Regaining a Bit of My Groove through Painting and Poetry (Inspired by Sunsets)

 Part I:

As you may or may not have noticed, I have not done too much writing lately...at least much that I have shared. And I think that my lack of production, coupled with lack of time dedicated to writing or other creative endeavors, has shaken a little of my confidence...or at least my creative confidence.

Part II:

Over the past two or three weeks I noticed an influx of sunset pictures on social media, too. And then I started noticing them again as I have had to run kids back and forth to rehearsals, to jobs, to the dentist, or to find a COIVD test. And I kept seeing them--all distinct from the previous day. Then the sunrises came, too, as I drove to campus each morning. For several consecutive days I drove blinded by beauty. My mind drifted through all sorts of metaphors regarding life, death, resurrection, the afterlife (and breakfast). It's a wonder I did not crash.

Part III:

Last Tuesday I was in charge of an activity for the 14-15 year old young men and women at church. Since Brooklyn falls into that age group, I asked her. She wanted to paint. Great idea. So I forced myself to create. I admit it was a struggle to come up with an idea at first, especially since I kept running back and forth with supplies for the teenagers (and they blasted the soundtrack to Disney's Encanto louder than should ever be played. Sidenote: (I am sick of Bruno!)

Part IV:

Right before I left the house, I saw an amazing sunset over the rooftops of my neighborhood. That became the inspiration for my amateur painting. After it was finished, I felt that it needed a poem, so I worked on that for the past few days. Now the desire to write and create and play is coming back!

Part V:

"Glory to Come"

Preparing

for His night shift,

the Master daubs the remnants

of today’s palette

over the blue-gray canvas,

sloshing purple and pink;

and with the waning light,

He rinses His brushes

through the clouds,

momentarily

spilling orange gold

around the edges.

 

The slipping sun winks

before sinking to black—

one last promise

of another masterpiece

to come.

Part VI:

As always, critiques and criticisms are welcome.

 

There's a Poem in That

Last year, I carpooled with a few colleagues to a literacy conference in Salt Lake. On the first morning of the conference, a couple of us went to a breakout session and heard from Georgia Heard, who offered these tidbits (among others) for teaching and writing poetry:

-          Find poetry in the ordinary

-          Observe the small moments around us

-          Be filled with curiosity and wonder

-          See beauty in the ugly (beyond stereotypes)

-          Look at the world in a new way (simile and metaphor)

-          Love the meaning and sound of words

-          Pay attention to and write from all feelings

-          Always be on the lookout for poetry seeds

-          See that you can look at anything and find a poem

Sound advice; and points I wholeheartedly agree with, especially as I name Billy Collins as my favorite modern poet. He subscribes to all of the above. (I try to as well when I pretend to poet.)

The next morning, as we began our journey north, we started a conversation about poetry, and I shared an anecdote about using Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Valentine for Ernest Mann” as a writing prompt for my 9^th graders. And as we discussed the place that poems hide, especially in the lives of teenagers who refuse to look for them, I spotted a middle-aged woman in a bright pink bathrobe, mismatched house slippers, and curlers, cigarette smoke shrouding most of her face, sitting slouched on a short, crumbling cement and brick wall at a bus stop. Flippantly, I mentioned that there was even a poem in that.

We had a good laugh—not at the woman, but at the truth that there was poetry everywhere, waiting to be discovered. Susan took that and ran with it. For the rest of the day (actually for the rest of the school year), she was always pointing out people and objects—ordinary or extraordinary—and asking me, “Is there a poem in that?” I think it started as a jest, but it stuck with me, and the rest of us, I believe, and we started seeing things for more than what they were. Our eyes were opened, if you will.

Susan used this and the presentations from Georgia Heard and Brod Bagert as a foundation for sharing with her students, advising them to always be on the lookout for poetry seeds. She also used this as a presentation during a week-long institute for the Central Utah Writing Project that I helped facilitate. The participants loved it and the other ideas she shared about poetry.

 

My favorite part was a haiku that Susan crafted and shared (and illustrated with an accompanying photo she found):

One of those mornings:

Slept through alarm; can’t find keys.

How I HATE Mondays.

A simple, shared sentiment—one that most of us dread—captured poetically. An image; a thought; a feeling. All of these can spark poetry. Another of my most favorite recent experiences with this is the “Three-Mile Radius” exhibit at the Springville Art Museum featuring art by Jacqui Larsen and poetry by her husband, Utah Poet Laureate Lance Larsen. I visited the museum with my nine year old daughter Brooklyn, queen of finding the art and poetry in the simple motions of daily life. I strongly recommend that you visit the exhibit before it’s over (22 Oct 16).

I guess the whole point of this post is to remind myself and whoever happens to read this far to look for the beauty and the profound in the simple day-to-day living. Who knows, you might find a poem in the recesses of your closet, the soccer-stained socks hanging on the edge of the tub next to a pile of Band-Aids and tissues, or the stack of undisturbed memos in your in box. I know I have found a few over the past few months. I’ve even gone so far as to scribble a few lines in sundry scattered notebooks. Maybe I’ll go back to them and remember the beauty I wanted to save for another day.

Field Trip

This is a short (and very rough) ramble I penned while at the Springville Museum of Art yesterday with a group of honors students.

I’m sitting at an iron-wrought table with lattice work that reminds me of an over-cooked apple pie, my wideness squeezed into a matching cold apple pie chair. It was obviously not meant for my comfort. Amid the patrolling volunteer docents are seventy of my junior high students—good kids—meandering here and there, clipboards in hand. The remaining museum population on this cold March morning consists of a smattering of high school students from another county as well as a few roving pockets of knee-high elementary schoolers, complete with chaperon in tow. Here and there a single parent with toddler and stroller appear.

As I perused the art alone—the other teacher chaperons elsewhere—I couldn’t help but observe the other specimens—the human subjects-with the same scrutiny I used on the watercolors and graphite sketches. Most of my students were clustered in various locations discussing anything but art, searching for an alcove or a recess in the building where they would become invisible to teachers' eyes, a place where their thumbs could blaze on their phones in peace.

A select few sit on the weathered wooden benches, appearing to ponder the oil and canvas. But upon closer reconnaissance, they are merely mechanically filling out worksheets—getting their required exposure to art over with as quickly as possible. They read the placard to fill in a box on the paper, doing their duty to photocopied academia so their friends don’t have to giggle in the next gallery with out them longer than thirty-seven seconds.

“Sure, we saw all the art, Mr. A,” they said when I asked one particular band of boys twenty minutes after arrival if they had seen a particular gallery. “We even did the assignment.” A hand produces a misshaped green paper-irregular creases like only a junior high pocket can produce. Three more papers materialize from folders and pockets as if to say “See, we’re cultured; now leave us alone.”

Ah, true. They might have seen all the art, I muse as they disappear around a corner…perhaps even two or three times, based on my frequent sightings of them in various locations. A flirtatious scream from the direction the boys had headed-definitely NOT a museum voice. Matthew’s narration of the Savior’s use of parables comes to mind: “because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand (Matthew 13:13).

And so I question, not just here in the Springville Museum of Art, but in life, how many of my students, how many human beings race through the halls of life’s gallery with their eyes open without seeing anything. How many times do I sprint through the day without pausing to enjoy the beauty that surrounds me?

I remember as a teenager being clichéd by my mother to take time and smell the roses. I propose that we not only stop for the roses, but for the plainer, simpler beauties: the daisies and marigolds, even if they don’t have much of an aroma. And truth be told, most flowers plain stink. But there is still beauty to be had.

I consider Naomi Shihab Nye’s “A Valentine for Ernest Mann.” We need to take the time and reinvent the skunks of the world and see them for their potential, their beauty, even if we don't understand the splotches of paint that are supposed to be fruit or seagulls, or the hardships of a the world repressed until they explode onto a canvas. Most people would raise their eyebrows if I suggested that the combined smells of gasoline, freshly cut grass, dirt, and deodorant-tinged body odor reek of success. You might just run through the halls, looking and sniffing, and pass by without a second thought. But my wife sure loves the yard when I’m done on a Saturday afternoon. It's the details of the process, not just the final product that matter.

So, when I say stop and drink up the smell of floor polish (without getting high), or pause to listen to the giggle of three little princesses getting their toes painted in the basement by their mother, or I have you stop and observe a small bumblebee dancing from pansy to petunia while snow still hugs the earth, or point out a 7th grader helping a classmate gather up an explosion that was once his notebook, remember that it’s these small details in life, the brushstrokes, the composition behind the canvas of life, if you will, that make the difference between merely existing and really being part of this life.

I don't pretend to understand art or life. However, I can appreciate it. I try to use my eyes to see, my ears to hear, and my life to comprehend and enjoy the beauty. Maybe some of that can rub off on my seventy—well, at least the two or three who took the time to pause and listen and see for themselves.