Writing With the Masterpieces Session 1

Nighthawks by Edward Hopper

Nighthawks: A Poem by Cathleen Cohen

She wears a dress the color of optimism

And paints her lips to match

Her fiery tresses flow down her milky shoulders

If things don’t turn out the way she hopes

She will still feel beautiful.

Like countless times before

She steps into the darkness

With the man in suit and hat

A man she’d met long before he was a man

Tonight there’s not a soul on the streets

So black and still but for a fluorescent buzz

Drawn to the glowing green light like moths

The woman and man drop into the diner.

Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci

Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh

STARRY NIGHTS.  Brenda Aronowitz

My own starry nights are one of the sweetest memories of childhood.

Long before I had seen an artist’s vision or the scientist’s view, long before I ever saw Starry Nights on van Gogh’s canvas or the Pillars of Creation through the James Webb telescope, I would create the dizzying swirling star-filled sky by spinning around and around on my swing. Defying my father’s prohibition against tangling the chains of the swing, ignoring my mother’s injunction not to swing too high, I twirled myself into a kaleidoscope, becoming intoxicated by the infinite, drunk on the endless constellations at my command.

In the hours after sunset, on the warm South African evenings of my childhood, I waited impatiently through the always clamorous evening meal until I could escape. Then I would jump onto the swing and push off hard into my person starry night, swinging as high as the home made swing would take me. Inside the house, the strife of discordant family and the volume of the news announcer would fade, as I “slipped the surly bonds of earth / and danced the skies” [John G. McGee, High Flight]

Seeing Starry Nights for the first time, I searched the whorls and tumble for my star, feeling that Vincent too must have had his home star, might have left a trail for me to find mine. I have come to believe that we all have our own special star, the star that comforts us, that holds us in place even as it lures us to travel beyond our boundaries. I know for sure that my star is ACrux, the pointer star of the Southern Cross. Were I an extra-terrestrial, I’d call ACrux my home. Perhaps, as children of the universe, we all feel this astral tension between our Earth planet and our stars. For some, the Sun; for me, the Southern Cross.

Many years ago, having fled the turmoil of my family and the Apartheid-era repression ravaging South Africa, I was faced with a dilemma. Leaving my only home and everyone I knew, I had vowed that I would never return. Now, across the miles, a telegram from my father called. Writing in his customary imperative voice, he summoned me back. “Come. Quickly. Mother dying.” Those four words shredded my resolve. So even as Apartheid was raging, even as my fury with my mother remained unresolved, I reneged on my vow. I maxed out my credit and boarded a South African Airlines plane for the 23-hour flight, back south across the equator and east towards the blood-red sun of my childhood.

Hours later, I awoke into a darkened cabin in my cramped seat, groggy and disoriented. When I pushed up the window shade all I could see was blackness of night. Deep in my despair, I realized there was no escaping this trip.I figured we were already above the Atlantic someplace, as I hurled back to the pain of my past.

Then, peering out of the porthole, I saw my star. Even before I could focus on the entire constellation of the Southern Cross, I recognized in that starry night the glow, the shine, the sparkle. It was so close that I could have reached out of the window and touched my home fire. In that instant, I realized that no matter how frustrating, how painful, how wrenching that return would be, I would be all right. I would manage.With the strength, the insight, the wisdom of the intervening years, and with my star, I could manage.

And so I did.

Although my home is now 40 degrees north of the equator, and I have had to learn the new constellations that rotate over my head, I have not ceased hunting ACrux. On the first night I cross the Equator, I go outside and look south. From Hawaii at 20 degrees north, from Costa Rica, from New Zealand, from Chile’s Atacama, from Patagonia , down to 54 degrees south, I make sure that my star is still there. I am okay.

However, I never did return to South Africa.

That mystery of shrinking distance, of shifting immutability, is that the essence of art, of poetry, of science, even of mathematics? In Van Gogh’s Starry Night, the topsy-turvy world above remains more durable than what we perceive as fixed—the trees and houses and fields we know. Swinging from art to science, from transience to permanence, it seems that art might someday answer these mysteries.

Dimensions of a Diner By David Blackburn------inspired by “Nighthawks”, by Edward Hopper

It was late in the big city that was turning dark and cold. A time when people who go home already went, and a scattering of humanity hung on to the remnants of the day. For better or worse, I was one of them. My name is Mack. I’m a P.I. I was Investigating a jewel-robbery case called in earlier, right around my dinner time. Now I found myself in a familiar diner downtown, after spending the better part of the evening chasing down a twosome responsible for lifting the glittery goods from a swanky party in a neighborhood uptown.

I didn’t know the suspects would be sitting across the counter from me, but there they were. When I walked in, I gave Joe the night cook the high sign not to acknowledge me. Part of being a private investigator is the “private” part, and I wanted to keep it that way. We knew each other from way back, and he knew when I meant business, and these two suddenly became my business. I knew one of the alleged suspects was a dame, and she’d be wearing a red dress – easy to spot and hard to ignore. Not too smart, I thought, as I swung my leg over the bar stool and sat down.  Joe asked if I wanted to look at the menu, acting like I’d just got in town from somewhere. I played along, asking what the special of the day was. “Meat loaf,” Joe said. “Comes with mash potatoes and peas.”

“That sounds fine,” I said, “And I’ll have a cup of coffee.”

While Joe poured, I looked around like I’d never been in the joint, shooting a glance at the couple who avoided making eye contact. Then it started to make sense. They were dressed up enough, especially her, to insinuate themselves into a situation like some big party where all sorts of jewelry was on display, or nearby, then slip out with whatever they could get away with when the time was right.

Red hair, red dress. I decided to call her “Red” for now, him John. For all I knew, he was one.  Red was fiddling with something in her hand. Looked like a matchbook. Probably a number or address scribbled on it from the “fence” who’d take the jewelry later. They’d have to make a call or, since there was a phone on the wall just out of sight, answer one. They were waiting.

I’d wait too.

Meanwhile, the java arrived, and I wrapped my mitts around that cup of warm, and settled in. 

They settle onto two wooden stools at the counter

They look like an ordinary couple, hands not touching

Steam rises from their coffee cups into one cloud

Sharing not a word, but space and time.

There is only one other customer

Also in suit and hat, he nurses a cup of coffee

At the longer arm of the counter

When they come in, he never looks up.

There is safety in this silence broken occasionally by a sigh

Or by the young guy in white shirt and cap behind the counter

Whether by personality or job training, he attempts small talk

But no one engages, each spinning in their own orbit.

A Letter by Bruce Hamilton

Dear Mr. Hopper (where ever you are):

Re: Nighthawks

Thanks for this painting, perhaps your most famous, and for the 2500+ paintings, drawings, and prints your widow left to the Whitney Museum when she died one year after you in 1968.  For me Nighthawks is immediately recognized as a Hopper.  It is typically stark (nothing hangs on the walls of the coffeeshop, not a scrap of paper on the side walk) cold and melancholy.  But confusing.  Focused I would assume on the four people, surely they are the nighthawks.  Who are they?  What are their stories?  What brings them to this modest little coffee shop in the dark of night?  Your painting raises these questions and more.  Much to ponder.  Open ended speculation. Questions never to be answered.  At the Chicago Art Institute I stood before your original among strangers who openly, outwardly and vigorously offered unsolicited opinions on these questions and more.  A conversation starter, one measure of arts reach and impact.

And inevitable comments about the evident lack of connection between the four subjects.  If I mention your name Mr. Hopper, without focusing on any one particular painting, first comments refer to loneliness, detachment, alienation, lack of connection. You completed Nighthawks, a seminal work in early 1942, the year of my birth and it was followed in 1950 by the seminal sociological book The Lonely Crowd.  Might the former have influenced the later?  And I can’t overlook the fact that Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941. Are we to assume these somber, sober nighthawks are contemplating America’s reluctant entrance into World War II?

Surely these many questions are more than enough to contemplate, to speculate, to debate as admirers have for 80 years.  Interest hasn’t waned though answers will forever be illusive.

But there is more.  More!  The cash register highlighted by the diagonal, the slanting patch of light.  Moonlight?  Nothing in your paintings seems to be there because it “was there” and yet the diagonals appear in much of your work, a wonderful expressive element.  But why the cash register?  Intentional confusion, surely not random?  Why did you muddle the focus of Nighthawks?  You must of had your reasons.  But only more to ponder.  Is there a sub-focus, some kind of anti-commerce, anti-capitalism statement?  This is confusing, frustrating.  I want answers but you provided none.  Will the speculation continue for another 80 years?  Well, job well done.

Writing With Masterpieces Week 2

American Gothic by Grant Wood

The Scream by Edvard Munch

STANZAS ON AN INADVERTENT TRIPTYCH

by Brenda Aronowitz

Reading the triptych from left to right: (Munch / Wood / Kahlo)

I Reinforcing Cultural Stereotypes:

Munch’s Scream redolent of Scandinavian angst

Cleaves the frozen North of the imagination

Only darkness and doom prevail

Where Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal

Allows no escaping death’s dance

The American Gothic farmer and his wife

Drip disapproval, disappointment, austere disdain

In their self-righteous labors, lace-curtain neighbors

Taming fields of shocked wheat with bundle fork

So she can flaunt the cameo brooch at her throat

Some sociologists have observed that warmer climates breed

Passions unknown to those who inhabit the temperate zones

Fecundity, lassitude, fruits of the earth in abundant gardens of eden

The many arms of Love’s Embrace of the Universe

Might shock the Midwesterner and thaw the frozen North

They all know they can’t stay here forever

Everything has changed yet nothing has changed

She still feels as beautiful as when she came in.

The woman and man will try to slip out quietly.

The other customer watches the young man behind the counter

And when his work shift is finally done

They will leave together, uncertain of what awaits them

In the long shadows of the skyscrapers and spires.

Promises that never knew they had been made

Are being broken here tonight

Soon they all will be looking for the door to the outside.

The Love Embrace of the Universe by Frieda Kahlo

Comments on The Scream, by Edvard Munch

Written by David Blackburn

Haven’t we all felt like screaming at one time or another? Edvard Munch must have. Considering he had periods of emotional instability, as well as a fear of developing an inherited mental condition, along with other related factors, it may not be surprising, given also to the environment of Scandinavia and perhaps the misunderstanding of such a sensitive soul.

“The Scream”, a self-portrait of his experience of walking across a bridge at sunset in Kristiana – now re-named Oslo, and hearing what he called the “enormous, infinite scream of nature” presents a subject juxtaposed in stark contrast to the leisurely strollers behind.

Whether a portent of the future breakdown he would suffer, or merely externalizing at that time an internal “cry for help”, he was more than prepared artistically to demonstrate the skills in expressionism acquired when he was in Paris, influenced by Gaugin, Van Gogh, and Toulouse-Latrec. He was also given “permission” to express himself this way, receiving encouragement from the nihilist Hans Jaeger, who urged him to paint his own emotional and psychological state.

Despite the eventual breakdown that occurred, out of which he gave up heavy drinking, along with increased acceptance by the people of Oslo, he ultimately spent his later years in privacy and peace, a hopeful outcome to inspire any of us who at times can feel overstimulate or overwhelmed. A scream is just moment, though remembered at length, is not a lifeltime.

American Gothic

Elisa Schmit 12/3/22

The fields are in the distance, the homestead at my back. Joseph stands a few steps before me, staff in hand at the ready, confronting evil head on. I stand slightly behind, my

eyes averted to the field for I can not look these demons in suits straight on. Joseph dressed for the occasion, his one suit jacket, neat, over worn overalls. I buttoned up

with my mother's broach, hair pulled back, as is my habit. Our Sunday best though this is no sacred place.

My place is usually behind, in the farmhouse. From the outside no one can see the rotted buttresses threatening collapse or the dust, a constant battle during this time of

drought. Can Joseph sense my anger, the fear haunting me? Yesterday I spilled some salt. Am I at fault?

We purchased this land with borrowed monies, dug up the native grasses to plant fields of wheat, promises of an ocean of gold, in beauty and coin. But no gold touched our

palms. Morning skies darkened with crackling clouds of dust. You could see the blue flame rise off the barbed wire fences. One year without rain, then another, then another.

We read the bible, prayed, hung dead snakes belly up as sacrifice. Still, no rain. Then God looked upon us with plaques of jackrabbits and grasshoppers. We did what we

could to free ourselves- took to the bible, took to the sword, so to speak. Men gathered in groups corralling the rabbits with car horns, the banging of pots and pans. We

couldn’t afford to waste bullets so they met their end at the end of a club. The grasshoppers ate everything clean and moved on.

We endured. Now these men were here to take what little we had left, what we had desperately held onto. Funny, that although I had long forsaken my bible, as I felt my

God had done to me, yesterday Job 40:13 popped into mind. “Hide them in the dust together, imprison them in a hidden place.” Joseph and I were zealous, the spot freshly

unearthed, dug deep, just this morning. If the dust storm held off, perhaps this sacrifice would bring the rains.

Las Dos Fridas (The Two Fridas, 1939)

Writing With Masterpieces Week 3

Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth

Reading the triptych from right to left: (Kahlo /Wood /Munch)

II. Deconstructing Creation

Mother Earth in the navel of Paradise

Shielding arms of the Universe

From the breast of comfort that flows with pelican’s blood

To succor the hungry, to silence the howling

Using strange rites to venerate the helpless babe

The farmer, the miner, the capitalist meet in a bar

Drinking to God, glory, gold, Who can denude the Earth first?

Who can rape the forests, poison the fields, pollute the streams

Leaving the children hungry and the babes to wail

While they watch the planet incinerate

Alienated, alone amid the colors of the Apocalypse

Cassandra’s voice crying in the wilderness

Unheeded prophesies lost in the clashes of conflict

the crash of climate catastrophes

While the planet combusts without a lifeboat in sight

After seeing all three paintings in relation to each other, might it become

difficult—if not impossible—to see each on its own?

Frida and My Sister written by Cathleen Cohen

Seated under turbid skies

Are the two Fridas.

Frida, fair as her European roots

In crisp colonial white

Her broken heart exposed

She clamps a vein to stop bleeding

Into petals at the border.

The other Frida that Diego had loved

With her mother’s skin, color of earth

Wearing inherited purple, gold and green

Blood and Diego’s memory pulse through

Arteries that wrap the two Fridas into one.

A Bar at the Folies-Bergère by Eduoard Manet

A Poetic Commentary on Homer Winslow’s “The Gulf Stream”

Lost in Plain Sight by David Blackburn, December 13, 2022

The sea can be cruel,

Calling to those with dreams afar,

Or forced to serve someone else’s scheme,

And go from where they are.

Either way, in this tableau

We see a man’s eminent pain,

To be dashed upon random rocks

Of fate’s disdain.

Devoured of what remains.

A ship ignores, he looks away,

Lost from sight, a saving face,

And not for someone of his race?

I see someone else as well —

I see my sister.

She sits stiffly to brace against pain

Interrupted pathways to and from her heart

Dressed in sterile white, pale under makeup

White of Asian death and mourning

Also the white of rebirth.

Cradling her hand is my sister reborn

Color returned to her face, she wears half a rainbow

At ease in the air swirling around her

She holds memories gently in her lap

As life navigates through her new heart.

Christinas World by Andrew Wyeth

Elisa Schmit

The sting of the slap was what surprised her, not the fact that she lay somewhat crumpled on the ground. That the sting could be felt now, what seemed like hours since he had left, that was what surprised and startled her. In the field together, after the storm of words and furious red hot tears, he hauled off and slapped her. Christina remembered spinning, at least in her head, and then awakening here fixed in this spot, muted grasses underneath her barely pink dress. The echo of a truck door slamming and tires peeling off down the rutted road, lingered in her ear alongside the stinging like morbid companions. They were trying to reach her, to tell her something.

She twisted her body toward the house. The almost colorless sky framed the homestead in the distance. “Home” the word even unspoken made her wince. The house was fenced in like a prison, barbed wire leaning in after so many years of trying to stand upright. She felt as she imagined the house felt, weathered, worn down, weary.

Yet there were elements of surprise, of hope. The ladder stretched up to the rooftop between two dormered windows. Christina remembered how they let natural warm light into the otherwise darkened attic. Was that a kite flying to the right of the house? Was it unbound or tethered? The barn stood to the left free from the other buildings. She could make out the shadows of birds in flight on its wooden planks.

Crouched there in her stockings and practical shoes, she grasped the earth in her hands. Life awakened in the feel of dirt and grass in her palms. Christina dared to lean forward. The treeless landscape before her, she knew she would crawl and claw her way back to the homestead and the children. She breathed deep, and was filled with enough air to lift herself upright. No longer under the ladder, Christina felt as if she was ascending the rungs, making progress. Overcome with faith and hope, she looked forward and toward the place she would soon leave far behind.

Christina’s World written by Brenda Aronowitz

“Andy, now don’t go bothering the neighbors,” the realtor had advised. “Those Olson’s got their hands full with poor Christina, they have.”

I had just purchased an old farmstead in Maine, hoping to be secluded enough to finish my novel. I often gazed over at the ramshackle house in the distance, as close as neighbors got in this neck of the woods, and began to wonder about the rumors I was hearing in the general store. As a writer, I felt entitled to listen in on local gossip, though I hesitated to ask questions that might label me as the nosy newcomer.

Eventually I became curious enough about ‘poor Christina’ that I broached the question. “Indeed you could ask, but you need to see the poor thing to understand. Them folk got their hands full with her.”

Then, walking my property line one day, I noticed something was thrashing around in the Olson’s field. At first glance it appeared to be an animal in some kind of trouble. It was rolling awkwardly side to side, appearing to creep toward the homestead by dragging its body, inch by inch.

Then I saw a human arm, thin as a spider leg, clawing at the long grasses. I realized with a shock that the creature must be poor Christina. I could see she was dragging her body through the stubble-field, hands scraped and bleeding.

The primal struggle horrified me, so painful and raw, as she fought the gravity binding her to the earth.

Yes, I understood now. Poor Christina. Oh, God! How could I ever find words vivid enough to describe this agony?

Maybe a quick sketch? Maybe I should even pull out my paints...

No saving grace, No saving grace

Appears in this fearful place

And of this nightmare, who’s to blame?

It brings us to the point of shame.

Although a ship behind of brimming sail,

Your rescue seems of no avail.

A curator at the Met,

States your “stoic resolve”.

You gaze away,

Beyond the frame,

Perhaps remembering from where you came,

Or to the One who knows your name.

There your future is dissolved

Perhaps our sins can be absolved.