 Seascape-Jetty, by Henry Ossawa Tanner (USA) 1879 Seascape-Jetty and Beloved Artist, Henry Ossawa Tanner Inky indigo cradles froth. Mood roils where jetty churns. Oils drape navy within ashen skies. Waves turn in turquoise and sage. Beloved artist, tell me, did pain dampen your interior? did nonacceptance torture your soul? During the struggle, did God Almighty whisper in breadth of light? Beloved artist, we’re not so different, you and I-- when inky indigo cradled froth, mood roiled where jetty churned, oils draped navy within ashen skies, and waves turned in turquoise and sage-- amid the pain, did you see angels? Jeannie E. Roberts lives in west-central Wisconsin. She has authored four poetry collections and two children’s books. Her work appears in print and online in North American and international journals and anthologies. She's a coffee drinker, an animal lover, a nature enthusiast, and poetry editor of the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs. When she’s not reading, writing, or editing, you can find her drawing and painting, or outdoors photographing her natural surroundings. ** Seascape—Jetty
after Henry Ossawa Tanner It’s the wave that I see but don’t hear that cresting crashes each window pane a notion the sunlight shatters onto rocks to lap each piling’s circumference into froth and dumbness upon which a roar errant for its tardiness is solitary reason the suckling waters deceptive in their imitation of stillness an audible sunray that slits the looming gale’s cobalt skein siren in charm and lure the aquatic blues deepen to black echoed in a pine for feet’s muffled percussion upon planks that frame both promenade and window and offer escape in steps counterpointed against wave strike along tan bluff in the distance a storm too close in my mind for comfort along creosote-soaked stanchions driven to last a battering the navy-blue tempest overhead echoed inside my head black against black to ground the sea’s recession into itself Jonathan Yungkans Jonathan Yungkans is a Los Angeles-based writer and photographer with an MFA from California State University, Long Beach. His work has appeared in Panoplyzine, Synkroniciti, West Texas Literary Review and other publications. His poetry chapbook, Colors the Thorns Draw, was released by Desert Willow Press in August 2018. ** lesson after two paintings by Henry Ossawa Tanner (USA), The Banjo Lesson, 1893 and Seascape-Jetty, 1879 the wind out there is wild, son it gives the sky a churn the sea too, and our rough shore but waves they never stop make of your arms a cradle, son feel the way I stomp like the surf at dawn when we wake and the waves in time beat on just your thumb now, an open G let's rock to a steady strum let the strings resound as one while the waves out there still pound place fingers on the frets, son first and second, pointer and ring move from open to C for the waves crash and never do they hush hush, my son, hear that cadent thrum-- beneath it all, the heart’s tidal turn a lesson never done so waves, beat on and sing beat on beat on . . . Alan Girling Alan Girling writes poetry mainly, sometimes fiction, non-fiction, or plays. His work has been seen in print, heard on the radio, at live readings, even viewed in shop windows. Such venues include The Ponder Review, Panoply, Hobart, The MacGuffin, Smokelong Quarterly, FreeFall, The Ekphrastic Review and CBC Radio. He is happy to have had poems win or place in four local poetry contests and a play produced for the Walking Fish Festival in Vancouver, B.C. ** Rearranged in Strange Light I want to be in this water dark as night, cold, alive. I, of both flesh and water, soiled, stained, ask to land hard on this stark coast, epidermis purged by salt and wind, body leaving grain by grain, face leveling like a rock. I ask this raging water to knock my coils off, to mutate me, spilling green over gold, churning me out sweeping me back without thought, my carnality downed by turbulence. In water I become water, ebbing from mortal time, moving in blankness rearranged in strange light like that ambiguous shape at the rocky edge where the sea turns over its colours again, where in a thin coat, a black figure, an artist perhaps, head lowered, balances two surfaces of the water I know and the rest of water. Janice Bethany Janice Bethany is a part-time professor in Houston who recently placed in a writing competition for Letheon with work forthcoming in 2020. Her work has appeared in the The Ekphrastic Review, Kansas Quarterly, Southern Humanities Review and more. ** Stronger Thick brushstrokes—discontent, disappointment, transformed into strength fueled by inner storms as fierce as the weather canvas recreates. Crossing the state to study with Eakins, Talent respected but not the man. A dark form on the edge of the Jetty—is it you, waiting there to jump off of, out of, our world into one where you are respected? I hear the ocean argue with you, its voice deep, deep as the crash of waves upon the jetty deep as the darkness of stormy afternoon sky deep as the water that sprays up between rocks as waves crashes onto the jetty. I hear you argue from your place on the canvas and behind the brush-- will stormy waters continue to rage about the rockes, your soul, or will you in a leap of faith, leave these shores? When skies clear, only those stronger than the waves, stronger than the bold brush of the master teacher, will succeed. Joan Leotta Joan Leotta, born in Pittsburgh herself, plays with words on page and stage. She loves the sea and spends hours walking the beach, looking for shells when she is not writing or performing. ** Template Wields Near fifty years since I in Sceaux, not knowing Henry Tanner there - a grave place for a starry son. I would have honoured him: mother a slave till underground, Wesley episcopal, father brand, and he debated octoroon. He detailed real rather than type, his daily frame, as middle name, a battleground for freedom fought - from canvassed shades came life and height. His passage first on seascape rocked, the horses riding in their rage, the roar of forties turning bend, the swell, walls, gulfs topography, sourced bubbled springs, drops of rain, oasis cloud or ice-melt stain. That water of the gully drift, should visit berg and sailing ship, moisten lips, xylem, tree of life, intricacies of massive maze, the plumbing of a worldly sort, nature, nurture, experience. So of Sarah, Ossawa welled and willed, pattern against the template wield, some hope in stratified, stultified, a point of light in layered dark. Stephen Kingsnorth Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, from ministry in the Methodist Church, has had pieces accepted by over a dozen on-line poetry sites, including The Ekphrastic Review, and Gold Dust, The Seventh Quarry, The Dawntreader & Foxtrot Uniform Poetry Magazines. https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com/ ** Seaside Our faces glow, Flushed with firelight. The bonfire blazes warmth for fingers and toes. Laughter trills chatter like crackle from burning logs. Beneath the smile heartbreak arises, A hiss of sea spray fogs that memory. Sand and seaweed, Fishermen hurl their weighty spinning rods, Mullet bait tossed from the shore. Today the chill wind tugs my hair And the strong shoulder of love gone. Skiffs bump the dock. The jetty reaches far into the gulf. Patsy Kate Booth Born in Beaumont, Texas, Patsy Kate migrated to the La Garita mountains of southern Colorado in 1973 where she lived off the grid, taught special education, created an outfitting/guide service with llamas as pack animals and began publishing her poetry and prose. Publications include, Lummox Press, Willow Creek Journal, Sand Hill Review, Amethyst Review, several anthologies including, Why We Boat, and A Walk Along the River. She is currently compiling decades of memoir adventures and endlessly organizing her poetry for publication. ** uncompassed distant forms, unattached, pull away like a feather drifting unbalanced, unaware of the difficulty of flight-- following the wind without intention like a feather drifting unbalanced into what is not after before-- following the wind without intention, currented by air carried away into what is now after before-- molecules alive with their own journeys, currented by air, carried away, caught by circumstance by tides molecules alive with their own journey turning into the undertow caught by circumstance, by tides, by sooner or later-- turning into the undertow, the unchosen intersection of elements, the sooner or later at the crossroads of to come or to go-- the unchosen intersection of elements unafraid of the difficulty of flight-- at the crossroads of to come or to go distant forms, unattached, pull away Kerfe Roig A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/, and see more of her work on her website http://kerferoig.com/ ** Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Seascape-Jetty Brings to Mind Winslow Homer My brother, who died a year ago, lived not far from Homer’s studio at Black Point, Maine. Seascapes with jetties all have the same look as the path I hiked behind the painter’s house. Before it became part of Portland Museum of Art you could walk right in, door unlocked, sit down at the table and read his books. For someone who grew up on the sea, it was like waking up in Van Gogh’s blue bedroom after a dream. For even the most sacred of spaces, there is a limit of your endurance of them. They are so still and quiet your attention wanders. I left the studio for slippery rocks crashed by waves as the tide came in. I took off a necklace of tumbled stones and left it in a crevice of the jetty. My brother’s wish was to have his ashes scattered from the breakwater just across the inlet where lobster boats leave to check their traps buoyed off the coast. Everyone gathered in a bitter Nor’easter, cast point closed for safety. They went ahead anyway for a sailor who’d settled on one of the most dramatic seas found and same as Homer, only left the protection of jetty to be swept up into a storm. Kyle Laws Kyle Laws is based out of the Arts Alliance Studios Community in Pueblo, CO where she directs Line/Circle: Women Poets in Performance. Her collections include Ride the Pink Horse (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), Faces of Fishing Creek (Middle Creek Publishing, 2018), This Town: Poems of Correspondence with Jared Smith (Liquid Light Press, 2017), So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press, 2015), and Wildwood (Lummox Press, 2014). With eight nominations for a Pushcart Prize, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Germany. She is the editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. ** Tanner Speaks, 1879 So you think because a man is black-- father preaching to a church of small children, sad black men & wordless women, his mother of Virginia slave-stock—so you think he hasn’t a word to say for himself, but cap in hand will mutter, ‘Sir’, and bow & back away with eyes downcast? Not I, Mister! For I have stood watching on that jetty where the Delaware sweeps out into the rolling Atlantic. Sure, that sight, those sounds will diminish me to nothingness-- however, not one word that you can say will ring above the roar of my senses when I stand here next the jetty; where moaning fog has closed the cliffs and all before us is the drag & thrash of water, waves bursting on these boulders into shards of light: the blue & turquoise of my palette melted like wax by light & water—light! Black I may be, but I can hear the hiss & rush & lash of sea, the same salt sea my fathers crossed in chains below the foetid decks. This brush, these oils speak louder in my ears than oceans, drown your voice to the abyss. And more than that—for I can see the ocean with my own dark eyes, frame it with my white- soled palms, ebony African fingers that hold these oils, this brush. So let me speak in darkest hues shot through with truth’s hot light. And for God’s sake hold your tongue. Lizzie Ballagher A published novelist between 1984 and 1996 in North America, Australasia, the UK, Netherlands and Sweden (pen-name Elizabeth Gibson), Lizzie Ballagher is now writing poetry rather than fiction. Her work has been featured in a variety of magazines and webzines, including The Ekphrastic Review. She blogs at https://www.lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/. ** To Henry Ossawa Tanner Regarding Seascape-Jetty Your brush enlightened sounds the roar of rage against resistant shore where harbour must be engineered to still the waters being steered so those asea can come ashore as equals -- neither less nor more -- with blood in common though unique to follow course by art you seek that wills one's authenticity by skills -- not by ethnicity -- respecting and yet not enslaved to path behind that pain has paved for those who now are free to yearn for joy they have a right to earn. Portly Bard Portly Bard: Old man. Ekphrastic fan. Prefers to craft with sole intent of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment. ** Sea-Jetty, 1879, by Henry Ossawa Tanner, the Only African-American Enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1879-1885. One night his easel was carried out into the middle of Broad Street and, though not painfully crucified, he was firmly tied to it and left there. —Joseph Pennell, The Adventures of an Illustrator The cloud-river sky, absorbed with itself, is speeding along on its own. A ship nearing the horizon has somewhere to get to, and sails on. But, in the middle distance, a ribbon of shallower water, sunlit by early or late rays, turns chrysoprase green for the artist’s eye, and where obdurate land and driven sea confront each other in a cataclysm of spume, something is exploding open-- like light about to be prism-split, like a crystal revealing its secret geometries, like the seed-pod of his own universe. Judy Kronenfeld Judy Kronenfeld’s most recent books of poetry are Bird Flying through the Banquet (FutureCycle, 2017) and Shimmer (WordTech, 2012). Her poems have appeared in Cimarron Review, Connotation Press, Natural Bridge, New Ohio Review, One (Jacar Press), Rattle, South Florida Poetry Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and other journals, and in two dozen anthologies. She is Lecturer Emerita, Creative Writing Department, University of California, Riverside, and an Associate Editor of the online poetry journal, Poemeleon.
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March 2023
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