Three Van Gogh Poems, by Mary C. Rowin

La Guinguette, by Vincent Van Gogh (Netherlands). 1886.

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

Public Park with Weeping Willow: the Poet's Garden 1, by Vincent Van Gogh (Netherlands). 1888.

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.”

Still Life Pink Roses, by Vincent Van Gogh (Netherlands). 1890.

"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.