Easter 2013

daffodil, forsythia, irises

oil/linen

Easter today, and all around us life is stirring out of the cold dark winter's earth.  Soon Spring will fill us, all around.

M told me about the title of the journal that he edits, Spring.  Norman Friedman, David Forrest, and Richard Kennedy met to discuss the idea of starting a literary journal about the poetry and work of E.E. Cummings on a day in New York City that was very cold.  They met at Sweetwaters Cafe, they decided they would do the journal, they could not find a title, and on the way out of the cafe, back into the sleet-filled streets of New York, Norman cried, "SPRING."

The journal continues today, so many years later.  You can take a look at:    SPRING  .

spring!

Daffodils, oil/canvas

This painting, which is quite large, has become apart from me; I cannot remember my imprints upon it.  Still, exuberant, with joy it is; "It takes my place" here!  

Here is a wonderful poem, a paean of spring, by Tomas Transtromer, Morning Birds .

The translation is by Gunnar Harding and Frederic Will.  Such ordinary-seeming views: this poem takes my breath away.

I wake my car.

Its windshield is covered with pollen.

I put on my sunglasses

and the song of the birds darkens.

While another man buys a newspaper

in the railroad station

near a large freight car

which is entirely red with rust

and stands flickering in the sun.

No emptiness anywhere here.

Straight across the spring warmth a cold corridor

where someone comes hurrying

to say that they are slandering him

all the way up to the Director.

Through a back door in the landscape comes the magpie

black and white, Hel's bird.

And the blackbird moving crisscross

until everything becomes a charcoal drawing,

except for the white sheets on the clothesline:

a Palestrina choir.

No emptiness anywhere here.

Fantastic to feel how my poem grows

while I myself shrink.

It is growing, it takes my place.

It pushes me out of its way.

It throws me out of the nest.

spring, forced

daffodils

The daffodils were blooming because a grower had "forced" the bloom early, inside.  Sandi forced a branch of redbud from her yard last week, and she brought the successfully blooming branch to class on Tuesday for us to see.  I like the meaning of the word "force" here.  You too?

My studio is in a building owned by a floral company.  Deb, who is in charge of all the potted plants, had some daffodils out on the back racks this week.  The daffodils looked good, but they were on their way out of bloom (probably they were brought in to sell for Valentines Day, the 14th).  I borrowed a pot of daffodils and did some small color sketches.  Here is one of them.