La Guinguette A river café. This one in Montmartre, but just as likely Amsterdam, where a walk along canals is a dangerous temptation, an impulse to slip into water undredged since Spring, hook a toe on a tipped bicycle or a hand on a floating doll while patrons watching from their canal-side benches, clink their Amstels and laugh at the foolish seduction of drowning. Mary C. Rowin My Dear Theo* a picture of a garden in sunshine, over the vault of heaven a marvelous blue, heavenly blues and yellows then sunflowers the red sun the last a garden, painted without green ordinary plane trees; pines in stiff clumps, a weeping tree I am ravished, ravished with what I see Petrarch lived near I am seeing the same cypresses and oleanders pictures painted in citron yellow and lime green poetry is more terrible than painting the painter holds his tongue someday you too will know a day without wind what pure air, what vibrant serenity the sunflowers and the gardens suggestive colour without talking about it there is the fatal necessity which will ruin us what days these are, are not finished. Mary C. Rowin *An erasure poem from a “Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, Arles, c. 17 September 1888.” "Great Bouquets of Roses"
1890. Vincent felt it when he painted pink roses at the end of his stay in Saint-Remy. Recharged and optimistic, floral paintings in violet and pink filled his days at the asylum where he wrote, “The last days in Saint-Remy I worked like a madman.” 1979. Adding a pint of red to a gallon of white, guards coated prison walls & ceilings with pink blush, watched violence fade as the colour called “drunk tank pink” washed over inmates. The colour’s charm spread. Scientists rushed in, revealed lower blood pressure in emotionally disturbed patients when exposed to the colour pink, less time needed to calm them. Mary C. Rowin Mary C. Rowin’s poetry, essays and reviews have appeared in a variety of publications such as Persimmon Tree, Hamline Lit Link, Hummingbird, Solitary Plover and Oakwood Literary Magazine. Recent awards include poetry prizes from The Nebraska Writers Guild and Journal from the Heartland, and Honorable Mentions from the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and Wisconsin People and Ideas. Mary lives with her husband in Middleton, Wisconsin. Editor's note: Mary C. Rowin wrote these for the Ekphrastic Van Gogh challenge and submitted them clearly marked. It was entirely the mistake of The Ekphrastic Review that the email went into the general submission file and was not viewed in time to consider them along with the other challenge entries. We thought it best to publish them after the fact rather than adding them after the fact to the older posts, so that they wouldn't be missed by our readers.
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March 2023
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