The title of the painting is The Dead Fox, and if I stood before the canvas in some spacious room of a foreign land -- at a national gallery, or upstairs in a villa, the painting hung, perhaps, on a bedroom wall papered with green velvet -- then I imagine I might find red dullness in the slitted eyes, a loss of light brought on by strokes Degas brought to bear.

But I am not standing in London, or Madrid, not in a villa overlooking a blue-violet bay at dawn with a man, half-covered by Egyptian cotton sheets, white sheets darkened blue-violet as the light’s still coming on, who half sleeps, half wakes, half urges me to come back to him in bed. No. I am studying a small screen lit with pixels in a small room in this house. I am looking through the trees beyond a still, fore-fronted fox, imagining the path, last night’s dew still on the verdant grass, imagining the light Degas split, near dead center, with a sapling there – the split light like a chapel window above where darkness ends.

Very challenging, provocative, surprising, Lynn. Only hitch for me, reading it how I am reading it, is when you call the fox "dead" in S2. In S1, you say you might have been able to see that it was dead if you were in the bedroom etc.; but you're not. What I love about the poem is the apparent reversal: if you were in this lusher, sexier place you would see the death, but in the place you actually are in, you do not: you are"imagining the path and last night’s dew still on the verdant grass, imagining the light Degas split, near dead center, with a sapling there – the split light like a chapel window above where darkness ends." Wow. Tom

I took out the dead usages and reworded the areas in both stanzas.  Also got rid of some stray html code I hadn't realized was there.  Thanks for your comments -- they opened my eyes to the problem you encountered.  This is what I sometimes do when I need a subject to write about, or toward, never quite sure of where an object will take me.  Last night it was a pear on my counter, today a dead fox by a dead painter.  Am pleased parts worked for you.  Thanks for comments, for stopping by ...

lynn

Lynn, this is stunning, no nits for me.  I love the little journeys in the writing, how they criss-cross like animal tracks.  It's a piece that grounds me.  Thank you. Love Sue

Great, Lynn. I love how you take (in some cases) rather obscure subjects and give them your complete devotion whilst still retaining such a clear voice of your own.

I thought you may be interested in the following from an article by Daniel Burden about site-specificity in art:

"The work is made in a specific place... it is there that it was ordered, forged, and only there it may be truly said to be seen in place. The following contradiction becomes apparent: it is impossible by definition for a work to be seen in place; still, the place where we see it influences the work even more than the place in which it was made and from which it has been cast out"

You can read the first page of it at the following address, but I think you have to sign up to read the whole thing:

http://www.jstor.org/pss/778628

It took me a few reads to get through the first stanza, but the second, wow -- just about the best ekphrastic writing I can remember reading for some time. Astonishing really.


B.

Really delicate in its self-awareness. Nice how the reader gets ushered into the art.
I like it, Lynn

Thanks, Sue!  Yes, the little journeys, the side trips ... when I wrote S1 and mentioned national galleries and villas, I had no idea that in S2 I'd put a man in a bed with the painting too.  Very lucky, for me, the imagined crisscrossing stories held.  Really appreciate your kind words.

Mike -- what a great quote from Daniel Burden on site specificity, almost as if Daniel was inside my head, or I was inside his, when I wrote this last night.  Thanks for the link -- I will go there.  And thanks for comments.  Much appreciated.

B. -- I did fix some thing in S1 after Tom's comments regarding confusion on use of "dead" -- Now, I suppose I can't see the forest for the trees, so could you expand on the difficulties you're having with S1?  Thanks.  And thanks for the nice words, too. 

Jill -- thank you.  Glad you liked it.

best regards to all,

lynn

Lynn, I found the first stanza too wordy and expository when I first read. I have to say, it bothered me less on subsequent reads, bothers me less today, but I'll tinker a little anyway, if nothing else to try to help you see the forest . . .


The title of the painting is The Dead Fox although the p Pixels make the lack of life difficult to see, but if I stood before the canvas in some national a gallery somewhere, or upstairs in a villa, the painting hung perhaps on a bedroom wall papered with green velvet, then, I imagine I might find blue film over slitted eyes or a red dullness brought on by loss of light and the deft strokes Degas would've brought to bear.



OK, that's now quite a run-on sentence! Alternatively you could keep the period after see, like in your current version.
Hope this helps.

B.

Very nice pruning, Brian -- you give me a good model to consider.  Thanks, much.  lynn

Hang on though if you do that She's hung on the villa wall!!! you can't do that!

Although I like the rest of your topiary, brian :)

Love to both

Sue

Appreciate your look in again at this one, Sue.  I'm giving this one a couple days [or longer] as is; not sure I want to lose the wordy reflectiveness of coming upon the painting via the internet and my coming to look closely at the details found there and in my imagination.  Probably somewhere between a kind landscape artist's rendering and my own is where it will end up . . . but for now, will remain a bit weedy [or is that 'wordy'?]

thanks!

lynn

I like the "wordy reflectiveness" too, maybe the right tool to approach the lives of those who actually do wake up to such a picture on the opposite wall.

I've kept looking in Lynn,  whenever there's a new post on it and I click and scroll down, I've forgotten I'll see the picture and it's a lovely treat.

I really like what you're doing and that you are thinking carefully about your edit because the balance in the peice is so fragile...

I'll be back again.

Sue

Yes, I understand the logic of the wordy reflection (The Logic of The Wordy Reflection - now there's a book title!)
but a little trim could help a lot, I think.

Look forward to a revision Lynn. Let me say again though, that this is great work, whatever you do.

B.

Lynn,

I love this piece that mixes Matisse with Degas who was something of a necrophilic
misanthrope. Degas was kinky like the postures on his bathers. This piece of yours
calls upon beauty of a different order and to me the artist and the model(fox) be-
come a vehicle to carry-lynn-home.

I'll await your coming redraft, Lynn, but, whatever, it'll be a pick.

milner

Revision up.  In the end I think I added more than I took away.  Some rearrangement.  Some movement.  A snip here and there.  I may have lost whatever rhythm might've been there.  Look forward to opinons. 

Thanks, Ken.  Thanks, Milner. 

lynn

Lynn,

Ken again. This piece grows with each reading. Do you know Amy Hempel's short
stories? Brilliant and some of them a page or two but whole ( The Collected Stories
of Amy Hempel). Your work her, with another paragrasph or two, would take shape
for me in a like manner: a sea-breeze thrtough the window of Matisse in Morocco.

Lynn,

Since my posts seem to have been lost I wanted to tell you that this is an extraordinary piece that uses
Degas to create an ambiance of Matisse (in Morocco). I can easily imagine this as one of Amy Hempel's
short-short stories ( a page or two as in her Collected Stories which, if you don't know them, you will
find are cut from your fine weave of cloth). You have a way of making internal states of mind live in the
outside world in a remarkable fashion. I rerally think this should be published.

                                               Ken

Ken -- I hope you received my gushing thank you for your kind words above.  I am off to find Amy Hempl's collected stories and order a copy.  She is someone I often heard good things about but have not read.  Thank you.

And, thank you to whoever moved this piece up -- if Milner, big grins here and much, much appreciated.

lynn

Lynn, I am late to reading this.  You give away immediately that you are not standing where you are not standing, by the use of "if", pre-empting some of the power from the second half.  Might you consider keeping the mystery going a little longer?  I noted a couple of other wee ideas for streaming and of a continued repetition of "small". What a great moment.  Thank you.

The title of the painting is The Dead Fox, and if I stood   standing before the canvas in some spacious room of a foreign land -- at a national gallery, or upstairs in a villa, the painting hung, perhaps, on a bedroom wall papered with green velvet -- then I imagine I might find red dullness in the slitted eyes, a loss of light brought on by strokes Degas brought to bear.

But I am not standing in Madrid, nor London, not in a villa overlooking a blue-violet bay at dawn with a man, half-covered by Egyptian cotton sheets, white sheets darkened blue-violet as the light’s still coming on, who half sleeps, half wakes, half urges me to come back to him in bed. No. I am studying a small screen lit with pixels in a small room in this small house. I am looking through the trees beyond a still, fore-fronted fox, imagining the path, last night’s dew still on the verdant grass, imagining the light Degas split, near dead center, with a sapling there – the split light like a chapel window above where darkness ends.

"verdant grass" makes me want a little something of a twist.  Not sure what, though.

"brought to bear" also makes me wish for a twist.  "Bear" throws me from fox.

I see John has moved this but it isn't yet appearing on the Front Page (technical hitch?) . . . but when it does, it will be well deserved.

I missed the revision Lynn, and really like how you have worked this. John's allusion to Locklin is apt. As Larry often mentions, what is exciting here is how the experience takes place within the poem. You have created an exquisite dynamic between reader, narrator and painting, which is why I said earlier I found it such an impressive example of ekphrasis.
 
Superb Lynn. Two in a row doesn't happen often and rarely happens to two such deserving poems. Congrats.

B.

yeah, i wrote to jay asking what happened...i moved it to the front page, but nothing's yet happened!

What an excellent surprise -- thank you, John!  This honor is (mark it on your calendars -- lynn is wordless at the moment) so unexpected.  And much appreciated. 

Best regards,
lynn 

B. -- thank you!  You mentioned John's allusion to Locklin?   And I can find no mention.  Am I missing a comment from John somehow, somewhere?  Just curious.

Again, muchas gracias mi amigo for kind words -- best, lynn

Lynn;
my allusion to Locklin was i think in my notes to the post where i first moved this to the front page (which have since disappeared.  you probably noted that there was some problem getting this thing to post and maybe in getting it corrected my comments were lost to the world forever.  what i said was that the poem reminds me a lot of locklin's wonderful poems describing his reactions to (and thoughts on) great works of art.  he's done whole series' of those things, not only on great works of art, but jazz as well.  that was what i alluded to...but don't let that detract or distract from the appreciation of this really good poem.  i get a real charge out of watching the way your mind works.  you're one of the people whose work i make it a point never to miss on the site.
john

Luscious as usual, Lynn. Wow, babck to back front pagers - you are hot, girl!

Here's John's post:

http://www.poetrycircle.com/index.php/topic,10266.0.html

That is a wonderful piece of ekphrasia. The interplay  between writers and painters has always been vivid and productive for both. When looking at ekphrasia I always try to match the style of the writing to the style of the painting, this gives the interplay depth beyond merely describing or narrating the picture. You have certainly done that here, your prose poem uses the same interplay of light and shadows to give dynamic life to the work. The piece sounds beautiful read as well, it's very careful and precise and making the distinction between the actual painting and the digital version (the living fox and the dead one?) is original and very clever.

Lovely poem, Lynn.

Thank you Lavonne, Paul, Jay -- what a pleasure all of your comments are for me.  Paul, I'm especially grateful for the consideration you gave this poem, especially the mention of the actual vs. the digital, the living fox and the dead one.  Your notes made me realize that element in the poem; the "clever," I have to admit, is that magic that every once in awhile comes into play with a piece.  One of the intentional themes I intended for this work was the "imagined" life vs. the real of the observor/nv.  But you have noted another layer; I am delighted that layer was there.  And sincere thanks for sharing ...

best regards,

lynn

      I love this, Lynn. . . I could on for hours on what - both the poem and picture coupled - bring home for me.  but I also know it wouldn't make much sense to some and would probably come off as chatty - so, just know that I love it and "verdant" has never meant more.  such a gift you are, N