For today’s Poetics prompt, Sarah invites us to verb animals and use those verbs or verb phrases—like “horsing around” or “pigging out” or our own inventions like “eagle over” or “ant the whole hill”—in our poem.
This Animal Kingdom
He is always sharking— dead-eyed stare, open mouth full of sharpness always moving—prowling for the next morsel to come too close
Me, I emu Unable to fly, I present a feathery girth over questionably designed legs with a deadly kick primed if he gets too close.
In the rare moments he’s not sharking, he squirrels—all his pouches full of nuts and seeds (mostly mine and the morsels’ he sharks)— but he squirrels lazily: I’ll find his burrow
When I don’t emu, I hornbill I spread my striking wingspan, and my caw, generated in my bulbous head, carries elation under the thick canopy, then using my curved, sharp beak I crack the nuts from his hollow.
Me, I Emu by Maria L. Berg 2023
Today’s images
Inspired by today’s poetics prompt, I thought it would be fun to use some animal filters with my new light-wrapped forms in the mirrorworld, to see if I could make them verb. I really enjoyed searching through my filters and picking out all the different animals I’ve created filters of over the years. The shark and the emu filters pictured above, I created to use with the fireworks last Fourth of July.
In my last abstractions post, I talked about The Power of the Center: A Study of Composition in the Visual Arts by Rudolf Arnheim, and the ideas of centric and eccentric composition. Arnheim goes on to talk about how forces like gravity can effect composition which I found interesting.
Arnheim says, “Walking downhill, dropping, or falling is experienced kinesthetically as acceding to one’s own weight. One is being pushed downward by a force situated in the center of one’s own body. . . .The dominant pull of gravity makes the space we live in asymmetrical. . . .Human beings experience the dynamic asymmetry, or anisotropy, of space by means of two senses, kinesthesis and vision. The physical effect of gravity is perceived as tension in the muscles, tendons, and joints of the body. Visually, the world is pervaded by a similar downward pull, whose influence on the dynamic character of the things we see may be illustrated by the difference between what goes on visually in horizontal and vertical surfaces.”
He continues to state that the horizontal orientation is centric composition, since all points have the same relation to the ground, but because of our physical interactions with gravity, vertical orientation is strengthened by a gravitational vector and is thus interacting with an outside center and an eccentric composition. He states that since we must put effort into upward movement, but not into downward movement, we perceive an element in the upper part of the vertical image as having more weight than an element in the lower part. Thus the element in the upper part should be smaller to counterbalance an element below.
Today’s images
I liked the new compositions I was making with the wrapped ring in the mirrorworld, but wanted to see if a smaller ring that actually fit inside the frame of the mirror would have better results. While looking for materials to make the form, I noticed some old wire hat stands I had and decided to try wrapping them with lights. I had three, so I stacked two of them, and wrapped them with colored lights, and left one as is and wrapped it with white lights. This idea has so much potential because they stand freely and I can move them around in relation to each other.
Inspired by Arnheim’s discussion of horizontal and vertical weight, I made a clear plastic filter and drew a symmetrical cross in black sharpie, and I cut out a paper filter with a symmetrical cross in the middle of a circle. The plastic filter creates texture, and I can layer the two filters and move the paper one over the plastic one to cross the crosses at different angles. These images show the paper filter.
What do you think? Do you feel a gravitational pull in the vertical image, but not the horizontal?
For today’s Poetics prompt, Lillian provided some portraits by Thorvald Hellesen (1888 – 1937) as inspiration. I chose “Portrait of Eivind Eckbo” painted in 1914 for today’s poem.
The Man in Motion
He is a whirl of spring air spinning, spinning always turning but with one eye holding my stare like a ballerina in an eternal pirouette one leg steady—in the shadow under there under his billowing cloak rising and falling, a dangerous snare— the other continuing the momentum pointing in, pointing out, so beware
He is fluttering soft petals on a fragrant breeze whirling, whirling, but that eye on me stares the head almost appears to have a plan to stay still as the body turns, but then all hair it snaps around and is back and then it does it again—SNAP! the head has come around, never losing that stare
And the spinning never stops as with each turn he becomes more aware that he’s a pastel shimmer in motion more breezy, more one with the spring air and forgets he has a leg on the ground in the shadows under that cloak that has flown off somewhere.
Experience Writing 