempt to dig into the world of mind and symbol, and write about something that comes from 'under the hood' of our conscious thought process. The piece should deal with the
world of dreams, the mind, symbols or
the unconscious. It mayretell an archetypal myth. It may be about a
specific dream. It may be about sanity or madness, or it may explore and focus
on any one or more of the symbols shown in these pictures or on a personallymeaningful one.
I have included thirty-two words (below) so that our poems may
take different directions. There is no maximum number limit, but also no requirement to use them
all, either.
However you must use at least five of the words from this list drawn from
Chapter One of Man & His Symbols,
in your choice of either a poem utilizing a
form, in aprose-poem,or in free verse.
So without further ado, here is the word list.
Have at it, pond dwellers, and show us what is hidden beneath those mental floorboards.
meaning
wheel
name
inkling
unconscious
perception
limit
amplification
faint
threshold
frail
dissociated
control
evasive
tender
oscillate
tension
impulse
penumbra
fetish
stiff
irrational
precise
trigger
primitive
cryptic
jump
boundaries
deflected
forgetting
collective
disguise
As always new work is preferred, but if by utilizing a significant
number of words (10 or more) from the list above, an older work can be given a
new voice that fits in with the theme, that is also welcome. If you choose to revamp an older work, feel free to include
both versions.
If using any of the images I've
included, please include attribution, as always. C.G. Jung quotes via Goodreads
