 Watermelons, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1954 Long Live Life Joy, an old man playing harmonica, eyes closed, hands caressing instrument, lips kissing it with passion and song. A starling’s murmurations in December. A vinaceous mulberry, hidden in leaves come mid-summer. It’s the cowardly, collywobbling lion skipping with Dorothy despite his overwhelming fear. A mother decorating sugar cookies though she has overworked the dough. Joy is loneliness walking into sunshine. Bees preparing for their queen. Maestro turned mad in late autumn, directing with abandon the last tune. Joy is Kahlo’s final painting, Viva La Vida carved on the green striped-skin fruit, its seeds a promise of new life. It’s the hope in the writings of her last days that life’s departure will finally bring joy. Jo Taylor Jo Taylor is a retired, 35-year English teacher from Georgia. In 2021 she published her first collection of poems, Strange Fire, and in 2024, she published her second book of poems, Come before Winter (Kelsay Books). Jo has been nominated for the Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes. She enjoys morning walks, playing with her two grandsons, and collecting and reading cookbooks. You can connect with her at https://www.jotaylorwrites.com/
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 Andy Warhol might be the most ubiquitous, identifiable artist of all time, with literally hundreds of thousands of artworks. He liked to make several thousand works a year. "I want to be a machine," he said. He wasn't terribly concerned whether or not his art was really art. "Art is anything you can get away with," he famously said. He copied objects, images, and faces from any source he could plunder, then repeated them over and over, mass producing his own work personally and plastering every inch of the world with it.
But what was behind it? Warhol himself said, "nothing." He claimed there was nothing there at all, saying "I'm a deeply superficial person." How did a shy, plain lad who could barely draw deliver a signature style of commercial art that became coveted by brands like Tiffany's and Vogue Magazine, and the celebrity guest of the world's most glamorous celebrities? Some of his circle said he was cruel and ruthless. Others lauded him as the person they could most be themselves around. What was he thinking? What was his voracious, compulsive need to create all about? Was it a statement about consumer society? Was it his own emptiness? Or was it genius we are barely beginning to understand? Join us on Tuesday as we talk about all this and more. We will take a look at the life and art of Andy Warhol, and use his works to inspire a few poems or story ideas of our own.  The Noon Recess, by Winslow Homer (USA) 1873 Kindred Spirits A barefoot brat pretends to read a book. While trapped indoors, outside his schoolmates play. His teacher, deep in thought, seems miles away, brow furrowed, bearing a determined look. She understands she chose the path she took but wishes now to leave though still must stay, at least until school's through, the end of May, then weave new courses like a restless brook. She hungers for a taste of city life, unwilling to settle down and marry. She'd clerk or find work as a secretary, rejecting the lot of a farmer's wife. So desperate to escape this one-room school, same as her pupil, she'll defy the rules. Carl D. Kinsky Carl Kinsky is a sonneteer masquerading as a criminal defense lawyer in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, a quirky old town on the west bank of the Mississippi River. He fancies himself a modern-day Pudd'nhead Wilson.  Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist, by Andrea Solario (Italy) 1509 Result of Criticism A head is presented to Herodias on a silver platter. His skin is pale and lifeless like paper, cold to the touch. His face appears to be at peace, calm and relaxed. His curls of hair, still neat and orderly. His life is something no more. Herodias looks at the severed head with satisfaction. She delicately holds the silver platter. That collects the red droplets of blood. Falling from his open cavity. The background of the room in shadows. Further illuminating the skin of those in the foreground. Some may see this fate as cruel, But others see it as justified for his criticism. A stark reminder of the cost of one’s actions. And the unwavering determination of one to punish others. Brandon Moon Brandon Moon is a high-school student in the USA.  The Willow Tree, photograph by James N Hoffman (USA) 2024 Where the Willow Wills back in the yard where the wind blows blue and the grass is green is a willow tree majestically tall drooping in delight its branches weave in a ballet of dance worthy of kings and queens ___ gone by sit and contemplate the pure air meditate to true grace for the willow wills you live in peace the sapling can teach of your place in the natural order of things breathe in the scent become enlightened for the willow wills you to be for the willow wills you enchanted life! James N Hoffman James N. Hoffman: "I received an MA in Applied Psychology from The Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg, PA and a BA in Philosophy at Edinboro University at Edinboro, PA. I started writing poetry roughly 50 years ago as a reaction to the scholarly limitations of technical philosophy. It turned into writing what I called colour poems only to find out much later that it was called ekphrastic poetry. I would have liked to be a painter but am not that talented so I began to paint with words. It truly is a challenge that that my spirit feels at home with."  Ioánnina, by Edward Lear (England) 1857 Ungovernable Forces Edward Lear, Ioánnina, 6th November 1848 A letter’s wilful invitation to chase fresh adventures -- Cairo, Sinai, Palestine with my friend John Cross -- and the spoilsport later season so unreasonable here in Epirus, where the climate is too bitter to host outdoor sketching, nudge me on a different path: I will defer completion of this tour until the spring sun warms my painting hand, and these surly rains skulk into hiding with their coldness. What’s more — Charles Church, my wandering companion, whom cholera and quarantine kept from me three months ago, is now nearby, our fellowship rekindled. But there are further convoluted logics for diversion: the published whims and quirks of steamboat timetables. And worse: insatiable caprices within my feet, fidgeting so much for daily novelty they seem not even to be part of me. To the interior of my darling ankles I must forward some strange new verses of complaint. Michael Loveday Author's note: "In 1848, the poet and landscape painter Edward Lear sailed from Constantinople to Saloníki (now Thessaloniki) in Northeast Greece, in order to embark upon a tour of southeastern Europe with a friend. A cholera outbreak blocked his onward route. Despite having only recently recovered from malaria, Lear decided to travel alone into Ottoman-ruled Albania, at that time a territory ravaged by conflict. His journals and landscape paintings were later published as one of the most celebrated travel books of the 19th century: Journals of a Landscape Painter in Albania, &c. (1851)." Michael Loveday lives in Bath, England, and is the author of two books and two pamphlets/chapbooks. His debut poetry pamphlet He Said/She Said was published by HappenStance Press in 2011. His most recent book is the writing craft guide Unlocking the Novella-in-Flash: from Blank Page to Finished Manuscript (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2022), which won an Arts Council England Award and three international book awards. More information is available at: www.michaelloveday.com
Missing Artist Found in the Railyard This poem was inspired by the artist, her story, and by Transmission Session, 2022: (scroll down to last painting) https://2022.rca.ac.uk/students/sarah-cunningham/ Between the first and third vertebrae, where the tracks switch, allowing passage to another direction. Loud drone like someone pressing a piano pedal, sostenuto silencing her pale flesh. A transmission to once gold fields now brown, where catkins catch reeds from river channels, where cows had given up a future pasture. Her youth convinced us to imagine knifepricks, a righteousness, though her website lacquered best practices, hundreds interviewed on meaningful connections. Her paintbrush demanded smoothness, yet she rough- brushed, captive to the linen canvas. Perhaps a lilac beard of the past spring snuck into the final landscape, with steps of green and ivy walls-- a southerly climate? Italy with swollen afternoon windows shuttered, seeping through the cracks, streaks of carmen. Laurel Benjamin Laurel Benjamin's new collection, Flowers on a Train, is forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. She is a San Francisco Bay Area poet, active with the Women’s Poetry Salon. She curates Ekphrastic Writers and is a reader for Common Ground Review. Current publications: Pirene's Fountain, Lily Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, Taos Journal of Poetry, Mom Egg Review, Gone Lawn, Nixes Mate. She received an Honorable Mention for the Ruben Rose Memorial Poetry Competition. Laurel holds an MFA from Mills College. She invented a secret language with her brother. Find her at: https://www.laurelbenjamin.com  Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. IV, by Georgia O'Keeffe (USA) 1930 Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. 1V At first glance it’s a stark and shocking face: Green hood (or hair) like large leaves. Black. No eyes. A giant nostril (or is that a mouth?) That rises to a blade with a sharp point. One feels one’s being stared at. Such a stare Is disconcerting! What of one is seen? And can that be evaded? Held and probed, The viewer may be daunted, and recoil. Or may continue gazing. If a flower, Its mystery’s intact. It’s deep and dark, Yet may not be the hostile force one feared. It may indeed be friendly, even known, If one can just gaze long enough, and give Oneself to what, perhaps, is gazing back. Bruce Bennett Bruce Bennett is author of ten books of poetry and more than thirty chapbooks. His most recent chapbook is Images Into Words (The Dove Block Project, 2022), a collection of ekphrastic poems co-authored with poet Jim Crenner. Bennett was a founder and editor of the journals Field and Ploughshares, and from 1973-2014 taught Literature and Creative Writing and directed the Visiting Writers Series at Wells College. In 2012 he was awarded a Pushcart Prize. He lives in Aurora, New York. His poetry website is https://justanotherdayinjustourtown.com.  The Face of War, by Salvador Dali (Spain) 1940 The Face of War still dreaming of more efficient ways to maim and murder ourselves. what to say to poison gas, mass radiation and napalm. to this Hundred Years’ War. to the snap and crack of broken bones. missing limbs. the smell of burnt and rotted flesh. millions of disappeared, disabled, distended. so many dead. my guts wrench. despair and disgust choke my throat. these hell-stones in my stomach will not pass. I can say humankind is an oxymoron. civilization, a misnomer. doublespeak. how to explain all this hate, this mass hysteria? I say hatred doesn’t simply wheedle its way into us, metastasize, and then find a place as insuppressible as breathing, eating or sleeping. it’s a bloodlust pumped through our veins by that evil engine in our chest, with us from very beginning, prenatal, delivered. compassion and tolerance only mop up the afterbirth. John M. Davis John M. Davis currently lives in Visalia, California. His poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals, includingDescant (Canada), The Comstock Review, Gyroscope Review, Bloodroot Literary Magazine, Constellations and Reunion: The Dallas Review. The Mojave, a chapbook, was published by the Dallas Community Poets.  A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, by Georges Seurat (France) 1884 The Woman on the Island and the Woman at the Diner Although La Grande Jatte shimmers in the sun, one woman stands in shadow, tense and wary This Sunday walk’s unsettling; if undone by innuendo, she may never marry. The woman in New York sits in harsh light that carves her face and neck in gaunt relief, but darkness lurks behind her: inky night might be the shadow of impending grief. These women stir our curiosity, the artists’ palettes colouring our urge to make up stories, as if we could see lives off the canvas. Theirs and ours may merge as we interpret worlds the artists made and contemplate the secrets half-betrayed. Our own secrets are also half-betrayed as we imagine two biographies. As if I am the woman in the shade, I burden her with my uncertainties. Has she arranged her hair beneath her hat with due discretion? Is her back as straight as is required of an aristocrat? Is she sufficiently poised and sedate? Or I sit in the diner and suppose the woman’s loose red hair means confidence, her forward slouch and painted lips expose her boldness. I can’t cite much evidence for my assumptions—these women don’t speak-- but there are hints in each painter’s technique. We read a painter’s hints in his technique. Throughout the canvas filled with Seurat’s dots, which render faces oddly vague, we peek at unknowable characters in plots that never intersect. Each face looks down or blankly forward—their expressions bland-- not toward another. Every bustled gown and drab suit on this crowded strip of land disguises one more stranger. Though less proper, the New York figures also make a show of cool reserve; with longer brush strokes, Hopper drew hawkish faces—but it’s hard to know if what’s so frankly lit is misery, a jaded sort of pleasure, or ennui. I’d guess it’s with less pleasure than ennui that each woman regards the man beside her-- both silent, smoking. Neither seems to be the woman’s lover, one who’s satisfied her. The man in France is top-hatted and tall; his presence renders her more dignified and decent, so she grips her parasol, stares straight ahead, walks mutely at his side. The man in New York, close enough to hold the woman’s hand, does not; they’re both restrained by mirthless poise. Companionship looks cold in both these scenes; no warmth is even feigned. I’ve known such men: vacant, if debonair; of course these women train their eyes elsewhere. I see what they see, as they look elsewhere. With one I see more hats, more bustled skirts, a river, trees, and people who might stare if she takes one wrong step. Her stiff neck hurts, but posture might just help her pass inspection. The woman in the diner doesn’t look at her surroundings; she makes no connection with either seated man or with the cook in his white cap in front of her. Instead, she stares at what might be the check; it’s nearly invisible before the dazzling red of her slim dress (no bustle here). Not merely considering the bill, she seems to weigh some other costs. What does each woman pay? The place and time dictate what each will pay for happiness, respectability, or what else she might seek. But what if they switched places? Could the bustled woman be emancipated by a bright red dress, the diner’s sharper contours, and late-night autonomy? And would the blurriness of dots, the long skirts, and the island light disclose some softness in the other’s being? It seems more likely both would be aghast, the change of scene disturbing more than freeing. Each woman was in fact perfectly cast, essential to each painting; to confuse the two lives disrespects these painted views. These women are more than these painted views-- this park or diner, staid or daring dress, and dull companions. With these well-drawn clues that give breath to lives long since gone, we guess about the blanks paint hasn’t filled. But though I almost smell the fresh green grass in France and urn-stale coffee in New York, I know I may have misread every circumstance. And yet I’ve met these women. One is shy, the other bitter; each of them will keep her secrets, braving what she can’t defy; and both will sleep alone tonight and weep-- although the diner’s food suits everyone, although La Grande Jatte shimmers in the sun. Jean L. Kreiling Jean L. Kreiling is the author of three books of poems; another is forthcoming soon from Able Muse Press. Her work has been awarded the Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Prize, the Rhina Espaillat Poetry Prize, the Frost Farm Prize, and the Able Muse Write Prize, among other honours; she lives on the coast of Massachusetts.  Nighthawks, by Edward Hopper (USA) 1942 |
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