Author Amok: paul klee

Highway and Byways, by Paul Klee
wikipaintings.org

The 44 Postcard Project is finally tripping the light ekphrastic -- getting all artsy. (Poets.org defines ekphrasis as "poetry confronting art." So there.)

One of the lovely ladies who donated old postcards for my project sent an art card with this painting by abstract expressionist Paul Klee.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Klee

The painting resembles an oddly pieced quilt. Or a step-pyramid. Or a poem by Baltimorean Chris Toll.

Let's start with Chris Toll. The poet, who was active in the local literary scene, died unexpectedly this fall. I'd never met him, but we were Facebook friends.

I was at a reading a few months after he passed away and glanced at one of Toll's books of poetry. There was a poem that ran down the page in several ... I wouldn't call them columns. The words were arranged on the page as if they were sprays of water coming down from four separate shower heads.

It was the tumbling down the page quality of Toll's poem that connected, for me, with Klee's painting.

Toll was known for his experimentation with form
and playfulness with language.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get my hands on a book of Toll's work quickly. I moved and did some research on the painting.

Klee painted Highway and Byways after a trip to Egypt, December 1929/January 1930. Some critics say that the horizontal blue and gray area at the top is supposed to be the Nile, Egypt's great highway. The verticals are fields, or roads and paths leading to the Nile or -- there are all sorts of interpretations.

www.globalresearch.ca

First draft: some weird combination of

1) my memory of Toll's poetic form

2) sketchy details from post-college trip to Egypt

3) facts about the painting's history.

Each of these elements had its own skinny-pyramid-like stanza running down the page. Clumsy.

Eventually, I ended up with this poem (very experimental, for me), combining pieces of all three first-draft stanzas, with a dash of stylistic playfulness a la Chris Toll:

Swimming in the Nile, Age 21,

with My Grandmother

After Highways and Byways, Paul Klee (1929)

The/re is in

Klee’s parallels so-

me stickiness,

something of

gran(ny)te layers,

storeys high-

roglyhpics faded

as a girl’s thighs

viewed two feet

be neat/h the

mur(dar)k surf

face. The river

never tips

its palm, re

veals no drown(ed)

& out god,

no ancient sun/

ken byways, no

sun-kissed

virgin’s bliss

full ~~for~~tune.

by Laura Shovan

In other 44 Postcard Project news, I have written 21 poems. That's nearly halfway.

It is also the equivalent of that moment in a marathon (disclaimer: I have never run a marathon) where you say "I can't do this -- I'm terrible at running. I should try flower arranging instead."

Me running. Not a pretty sight.

The last three things I have written for the project: poetic lightweights, devoid of meaning. Fluff.

The recent poems include rebellious facial moles, angry chickadees and hot-pink evening gloves (I swear, this will make sense when you see postcards 19, 20 and 21).

My brain is screaming like a sprained hamstring. "I have been stretched to my limit," it says. It wimps out. It whimpers, "How about a limerick today? They're easy."

I'm getting a little punch drunk on the project. Maybe this weekend, I'll turn the corner.

Some info on the stash of postcards I discovered (in my own basement -- sheesh):