This is better than yours...

1.

Comparison:

Van Gogh makes me think of

all the drugs I forgot to take

(wonder what he would have done

under the right prescription).

Hiroshige would be most displeased

to see the slip, glow, burn and leak.

Another gaijin, like a madman,

working within an orange frame

made out of some sort of drunk love

for what the Japanese master could not see.

2.

A Complaint and a Response:

“A reference to the image an(d) Van Gogh’s translation of it seems called for,

somewhere within the poem” (Professor's comments)

- In my notes:

Hiroshige (Japanese artist) working in the ukiyo-e style – very spare, full of grey

expanses, tufts of grass and, in the background, figures gathered for a day at the

park. Kimonos and shaved heads. No one in the foreground. Frame: grey

(painted wood)

Van Gogh, whose own perception of the work was formed by his sense of the

unending storm that is Nature. Everything looks fresh, still wet to the touch. I

called the sky “harsh”, the grass “soupy” and noted, as seen in Hiroshige’s work,

the central foregrounded tree branch, here now burnt brown-black, bent like a

flexed muscle. People seem even farther away than in the Hiroshige piece

3.

Unheard Dialogue:

“Don’t climb the trees,” her mother said. “You have to eat later and you will mess up your clothes.”

She didn’t listen, and played with the boys who went right up into the highest branches, scratching their arms, scraping their knees.

She made it to one of the highest limbs, on a dare.

And she could see the bridge...

Later, when two gentlemen nearby by wanted to know what it was like up there,

she giggled, thinking that they were afraid of heights, and ran back to her parents

(they told her not to talk to strangers), dreaming of the sky,

thinking of her branch.

*

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You can find more poems, stories, and articles by Kendall Defoe on my Vocal profile. I complain, argue, provoke and create...just like everybody else.

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