New Statesman -- poems on paintings -- April 26
 

The spring double issue seems to be out a day early.

Bill Greenwell and I managed hon menshes, but we ain't got the do-re-mi this week. After a long run of prose competitions, here's a call for poems. I don't see a line limit specified, but the mention of sonnets probably gives some indication of the length they're looking for.

No 4224

Set by Leonora Casement
The Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti frequently wrote sonnets to accompany his pictures. We want you to send in verses to any painting of your choice. To be in by 26 April comp@newstatesman.co.uk

I gave it a quick try, but unfortunately I seem to have forgotten to put any jokes into it:


THE SCREAM

The sky turned red as blood. Exhausted, tense,
anxious, with anxiety that's shared
by all of nature, leaning on a fence,
as tongues of scalding flame like torches flared
across the sorry canvas of damnation,
I felt a dawning sunrise of despair
paint streaks across a canvas of negation
and knew that what I felt was everywhere,
and from my stomach's pit, the place my soul
would lurk if I could still believe in magic,
I felt a force beyond my self-control,
beyond the consolations of the tragic,
a horror, since I knew it was no dream,
and gave the only thing I could: a scream.

Are jokes obligatory, Roger? I think the Speccie sixteen lines is a good length. It has won before. Does the painting have to be real? Or can it be a literary painting?


The Picture of Dorian Gray

Lord Henry Wotton says pleasure
Is a thing to enjoy without measure.
And there isn’t much doubt what he’s talking about
Is the joy of a boy for your leisure.

Basil Hallward, the painter, is gay,
(Most of Lord Henry’s friends are that way),
And he’s pissing his pants for a chance at romance
With a honey called Dorian Gray.

This Dorian’s helluva hot
For a spell in the sack, and why not?
Added to which, the sonovabitch
Doesn’t age – not a tittle or jot.

Yes, the sheen on his skin is as soft
As a baby’s behind . Has he quaffed
Any magical fixers? His secret elixir’s
The portrait he keeps in his loft.

Plainly Dorian won't do because it wants a poem TO the painting. But perhaps this will. It's a re-jig of something I wrote before but it fits quite well, particularly as I gather that Eros/Cupid here may well be a lover of the painter.He certainly turns up in another painting, but older. I don't know that much about Caravaggio except that he led a rackety life and (I think) killed someone.

Amor Victorious by Caravaggio

Oh you are as sweet as the ace in the hole,
As the lilt of your look and the scrub of your hair,
And your hair is as black as the black of the coal,
And the coal is as black as the deep of despair,
And your skin is as pale as the pale of the milk,
And your teeth are as sharp as the teeth of the fox,
And your touch is as smooth as the smooth of the silk,
And your eyes are like diamonds shut in a box.

You are silver as starshine, as gold as a ring,
You are fleeting and fine as a trick of the light,
You are warm as the woof and the weft of the spring,
You are cool as a pool on a soft summer night,
You are wanton and wise as the elephant’s child,
You are lissom and lithe as a broth of a boy
And as fierce and as fell as a wolf in the wild
And the birth of my pain and the death of my joy.

Hmm. You're more observant than I am, John. In posting the competition information, I didn't take note of that phrasing -- "verses to any painting of your choice." Given the previous sentence's mention of Rossetti's "sonnets to accompany his pictures," I'd guess that "to any painting" doesn't necessarily mean "addressed to any painting," but rather something like "in response to any painting." But I've been wrong before.

I think you're right, Chris, not me. But I can be sort of right too.

An Exasperated Constable
 

I don't know why we hired that gormless kid.
You won't believe the stupid thing he did:
He tried to cross the river with the horse
and cart; he got about halfway, of course,
then stood there doing sod all, while I watched,
until I shouted, "Hey, Wayne, - Christ, you've botched
that job." "I know," he said. "The wheels are stuck."
I raised my eyes to heaven. What The...??

[sorry, pay no attention to that little man in the corner, impasting this over]

But I think (or hope) you're right, Chris. Otherwise I've wasted my entries!

I hope so too. But I'm sure - well, not entirely sure, because competition editors move in mysterious ways - that "to a painting" must mean "to go with a painting" or "to describe a painting".

If I'm wrong, I'll eat the hat from the sonnet competition.

a country boy writes...
 

I take the rubric to mean, exam-question-style, 'write a poem about a painting of your choice'. And that's what I did.