So begins the third week of NaPoWriMo! I have been blown away by the overall standard of the poetry that has been linked to our prompts, and I am sure that many other poems have been written since OLM last week, which we have not all had the opportunity to read yet. Feel free to share what you have written with us today. All our regular Members and Followers, who have opted out of the attempt to complete 30 poems in April, are invited to link up poems of their choice, either old or new. With so much extraordinary poetry around we should have a wealth of reading material to enjoy today.
Greetings, toads, toadettes and fellow pond travelers, Hedgewitch coming at you with our weekend challenge. By now we're all well into our second week of April poetry
madness here at the Garden, so I'm not going to tie anyone's brain in knots
trying to learn a new poetic form. Instead, I'm choosing a simple ekphrasis challenge
today, to write to one of the paintings of Spanish Impressionist Joaquin Sorolla.
If you don't have time to read all my blithering, you can get to the lowdown on the challenge by scrolling down to the end of the post.
The First Child
As a child
growing up in the slums of Chicago, eldest of three daughters of a single
mother on welfare, Art was not somethingto which I had much exposure. A Superman comic bought with pop bottles I
patiently collected and returned for a two penny deposit, or the cheap print of
Jesuscut from a magazine above my
grandmother's bed were about it for me back then. I am nowhere near an expert or even truly knowledgeable about Art, but I do know that when I met it for the first time, it changed my life.
Another Margarita
This change happened in junior
high (middle school to you sprouts) when we took a field trip to the Art Institute of Chicago. I saw sculpture, I saw art ancient and modern, from medieval religious paintings that seemed
like a child's drawings, primitively sketched and colored by a species beginning
to feel its way from survival into something larger, to the bewildering abstracts of Picasso. I saw my first Van Gogh,
my first Seurat, my first Monet. It was like a door opening into a fantastic
palace of unbelievable treasures to me, and I spent many, many days walking its
halls when I became old enough to get there on my own. It
was there that Impressionism became the first Art love of my life, and where I stared for hours at Renoir's softly blurred, bright women and the ballerinas of Degas.
It's only recently, though, through the equal magic of the blogosphere, that I've discovered a new
favorite, the artist I'm sharing with you today, Joaquin Sorolla
y Batisda.
Cafe in Paris
To quote wikipedia,"Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (27 February
1863 – 10 August 1923) was a Valencian Spanish painter. Sorolla excelled in the
painting of portraits, landscapes, and monumental works of social and
historical themes. His most typical works are characterized by a dexterous
representation of the people and landscape under the sunlight of his native
land."
Beached Boats
Girl with Flowers
His flavor of
Impressionism is to me often a warmer, brighter one, reflective of the color and light
of Spain, more dazzling than other Impressionists, with their muted blues and greys. He painted everything from formal classical pieces
to vibrant landscapes and idiosyncratic portraits and has a wonderful way with
children, the seashore, and sunlight, as well as the everyday life of the
people of his country.
Mending Nets
You can browse through a collection of his works here at wikipaintings.org,
to get a feel for his subject matter and method, and also look for a painting
that speaks to you beyond the few I have included here. All of his paintings
are in the public domain, so it's fine to reproduce any of them with your poem.
Seville~The Dance
Mother
Skipping Rope at La Granja
The Challenge
Because Sunday is
normally the day for our mini-forms challenge, I'd love to challenge people to
write from any one of Sorolla's paintings, employing their favorite of the many short forms we've been exposed to here at the
Garden over the months: haiku, slijo, senryu, nonet, sevenling, triolet, cinquin, or any
of the many others Kerry and others have shared with us. This is purely optional!
For those who prefer to write in free verse, of course please feel free to do so. I'd just ask that in the "mini" spirit
of the mini-challenge, you write an original poem inspired by one of Sorolla's
paintings (either in a short form or in free verse) using approximately 100 words or less.
A Rooftop With Flowers
That's it, toads. Have at it and enjoy! And if you've
been keeping up with the challenge of Poetry Month, congratulations on writing
your fourteenth poem.
