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A New Reckoning with the Sublime 1. To love a painting that depicts suffering in such immaculate light is perhaps a sign of sadism—or at the very least, of bad taste. And yet, it is this painting that I seek out in the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. I’m 20 when I finally see it in person. I nearly run past the other works in the halls, spurred on by the thought that I will at last stand before the great eruption as it stretches some 21 feet across the wall. The ‘flaming colossus’ as the Italian painter Vincenzo Camuccini called it, depicts—as its title promises—the last day of Pompeii. There is something feverishly dream-like about the painting. The oranges glow more orange, and the dark ash of the clouds seems impossibly black. The size of the thing alone makes it jump out from the wall—it consumes the viewer’s visual range. The Last Day at Pompeii is nearly grotesque in its romanticism. I mean this both in the sense of style (dramatic shadows and idealized forms) but also in the true meaning of the word ‘romantic;’ in Bryullov’s strokes, the pain of Pompeii’s eruption is extravagant and enchanting. You could fall in love gazing into the subjects’ faces, their mouths agape in expressions that connote less horror than awe or orgasmic pleasure at such a horrendous fate. 2. Fire, fire, fire. Heat, heat, heat. Why must the climate apocalypse be so hot!? Today, I am listening to a song by the band Pinegrove called ‘Orange.’ It was written in response to photos of the 2020 wildfires that painted Oregon’s skies orange. I try to laugh or sleep it off, lead singer Evan Stephens Hall’s voice spills into my ears from my headphones as I scan Google images. The reflection of the bright orange light from my computer screen plays off the lenses of my glasses. Today the sky is orange/and you and I know why. I can’t help but marvel at the colour—how something so devastating could be so glaringly bright, so garishly brilliant. 3. At 18, I’m sitting inside a windowed office while I read Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Outside, the rain is falling heavy. We’re having one of those Oklahoma summer thunderstorms, the kind that sends life into limbo and makes the whole world feel like it’s spinning off-kilter. I am reading Burke for an online class. I am preparing for our virtual discussion of the presence of the natural world in the American imagination while my window is splattered with waves of summer rain. At the core of Burke’s Inquiry, is a separation of the beautiful and the sublime. The beautiful is a matter of aesthetics and delicacy, whereas the sublime has more to do with power. The sublime in nature is noted by its ability to destroy; it stirs fear in the viewer. But I seem always in my memory to collapse the two. The beautiful compliments the sublime. That which is powerful, that which humbles, is also beautiful perhaps because of the fear it strikes in me. From the safety of my windowed office, the thunderstorm inspires fear, but a manageable kind, moderated as it is by the glass and steel and cinderblocks that keep me separate from the object of my fear. So it is that when I see a painting of devastation wrought by nature’s mighty hand I feel both fear and appreciation of beauty. Perhaps it is only when nature’s awesome power is frozen by paint and canvas that I can see the sublime as beautiful. 4. In Bryullov’s eyes maybe there is something beautiful about surrendering oneself to the nearly (okay, completely) divine wrath of nature. I fell in love with Bryullov’s painting around the same time I became conscious that climate change would penetrate every aspect of life for my generation in the coming years. In fact, as I write this, Pakistan is recovering from biblical floods; the American west is suffering drought; and Puerto Rico is struggling to stay relevant in the ever-changing news cycle as Hurricane Ian touches down in Florida where my grandparents live. I called them in anticipation of the storm. My grandmother said they planned to stay in their home with metal shudders over all their windows. She joked morbidly that should anything happen, I am to: “remember them as they used to be.” On the night that Ian knocked out the power in their area, I imagined my grandmother and grandfather taking shelter beneath a toga like two of Bryullov’s figures. As if cloth could keep out lava. Perhaps I love Bryullov because he could make fear beautiful—because he could make devastation romantic—because I feel safe in a gallery staring in awe at someone else's suffering with my hands clasped tight behind my back. Elizabeth J. Wenger Elizabeth J. Wenger is a writer from Oklahoma. She is currently an MFA Candidate at Iowa State University's program in Creative Writing and Environment. She has been published in essaydaily.org, Flash Fiction Magazine, and The Hopper. Her essay "Cutting A Tree" was recently nominated for Best of the Web. Book Review by Kate Flannery Kitkitdizzi by Ann Brantingham and John Brantingham Bamboo Dart Press 77 pages Click on image above to view or purchase from publisher. Communion and Transformation in the High Sierra When I was growing up in the Pacific Northwest, my summers were spent either on the North Oregon Coast or camping and hiking at the base of Mt. St. Helens. Both places made me feel very small, and, of course, I was by comparison to the ocean and the mountain. Being small in the midst of big places can give you a tantalizing invitation to be transformed, to begin to know and become part of a place by exploring the other small things around you: wading through grasses at the beach, wondering about sea creatures who lived in the sand dollars you pick up, tasting the sweetness of salmon berries before the bears get to them, and skidding down pumice trails in a fir forest. These are things you can know. These are things you can take in and hold close. It is these small and quiet essences of a place that invite you gently into communion with things greater than yourself. And it is this communion that Ann and John Brantingham offer us in Kitkitdizzi, a new volume about the Sierra Nevada from Bamboo Dart Press. Words can’t capture the Sierra. And, to my mind, visual representations also lack something in calling forth the experience of this vast area. Words and pictures, separately, can come close, but when someone gives you textured words accompanied by the most articulate of drawings, you can take a transformative leap toward the Sierra’s mystery and timelessness. Most writers and artists have focused on the grandeur of the Sierra: the granite and the ice, the rush of rivers and the giant trees. But Kitkitdizzi takes us down a different path, one filled with quiet and peace. And this, for many of us who love the Sierra, is the heart of it all. The Sierra Nevada are a grand array of mountains, meadows, rivers, and canyons. Its animal inhabitants are as varied as the terrain. Writers and artists have tackled and tried to capture it for hundreds of years, from John Muir to Kim Stanley Robinson, from Leland Curtis to Ansel Adams. To approach the Sierra is humbling; their draw is inescapable. Kitkitdizzi pairs the words and meditations of John Brantingham with the delicate and nuanced details of Ann Brantingham’s drawings. And it is a match beautifully made. Together these two continually reveal the quiet persistence of the Sierra. As John weaves his way down paths he has known since childhood, we get to listen to his wonderings about who he is and where he belongs. He explores his own inner landscape and invites us to explore our own. Ann’s art perfectly complements and reflects these musings as she draws us in to the complexities of the plants and growing things, compelling us to see the abiding presence of the place in its smallest, most intimate moments. The title of the book refers to one of these small things in the Sierra: a low bush or groundcover that grows best in the sun and along pathways in the high country. Because of the distinctive odor of its leaves, it is not appreciated by everyone, but there are those, like John Brantingham, who love its scent; he breathes in deeply as he walks by and brushes its branches. The silence of the Sierra is a bit like that, Brantingham explains. Not everyone likes the quiet of the backwoods, he says, but it is clear that he and Ann have found the place to be transformative. Ann’s drawing of the Kitkitdizzi plant, appearing on the cover of the book, misses nothing of its habit. She shows us every detail of the small, frondlike leaves, composed of leaflets which are in turn regular gatherings of even smaller, frilled leaflets. You almost believe you could touch the image and come away with some of Kitkitdizzi’s sticky resin on your fingertips. The range of John Brantingham’s wonderings is immense, whether he’s telling us about sitting around an evening’s campfire in the midst of bats dancing, or running with a bear down a mountain slope terrified by an approaching storm’s lightning and thunder. He can speak eloquently of his solitariness, “lost in the long thoughts,” as he takes notice of a Sooty Grouse nearby. And he can speak just as eloquently, in first person plural, in the voice of a community of artists and poets walking to Heather Lake, each of them letting their memories unfold. The range of Ann’s renderings of the leaves, flowers, and other creatures of the Sierra is also impressive. She gives us a scarred and anonymous “Leaf from Wuksachi” as well as a trio of manzanita leaves, immediately familiar to anyone who has trekked in the Sierra. Rather than show us the large, white sepal blooms of the dogwood trees which often nestle under the giant sequoias, she meticulously draws the underside of the dogwood leaf, a part of the tree which is overlooked more often than not. Rounding out the array of her artwork are the drawings of the Rubber Boa and the Ceanothus Moth, both small but essential parts of the life of the Sierra. These renderings from the Brantinghams focus not on the grand things of the Sierra, but on the intimacies of mountains and meadows, rock and stream, insects, birds and bears. We see the tenacity of life that exists there even when devastated by fire and invaded by humankind. Kitkitdizzi offers us the small exchanges that can occur between human and place, and by them we are transformed and moved to a new plane of understanding, a new world of quiet, a new sense of wholeness. Kate Flannery Read Kate Flannery's "14 Stations- an Experience of Despair" and Faith in The Ekphrastic Review Kate Flannery is an Editor-at-Large for The Journal of Radical Wonder where she writes the column, “Interludes.” Her essays, poetry and fiction have been published in Chiron Review, Shark Reef, and Pure Slush, as well as other literary journals. She was a finalist in Bellingham Review’s 2022 Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction. Running with the Bear In the morning, I hike up to Heather Lake alone, taking nothing but the clothes I’m wearing. It’s sunny and warm so I wear a tee shirt, shorts and running shoes. It’s a long uphill climb, but the day cools by degrees, and by the time I hike the four miles, it’s clouded over too. The view is beautiful. On one side Alta Peak rises out of the treeline and is snowcapped. On the other, I look down past Tokopah Falls to the canyon where the Marble Fork of the Kaweah River rushes toward Lodgepole. I walk back to camp in a different direction than I came, cresting a mountain. Just as I am on the broad and flat ridgeline, the clouds darken up, and it starts to rain. I speed up my trudge, which is made easier by the fact that I’m going downhill. Soon, the rain gets harder, and in ten minutes it’s hailing, the little stones stinging my skin, but they don’t really hurt, and the day is so cool, I start to jog downhill. In a moment, the lightning starts, but it’s not directly on top of me. I’ve never had a moment like this before, running through a lightning and hail storm, the thunder like something out of a Wagnerian opera. I’m going down the ridgeline which is perhaps only twenty yards wide, so when a black bear sees me charging, he assumes there is something to run from and starts his own gallup downhill, running in a kind of easy lope. For a moment, maybe five seconds, we’re running together, me on the trail, him through the trees, but together. I will try to explain the sensation of running with a bear through the lightning and hail when I get back, but it falls flat with everyone I tell. John Brantingham How to Be Alone One of the first things I have to do when we come up to the mountain is to relearn how to be alone. For Annie, it’s less difficult, I think. She’s comfortably alone, and she works out of the house. She’s by herself most of the time and knows how to be there. Besides, she’s an introvert. I am, however, an extrovert, and during the semester, I am surrounded by students and colleagues. I like to be with people and to hear them and to talk with them about everything. They give me energy. As the semester builds and my stress level grows, people give me insulation from the self-doubt that I live with. I am a born worrier and over-thinker. I feel guilt for things I have done even when they were the right thing to do. By the end of the semester, I find myself seeking people so I don’t have to think about those things that are bothering me. They are distractions, and I need them. I, like so many people, have a number of addictions. The most powerful of these is the distraction I get from being around other people. I feed this. When I am not with students, I seek out my colleagues. I am on Facebook constantly, and I get a little high every time someone likes my post or comments on it. I have three email addresses for three different groups of people. It’s not healthy to always be alone, but it is equally unhealthy to search for a group of people to help dispel the alienation and boost my endorphins. I am not alone in this. The world, as Wordsworth put it, is too much with us. He wrote this line in 1802, and it hasn’t gotten better, and my mind magnifies and creates problems, so soon I am thinking about all of the ways the world has failed me, or I have failed it. The first part in learning to be alone is trying to go cold turkey. Connection to people is my drug. Silence is sobriety. We generally leave during the night to avoid traffic. Annie usually sleeps, and I try to turn off the radio. My drug is talking to people, and I do it to distract myself from painful thoughts, so I sit in silence for as long as I can take it as my mind goes over every slight and every failure, real and imagined, in my life. I sink lower and lower into an evil depression until I can’t take it any longer. Usually, this lasts about two hours. That’s when I turn on the radio or put on an audiobook to distract myself. It’s like this for days as I am setting up camp and getting ready for the next weeks or months in the mountains. Annie is there, and she’s happy to talk to me. It’s good to talk to her, but I can’t yammer on constantly. Anyway, I’m trying to cure myself. The key is not to distract myself. The key is not to be frightened of those thoughts. After a while they’re not crowding in on me all at once. It’s not a hurricane in my mind where I flit from one negative thought to the next. When that happens, I let my misgivings come, and I think my way through each one. Once I have thought about it and decided whether I can do anything about it, I can let it go. This is the hardest part of the summer and the most difficult part of learning to be comfortably alone. If you are like me, and the world is too much with you, and you rely on social media and conversations to get through your day, this will be the hardest part for you as well. I find that it lasts a torturous three days. By the time that is done, I can do the real work of finding my own place in this world. Learning how to be alone is both the most difficult and most important thing that we are doing. It forces a retraining of my brain. At the beginning of the semester, what I am doing is trying to help my students and my colleagues as much as possible. By the end of the semester, I am addicted to the stress. I both hate it and need it, and I am often looking for problems where they don’t exist simply because that is what I have been doing, and it is the only thing that I have been doing, for the past months. Eventually, I cannot see the world except through the lens of my frustrations. It is not necessary to go into the forest to find what I am truly looking for. I could do this at the ocean, in the desert, or even in the city. It’s easier for me to find that thing in the forest because away from the Internet and my responsibilities I can see my addiction to stress for what it is. It’s also easier to see what is truly meaningful and what simply does not matter. I go into the forest, therefore, not to find what is outside in the world, but to discover what is inside of me. John Brantingham Ghost Owl I have always loved it here in the High Sierra at night, and it is magic this evening, when the owl drops out of its branch and floats above camp, going after a rodent I suppose, but there’s something so unearthly about the way it moves through the sky that it seems more metaphor than living animal, or so are the thoughts I have when sitting alone in the dark next to a fire that’s almost out watching the stars. I supposed I have seen owls flap their wings, but I can’t remember it. Mostly what I remember are nights like these when they have come out of nowhere and disappeared in a moment. I have never been with anyone when this happens, never been able to poke someone and point and talk about what we both have seen. In this, for me, they are like ghosts. They’re so odd, so beautiful that I don’t know if what I have seen is real, and there is no way for me to confirm that what I just witnessed wasn’t a part of my imagination. Tonight, I look up from my chair in this camp I have returned to for forty years now to see the face of a teenage boy hanging in the darkness, watching me. He’s too skinny and wears a black Member’s Only knock-off jacket. He tilts his head and watches me, silent and trying to figure me out. I say, “John,” and he’s gone. This, I understand, is the ghost of me, fourteen years old. He has slipped out of the cabin after everyone else went to sleep. Tonight, he’s seen his first owl, and he thinks there’s something magic about sneaking out and seeing that, like maybe he’s cheated the world, like maybe this signifies that he’s special somehow, destined to see things and know things that others can’t. I don’t know about all of that, but I know that he’s right on one count. Seeing that owl was magic. I want to speak to him, and I remember where he went after he saw the great bird, so I douse the campfire and move toward the meadow where I spent so many of my childhood nights. There’s a spot where I could sit on a rock and stare out across the grasses and just lose myself in not thinking. I trudge my way through the night, no longer moving silently the way I would back in those days. Now my feet are heavy. They kick up dust behind me. That kid up ahead of me, hiding from me, the ghost of the boy I used to be, doesn’t trust adults, I know. He won’t trust me now. He trusts things that don’t lie to him. He trusts birds and rain. He trusts the earth and the thoughts buried deep in his head. This year will be a year of owls for him. He’ll be walking through the desert in late fall when he must come close to a nest and an owl buzzes him again and again. He will spend a night in a quarter mile square deep in the High Sierra listening to an owl call and trying to find it in the dark. He will be sure he saw one swooping over his Los Angeles neighborhood and not be able to convince anyone that he did. I want to let him know that I believe him. He’s there at the meadow, alert to me and my heavy steps. He watches me from the rock, and I stop as I would stop so as not to spook a wary animal. We stare at each other for a moment, and then I blink, and he is gone. Who knows where he is now? He can move through the woods better than anyone I’ve ever known, and I’ll never catch him. Anyway, I should let him be. He is lost in his dreams of owls, and that’s not a bad place to take up residence. He will haunt these woods forever. John Brantingham Sooty Grouse
Up near Alta Peak, I come upon a male sooty grouse. He is standing on the edge of the cliff looking down into the hundred foot chasm below him calling in a throaty voice. I am not a birder although I have always admired them, so I don’t know what exactly his call means. Perhaps he is calling for his mate who has gone down into the canyon. Do they fly? I don’t know. Maybe he has just lost the love of his life. She has died, and he is calling after her. Maybe he is just trying to locate friends. I am alone here on this mountain, the only person on this trail as far as I know, perhaps the only human for ten miles, and this is my afternoon. I look out with the grouse past the city of Three Rivers to the San Joaquin Valley, and he thinks about his family, and I think about my wife. Finally, there is a call back from down below. He cocks his head, and it comes again. He’s the size and roughly the shape of a small chicken, so I’m surprised when he bounces off the edge and flutters down. I watch him make his awkward way through the air into the valley floor, and realize that I am here to witness a kind of truth, but I’m not sure exactly what it is. I don’t know how to articulate it, and there’s no one to talk it over with, and anyway what would we say? In any case, part of the truth has to do with the fact that I am completely alone here, apart from all other humans and lost in the long thoughts possible only when I am. John Brantingham Read "The Bottles," by John Brantingham in The Ekphrastic Review Ann and John Brantingham met in London on a joint study abroad program through Mt. San Antonio College and Rio Hondo College and fell just about immediately in love. They were drawn together by a joint passion for art, literature, the forest, the city, dogs, and each other. They’ve tried to live their lives compassionately, and they believe that compassion is their highest purpose and most noble aspiration. They came closer to their own humanity in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks where they volunteered and lived for nine summers in a van. The time they’ve shared with the volunteers, employees, and friends up in the parks means more to them than they can say. What they hope more than anything is that you disappear into your own natural haven and find out a little more about yourself. They keep discovering who they are again and again. Transatlantic Crossing Marsden Hartley paints John Donne in his shroud If an ocean-going liner traveling at let’s say twenty-three knots not fast enough quite to win the Blue Riband crosses the path of the They stood out from the bay at five o’clock in the light of dawn entered by eight close after he witnessed from the deck some galleon commanded by Devereaux or maybe de Vere Let’s say Nicholas Stone worked from a drawing of Donne in his shroud then awkward Martin Droeshout tried an engraving it’s just fact the statue itself survived the Great Fire stands now at St. Paul’s Let’s say this shy young man gay diffident retiring beneath Mount Katahdin The Painter of Maine dies quietly alone before he does let’s say traveling a contemplative 2mph but halting at shore at mountain to observe let’s say crosses the path of the man Who knowing death approaches takes to his shroud and won’t get out of it let’s say a man marked by the perishing away of Henry his brother dead in Newgate for his faith let’s say a man who abjured that faith and took another let’s say a man who loved one woman his whole life fought for his king let’s say a man convinced of his sin but forced anyway into holy orders becomes the most celebrated preacher of his Let’s say these two cross paths over the Atlantic over the centuries let’s say they do let’s say no calculation parses the place where the two of them burst each one from his point Euclidean primitive notion to the intersection that holds up the world. Let’s say if they did not the world would collapse on itself. Let’s say it would. Jane Wiseman Jane Wiseman is a writer who splits her time between very urban Minneapolis and the Sandia Mountains of New Mexico. She paints, too. Disappearing Ghosts Dancing My deep indigo dreams bleed into morning, permeate the ocean of a new day. Every ray of light is a blessing and a prayer for new beginnings. Ghosts dance across the water of placid glass, characters leaping in mini memory clips, the melding together of every experience from yesterday-- the postman wishing me a good day, my neighbor’s dog wagging his joyful tail, the owl in our backyard, hooting her presence, a watchful sentry perched on high. The veil is lifted by a sunrise kiss, warming the sea, a golden-webbed touch, a blueprint of possibility imprinted on the surface. Sunrise now lives in my chest, a thousand rays, a thousand stories, disappearing ghosts now dancing within my quickening pulse. Cristina M. R. Norcross Cristina M. R. Norcross lives in Wisconsin with her husband and two sons. She loves to sip and savor nature in her backyard which is home to sandhill cranes and owls. She creates in several different mediums, including wire-wrapped beaded jewelry. Cristina is the editor of Blue Heron Review, author of nine poetry collections, a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, and an Eric Hoffer Book Award nominee. Her most recent collection is The Sound of a Collective Pulse (Kelsay Books, 2021). Her work appears in numerous journals and anthologies. She facilitates a writing prompt group and hosts open mic readings. www.cristinanorcross.com More from Cristina: The Lantern in the Sky Beyond the Window Panes On Eero Järnefelt’s Under the Yoke (Burning the Brushwood) When I cough, I cough up eyes sometimes. Beautiful eyes. Eyes that you want to keep. When I call the V.A. to let them know I’d like to have my exposures to the burn bins in my record, they tell me they don’t know who I should call. They don’t know who the wind should call or the heat in my lungs or the hate in my head or the hurt in my theatrical heart. I remember how the smoke came from 1893, how generational trauma woke up in our late-hung spines, our lake dried, our cabin surrounded by fire. I had one relative, death by drowning. Another burned alive. Which would be worse? my cousin asks. All the above. He’s been in a psych ward. You can see it in his eyes. Ron Riekki Ron Riekki’s books include My Ancestors are Reindeer Herders and I Am Melting in Extinction (Loyola University Maryland’s Apprentice House Press), Posttraumatic (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle), and U.P. (Ghost Road Press). He has received a Pushcart Prize, a Shenandoah Fiction Award, a Best Small Fictions selection, and been in several other anthologies. Right now, he's listening to Elbow's "One Day Like This." The Flautist by Remedios Varo, 1948 A volcano erupts, fire and lava spew everywhere, the stone slabs near the top of the lighthouse blasted off by the force, crash to the ground. The flutist protects herself, leans herself against a charred skeleton, all that remains of an ancient bald cypress. On her golden flute she plays a mesmerizing rapture of notes, light but with enough heft to hoist the stones back into place on the tower—music that has the power to turn back time, reverse unimaginable damage. Karen George Karen George is author of three poetry collections from Dos Madres Press: Swim Your Way Back (2014), A Map and One Year (2018), and Where Wind Tastes Like Pears (2021). She won Slippery Elm’s 2022 Poetry Contest, and her short story collection, How We Fracture, which won the Rosemary Daniell Fiction Prize, is forthcoming from Minerva Rising Press in Spring 2023. After 25 years as a computer programmer/analyst, she retired to write full-time. She enjoys photography and visiting museums, cemeteries, historic towns, gardens, and bodies of water. Her website is: https://karenlgeorge.blogspot.com/. The Oak by Edvard Munch The oak twists trembles like a woman trying to shake lightening out of her hair Blue air yanks off her twigs blows them away Fire burns on her shoulder a ball of white flame cannons out of the sky She will tear herself apart trying to flee Something hovers behind the mass of limbs Something that holds the eye of fire between its knees Something with a mouth Something with teeth Something that hungers for tree Ellen Aronofsky Cole Ellen Aronofsky Cole is an actor, puppeteer, teaching artist, and poet. Her books include her full-length collection, Notes from the Dry Country, (Mayapple Press, 2019) and Prognosis, (Finishing Line Press, 2011.) Her poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Gargoyle, Little Patuxent Review, Potomac Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Fledgling Rag, The Washington Post, New Verse News, and elsewhere. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her husband Brian, and a small, feisty parrot named Haiku. Saturn Devouring His Son: A Text-Generation Project Employing the Artificial Intelligence Tool ChatGPT In early December of 2022, about a week after the release of the new AI tool ChatGPT, I started playing around with it and immediately became hooked. I tried a bunch of different requests for text output, but I especially focused on interesting mashups. The results varied wildly. Some of the generated texts were amazingly clever and surprising, while others were overly simplistic. The tool, for some reason, had a tendency to end stories with morals or trite platitudes, and the tone was often that of stories for children. I discovered that I could override some of these tendencies by giving ever more explicit instructions as needed. If you see a long and complicated query here, you can bet that particular experiment went through multiple iterations until I got something I wanted to keep. Sometimes, though, the tool was not wholly compliant. For instance, it might ignore my request for a particular minimum word length, and it might continue to write rhyming poetry despite my demand that it stop rhyming! I ultimately decided that the next step after individual attempts was to take a single element that would be constant among a bunch of queries for texts in different styles or perspectives. For this project, I settled on an ekphrastic poetry series, i.e. poems and texts based on a single painting. The painting I chose was Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son, one of his “Black Paintings.” It’s a visceral and disturbing image that I thought would yield interesting results. I’ve collected 16 of these pieces here, in a range of styles, inspired by Raymond Queneau’s great prose sequence Exercises in Style. I won’t get into the question of aesthetics, i.e., are these AI-generated texts any good? I think some of them are quite amusing, and certainly things I could not have written myself. I’m still in the honeymoon stage with this technology, but my ultimate goal is to find a way to use the tool in a more collaborative way for a larger project, whatever that might mean in practice, but I’ll let my unconscious work on that for a while as I attend to other things. At the current stage of my exploration, I can’t really claim these texts as my own. Let’s say they’re human-assisted artificial intelligence creations. Of course, the results are wholly dependent on the structure and content of the queries I pose. I have not altered the texts created by the app, but I have selected and sequenced them from a much larger pool of results, the ones I thought were the most interesting, amusing, or simply illustrative of the possibilities of the technology. The only texts I’ve altered are the queries that precede the output. I’ve simplified them so I don’t have to repeat the name of the painter or the title every time, as I did when forming queries. 1. Write a poem about Goya’s painting Saturn Devouring His Son. A feast of horror, the titan cries, “I must consume to sate these lies!” The bloody scene, a gruesome sight, The final means to set things right. His child, a taste of sweet revenge, A cruel act no father should avenge. The jowls still dripping with crimson red, The thought of it enough to fill us with dread. The monster-father, now baring his teeth, His child, a meal not meant for consumption beneath. A father’s love and a son’s respect, Ripped away in this horrid, bleak desert. 2. Write a prose poem about the painting. Do not let the reader know you’re talking about a painting. The darkness clung to the room like a heavy blanket, a silent witness to the horror that lurked in the shadows. I could feel the fear, palpable and dense, as I crept closer to the figure in the center of the room. He stood there, his face a mask of rage and betrayal, his hands trembling as he clutched at something I could not see. I moved closer, my heart pounding in my chest, and I saw it. He held a small and fragile figure in his grasp, and his mouth hung open in a scream of anguish as he ripped and tore at the body. The eyes of the victim stared back at me, wide with terror, and I could feel the pain and terror of his final moments. I watched, transfixed, as the figure consumed the body, devouring it piece by piece until nothing remained. I felt the tears streaming down my face as I realized what I had just seen. The figure had been a father, and he had just consumed his own son. 3. Write a prose poem in the voice of a person who is convinced that the painting is actually a photograph of an actual event. The person must believe it is evidence of a crime that he must set to rights. He must speculate on the motive for the crime and the possible identity of the perpetrator and the victim, since he does not know it’s Saturn and his son. The diction must be natural, not stilted. Make believe Hemingway is writing this. Develop the story, it should be at least 600 words long. The image I saw was like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was a man, an old man, but strong and fierce looking. He had a wild look in his eye, and his mouth was open and drooling as if he were in the throes of some kind of madness. He had a hand on the neck of another man, a much younger one, and he was sinking his teeth into it. It was a gruesome sight, and I knew right away that what I was seeing was no mere painting. It was a photograph, evidence of a terrible crime. I couldn't help but wonder what had driven the old man to such an act. Was it revenge? Jealousy? Madness? Whatever it was, it was clear that he was consumed by some dark and passionate emotion. But who was this young man? Was he a friend, a rival, a lover? Or was he simply an innocent victim? I had no way of knowing, but I was determined to find out. I set out to investigate the crime, starting with the old man. I searched for him everywhere, asking anyone I could about him. Unfortunately, no one seemed to know who he was. Everywhere I went, I was met with the same answer: no one had ever seen him before. Finally, I turned my attention to the young man. I followed every lead I could find, determined to discover his identity. After weeks of searching, I finally found someone who knew him. He had been a shepherd, living in the mountains not far from the scene of the crime. When I asked this man why the old man had killed the young man, he shook his head sadly. “It was the gods,” he said. “The old man was Saturn, and the young man was his son. Saturn had been warned by the oracle that one day his son would overthrow him. He was so consumed by fear that he devoured him.” I was shocked to hear this. I had never imagined that the crime was so ancient, so steeped in myth. But now I understood why the old man had done what he did. He had acted out of fear, scared of the prophecy that had been made about his son. I realized then that this wasn’t a crime that could be solved. This was a tragedy that had been repeated throughout history, one that would continue to haunt us all. I had found the truth, but I could do nothing to change it. All I could do was stand in awe of the terrible power of fear. 4. Write a poem in the style of John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud.” Death, be not proud, though thou hast consumed The son of Saturn, and the god’s own blood; Though with thy jaws thou hast his body doomed, Though thou hast swallowed him in thy dark flood: For men still live, despite thy awful might, And though thy fury leaves them broken, blighted, Thy power cannot remove the eternal Light From which we find our hope and life re-ignited. Our mortal frame may fail, and our life wane, But death can never take away our souls; Though life may end, our spirit still remains, And in that strength our faith still brightly glows. Our hope is found in something ever-true, That which is greater than death’s cruel power: The love of God, who brings us life anew, O’er death's dominion, our hearts will tower! 5. Write a poem about Goya’s painting using the syntax of the lyrics to “Yes, We Have No Bananas.” Oh, we have no Bananas We have no Bananas today But we have a Goya painting That’s a sight to behold, they say Saturn Devouring His Son A father’s sorrowful deed A strange and grisly scene A terrible tragedy The painting’s tones are somber The poignancy is clear A son taken by a father To his death he draws near Oh, we have no Bananas We have no Bananas today But we have a Goya painting That’s a sight to behold, they say 6. Write a free verse poem from the perspective of the night watchman at the museum. The poem must not rhyme. Twilight settles over the gallery A painting looms in the darkness Saturn devouring his son Painting of a primal feast The night watchman stares At a father, a monster, a king Engulfing his child in rage A desperate act of love The night watchman wonders What drove the father to this Did he fear for his son’s future? Or was it a deeper dread? The night watchman looks away The painting is too much to bear But still he can feel the terror That hangs in the air 7. Write a prose poem from the perspective of an art restorer who must repair damage to the work. However, the reader must never know that he is an art restorer and restoring the work. The poem should be his inner thoughts, no audience intended. Because it’s inner thoughts, it can be rambling at times, go off the subject then come back, go wild! The restorer must not refer to the work as a painting, because he is not sure it’s not reality rather than a representation he must restore. The darkness of the room envelopes me, drawing me closer to the scene before me. I can feel the energy radiating out from the image, an energy that threatens to consume all that stands in its way. I am transfixed, my eyes scanning the details of the scene, as if I am searching for a way out. The figure looms large, so large in fact that it takes up most of the space, leaving little room for anything else. Its hands reach out, gripping the struggling body of its victim, holding it in place as it begins to consume it. The creature’s eyes are filled with a fiery hunger, an insatiable appetite for destruction, and yet there is something more, something beneath the surface that I can feel but can’t quite explain. I can feel the tension in the air, the fear that has been created by this monstrosity. I want to run away, to escape the terror that has been unleashed upon this scene, but I cannot. I am rooted in place, my feet firmly planted on the ground, my eyes glued to the image before me. I am reminded of the fragility of life, of how quickly it can be taken away. I can feel the pain and suffering that has been inflicted on this victim, the injustice of it all. I want to reach out and help, to save this poor soul from the clutches of this beast, but I know that I cannot. I am here to restore this work, to bring it back to its former glory, but I cannot help but wonder if this is even real. Is this a representation of a scene or is this really happening? I don’t know, but I know that I must restore it nonetheless. I will bring it back to life, so that it can be seen by all and so that the terror of this scene can never be forgotten. 8. Describe Goya’s painting in the style of gangsta rap. Yo, Saturn is hungry, he done lost his cool Devourin’ his son, like he got no rules Chompin on that flesh, tearin’ it apart Feelin' no remorse with his crazed heart The terror in his eyes is enough to make ya sick But still he carries on, makin’ this wicked pick His body so twisted his face so dark He’s got a hankerin’ for humanity’s mark So watch out y’all, he’s comin’ for you Just one look and you'll know, this dude ain’t true blue 9. Write a TV commercial about the painting as an effective antacid. It must describe the painting and explain how it works as an antacid. The narrator is a doctor who explains how the painting has helped his patients manage their acid reflux. Follow this with testimonials from patients. Narrator: Do you suffer from acid reflux? If so, you may have seen Goya’s painting, Saturn Devouring His Son, and wondered how it could help. Well, I’m here to tell you. As a doctor specializing in acid reflux, I’ve seen this painting provide relief to many of my patients. The painting is a vivid representation of the struggle with acid reflux. It depicts Saturn, god of time and harvest, consuming his own son, symbolizing the relentless and destructive nature of acid reflux. Looking at the painting can give us perspective on our own struggles with this condition, and provide relief from the symptoms. Testimonial 1: Before I saw Goya’s painting, I felt like I was fighting an impossible battle. But looking at Saturn Devouring His Son gave me a new perspective. I no longer felt so helpless, and I found my symptoms were much more manageable. Testimonial 2: Goya’s painting has helped me get my acid reflux under control. After seeing the painting, I realized that I was not alone in my struggle, and that I could find relief from the symptoms. So if you suffer from acid reflux, I strongly recommend taking a look at Goya’s painting, Saturn Devouring His Son. It could be the relief you’ve been looking for. 10. If Bob Dylan had written a song based on the Goya painting Saturn Devouring His Son for the John Wesley Harding album, what would the lyrics be? Verse 1: My own father, my destroyer, now he stands before me Heaven’s wrathful gaze, his face so grim and cold On my neck, his hands of fire, my life about to end Saturn devouring his own son, so cruel and bold Chorus: Saturn devouring his own son, such a frightful sight Oh, what terror and pain, for this I must pay My destiny awaits me, no escape from this fate Saturn devouring his own son, on this judgment day Verse 2: My soul cries out in anguish, my life no more to be My fate has been sealed, no mercy here to find So I beg of thee, oh Father, please spare me this night But my cries are unheard, and I am left to die Chorus: Saturn devouring his own son, such a frightful sight Oh, what terror and pain, for this I must pay My destiny awaits me, no escape from this fate Saturn devouring his own son, on this judgment day Verse 3: My body trembles in fear, my life so soon to end The sky is filled with thunder, the gods have heard my plea But the outcome is the same, no mercy for me here Saturn devouring his own son, so merciless and mean Chorus: Saturn devouring his own son, such a frightful sight Oh, what terror and pain, for this I must pay My destiny awaits me, no escape from this fate Saturn devouring his own son, on this judgment day 11. Write a dialogue between Saturn and his son just before the event depicted in the painting took place. The son will not accept Saturn’s explanation and demands further justification for the father’s actions. Still not satisfied, the son threatens to eat his own father. Continue with a narrative paragraph about how the son eats Saturn and that the Goya painting is transformed into Saturn’s Son Eats His Father. Saturn: My son, I must do this. It is my fate, and it is the fate of all the gods. Son: But why must you do this to me? Is there no other way? Saturn: No, my son. I must do this for the sake of the gods. Son: Do not do this to me! I will not accept it! Saturn: I’m sorry, my son, but this is how it must be. Son: If you do this, then so will I. I will eat you, Father! Saturn: No, my son, please don’t do this! Despite Saturn’s pleas, the son proceeded to eat him, transforming Goya’s painting of Saturn Devouring His Son into a scene of Saturn’s Son Eats His Father. The son, consumed with rage and sorrow, consumed his own father. The painting now depicts a twisted version of the original scene: a son consumed by his inner darkness and the fear that he will become just like his father. 12. Write a calypso lyric based on the painting. Verse 1: Saturn the king, so powerful and strong, Took his son’s life, he knew it was wrong But his anger was so great, his heart was stone, The sight of his child, he could not condone. Chorus: Oh, Saturn the king, in his wrathful rage, Devoured his own son, so young and so sage No one could stop him, no matter how hard they tried, His son’s fate was sealed, and he sadly died. Verse 2: No mercy for the son, no time for remorse, Saturn felt no pity, and his heart was coarse His hunger for power, his jealousy too, Consumed his son’s life, what more could he do? Chorus: Oh, Saturn the king, in his wrathful rage, Devoured his own son, so young and so sage No one could stop him, no matter how hard they tried, His son’s fate was sealed, and he sadly died. 13. Write a poem in the style of Wallace Stevens’ “The Emperor of Ice-Cream.” Call for the mournful music of the son, Bring out the writhing figure, pale and numb, Let him be seated on the father’s knee, The god of war and time who cannot flee. Let the knife-blade glint and the blood flow free, The painting tells a tale of tragedy. The father, consumed by hunger and despair, Eats his own son, destroying all his care. Bring out the bread and wine, the cloth and plate, The bowl with its contents of bitter fate. Let him be shrouded in a blackened shroud, Denying him his final, earthly cloud. Let the music swell and the chorus sing, The father’s mouth open wide to bring His son into his dark and empty grave, Unable to save him from his own knave. 14. Write a hold-by-hold narration of the event depicted in the painting as if it were a professional wrestling match. Do not shy away from gory descriptions. Also describe the reactions of the crowd. Give some history of the rivalry between Saturn and his son. It should be in the voice of the TV announcer for the match. Welcome ladies and gentlemen to tonight’s special event: Saturn Devours His Son! This is a matchup that has been boiling since the dawn of time. Saturn and his son have been rivals for centuries, and tonight we will see the ultimate conclusion of their rivalry. Saturn enters the ring to a chorus of boos from the crowd, who are eager to see his son put him in his place. He stands tall and confident, casting an eerie shadow over the ring. His son enters to a roar of cheers from the audience. He is determined to make his father pay for all the wrongs he has done. The bell rings and the match is underway! Saturn grabs his son by the throat and starts pummeling him with savage punches. His son fights back, but it is not enough. Saturn’s strength is too much for him. Saturn grabs his son’s head and slams it against the mat before locking in a powerful headlock. His son is powerless to escape and the crowd is on the edge of their seats. The crowd erupts as Saturn lifts his son into the air and savagely bites into his neck. Blood sprays everywhere as Saturn devours his son alive. The crowd is in shock and disbelief. Saturn throws his son’s lifeless body to the ground, victorious. With his son defeated, Saturn stands tall with a sinister smirk on his face. It is a gruesome and bloody ending to this centuries-old rivalry. Saturn has emerged victorious in this battle, and he has done so in a shocking and brutal way. That was Saturn Devours His Son, and it was an unforgettable night. We hope you enjoyed it! 15. Write a prose poem from the perspective of a contract killer. It is for a sophisticated, adult audience. It should not be easily understood without a college reading level. My life has been a series of contracts, of agreements I make with those who desire a particular end. I take the hand of death and deliver it to my employer, the one who pays me for my services. I have no preference for the target, no loyalty to them in any way, and I do not allow myself to feel any emotion upon completion. But, when I look upon Goya’s painting of Saturn devouring his son, I cannot help but feel a pang of regret that I have not experienced. The King of the Titans, betrayed by his own blood, is an image I have seen countless times in my line of work. The anguish and grief of the father, a man who, in a moment of desperation, turned upon his own flesh and blood, is mirrored in my own actions. I am the death bringer, the one who brings about such a dire consequence as the one depicted in Goya’s work. The painting serves as a reminder of the consequences of betrayal and of the power of our own emotions. My contracts may be made of paper, but the debt owed is paid in blood. I am the messenger of this debt and I must deliver the consequence of a broken agreement. I am Saturn, the devourer of sons, the one who brings about the end of those who have wronged my employer. 16. Modify the lyrics to “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” so it talks about Goya’s painting Saturn Devours His Son. For He’s a dreadful sight to see Saturn’s son devoured by thee, He devours him with a frightful grimace Depicted in Goya’s painting of Saturn’s place. His teeth are sharp, his claws are bold His eyes are dark, his hair is gold, The painting shows a father so cruel Devouring his own son, no one can rule. So rise up friends and give a cheer For the painting by Goya so strange and queer, Let us all raise our glasses high To honor his portrayal of Saturn’s son’s demise! Peter Cherches Peter Cherches has published five collections of fiction and creative nonfiction since 2013, most recently Masks: Stories from a Pandemic. Called “one of the innovators of the short short story” by Publishers Weekly, he’s also a jazz singer and lyricist. He’s a native of Brooklyn, New York. Black Christ at Calvary When Dad died I found some letters from his sister Maryat and a faded snapshot of her painting of a black Christ on the cross. She painted it for Walsie, the woman who sold us fresh eggs and cream-- more a mural than a portrait. Bold colors, faceless soldiers, children running around, people grieving. Christ’s dark head resting on his chest. I wanted to find it. At a church outside Milledgeville I met Walsie’s son, ninety-eight years old, who showed me where my aunt’s painting had hung. He said it got taken down during renovations long ago, was in storage. There it was, brought out of a closet. The primary colours, stark figures, the movement, the mourning. Walsie was a powerhouse, says Mr. Walker. He doesn’t understand why other church members wanted to keep the painting out of sight. Seeing it carries me back to my aunt’s bold wanderings. Mr. Walker and I were raised in the same town. Here we are now. Mary Dean Lee Mary Dean Lee’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Best Canadian Poetry 2021, Ploughshares, I-70 Review, Windsor Review, LEON Literary Review, The Halcyone, The Write Launch, Event, Grain, Hamilton Arts & Letters, The Tishman Review, and Montreal Serai. Recently, her manuscript, Tidal Bore, was a Finalist with Trail to Table Press. She grew up in Milledgeville, Georgia, studied theatre and literature at Duke University and Eckerd College, and received her PhD in organizational behavior at Yale. She lives in Montreal, Canada. Maryat Lee (born Mary Attaway Lee; May 26, 1923 – September 18, 1989) was an American playwright and theatre director who made important contributions to post-World War II avant-garde theatre, pioneering street theatre in Harlem and later founding the Eco Theater, which developed drama productions out of oral histories in Appalachia. |
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Tickled Pink Contest
April 2024
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