Tag Archives: new poem

Finished After Water-Proofing Garden Rock

Painted Rock by Maria L. Berg 2023

dVerse Poets Pub

Today is Open Link Night at the pub, so I get to write about anything I want. There are already lots of little green starts coming up from the seeds I planted, and I painted the big rock I dug up from my garden.

When Mixing, It’s Important to Know There Are Warm Shades And Cool Shades to Your Colors

I made sure she came out and saw it:
I don’t know why I needed her to see it

She instantly said, “It’s like one of your images. You made it look like your photographs.”
I couldn’t believe it, with all its imperfections, she saw it, just as it was.

The rock, the huge-to-me rock that I dug up out of the garden plot I’ve been working for so many years; it was so big I knew I had to paint it, to turn it into a marker, a greeter, a part of the garden.

When I asked him if I could use the plot, the square of overgrowth where my grandfather had planted potatoes, he said, “Go ahead, but the soils bad.”  After I’ve tried all sorts of different seeds and plants and worked and worked that soil for a decade, when I showed him this year’s planted garden, he said, “We’ll see. That soil’s bad.”

How can the soil that fed me those incredible baby acorn squash —that I didn’t even plant when the car wasn’t running and I needed food—be bad?

I was so surprised when I dug up that rock after digging in this same square of earth so long. But then, that’s what roots do: they reach down, and around those rocks, and while they reach,
they grow and forget about those rocks
as their reaching and growing pushes rocks to the surface. 

It was hard to decide what to paint. I wanted to create something that would invite me into my garden to work, to weed and to tend, to pay attention. I wanted something that I would want to visit. That’s hard to paint for oneself. It had to have something right and wrong with it, change with the light.

And she was right, I tried to recreate overlapping colored lights with paint, to turn the curled metal of my small mirror into a vine. And she saw it. And she saw me without a word, she just knew it was me,
inviting me to my garden.



Me, I Emu

Always Sharking by Maria L. Berg 2023

dVerse Poets Pub

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.

A Garden Once Begun

My Freshly Finished Garden by Maria L. Berg 2023

dVerse Poets Pub

Today’s Form For All prompt is to write a Quatern

A Garden Once Begun

Today, I finished my garden
Over four days I toiled in soil
The hoe broke through thick roots and rocks
As if last year’s work never was

And I dug up such a large rock
Today; I finished my garden
In the same plot I’ve worked for years
I will paint it as a path stone

To greet me when I come to weed
My even horizontal rows
I finished planting. My garden
Will be the best this year because

I worked harder, and dug deeper
Seems I exclaim that every year
I will reap what I sow soon, but
Today, I finished my garden



How Gravity Affects Composition

Horizontal Weight by Maria L. Berg 2023

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?

Vertical Weight by Maria L. Berg 2023

dVerse Poets Pub

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.

She Says Peculiarity is Orange

Peculiarity in Sympathy by Maria L. Berg 2023

For those readers who are wondering where my Reading Novels Like a Novelist (RNLN) post is, those posts are on hold for now. I’m still reading and taking notes on a novel a week, I’m just not into spending the time writing about them right now. We’re having some early summer weather here in the South Sound, and I have flower beds to find, and ants to battle, lawns to mow, and a garden to plant, and the weird thing is; my back gets sore, and I get tired. What’s that about? This crazy excitement for working outside will hopefully last through next week and then I’ll probably get back to talking about noveling (and revising my novel, of course).

Today’s Images

I finally found some new pool noodles, so my floating studio has a new façade! I made a new tiny brad filter with a moving triangle on a triangle inspired by a diagram of Jean Victor Poncelet’s treatise on the projective properties of figures in Visual Thinking by Rudolf Arnheim.

While I was setting up my floating studio, a ginormous fish swam under it, and then came back to see what I was doing (sorry I didn’t take its picture, I was kind of stunned, and my camera was still on the porch). I think it might be a bass and live under the dock. I hope it comes to visit again, but not when I’m swimming.

It’s Open Link Night at dVerse Poets Pub which means there’s no poetry prompt, so head over and link up one of your poems and enjoy reading poetry by poets from all over the world!

For today’s poem, I’m continuing to focus on contradictory abstract nouns. I’ve collected and printed out an extensive list of abstract nouns ( I’m hoping to eventually have a definitive list of all of the abstract nouns in the English language to put in my three dimensional chart of where they fit on the continua of fear, control, and bias). At the moment, the words are on strips of paper in a cup. I selected peculiarity and sympathy to think about today.

Sympathy in Peculiarity by Maria L. Berg 2023

She says peculiarity is orange

like this Fanta orange? zesting fizzy, bright and sweet?
she ponders, head tilted, then smiles and shakes her head

like a construction cone (worn as a hat), or safety vest (over an evening gown)?
she laughs, then frowns, then smiles, her orange lips stretching almost to her orange hair
staring into me, waiting silently

the orange peculiar to oranges?

she knows orange is my favorite color
I’m in my orange flightsuit, drinking an orange soda, under an orange tree in an orange plastic chair

I would say that orange is sympathetic
in an agreed juicy taste and spherical shape
sharing an understanding of orangeness

but do they feel sorrow—as they fall from the tree—in the falling;
do they feel peculiar in their oneness;
do they feel compassion for the others still clinging, and afraid?

she knows orange is my favorite color

Dialectic Composition: Centricity and Eccentricity

Centricity by Maria L. Berg 2023

While contemplating the next steps in my study of contradictory abstract nouns, I started reading The Power of the Center: A Study of Composition in the Visual Arts by Rudolf Arnheim, and realized that focusing on composition, both in my images and in my poetry is a logical next step.

Arnheim proposes that there are two compositional systems: the centric and the eccentric. The centric is the self-centered attitude. The eccentric is the recognition that one’s own center is not the only center, and stands for any action directed toward an outer center, and is in turn affected by the outer center.

Arnheim states, “The tension between the two antagonistic tendencies trying to achieve equilibrium is the very spice of human experience, and any artistic statement failing to meet the challenge will strike us as insufficient. Neither total self-centeredness nor total surrender to outer powers can make for an acceptable image of human motivation.”

So Arnheim has set up a dialectic of composition: The centric system gives rise to the eccentric system which is in conflict with it, and the two create tension while trying to come to equilibrium. As he talked more about centric and eccentric systems they seemed to correlate with my ideas of inner and outer control.

Though I’m just beginning to read the book and think about centric and eccentric composition, I was inspired to try something new in the mirrorworld to change my compositions. In December of 2021, I tried making “wreaths of light” by wrapping lights around a metal ring. Today, I wrapped the metal ring in lights and put it in the mirrorworld. I tied it to a bar overhead so it would stand up. I’ve always draped the string-lights between the mirrors, so this changes many aspects of the compositions. The most interesting change is that the wires between the lights are no longer part of the composition.

Eccentricity by Maria L. Berg 2023

dVerse Poets Pub

For today’s Poetics prompt, Mish introduced us to the surrealist images of Erik Johansson and asks us to write a poem inspired by one of a selection of his works. For today’s focus, I was most drawn to “Drifting Away.”

Watching the Others Drifting Along

That explains a lot, really—
It’s the waves (in the dip between the crests)
that lull us into believing the fluffy clouds are harmless
the crows cawing as they chase past the steeple carry no omen
the open barn doors only invite the cattle home
not to slaughter, not to ruin
It’s so easy to forget the bottle will soon be tossed
the upheaval will arrive


Outside the glass, the eccentric, the other center
pushes and pulls, cycles and swirls, always


But in that lull, when the sun hits just right
the water splashed and dripping could be
a refreshing rain, not the evidence
that I am only in a bigger bottle.

Cat-scratch Reveille

Scratching at the Window by Maria L. Berg 2023

At dVerse Poets Pub for today’s MTB Critique and Craft prompt we are:

  • writing an alternate rhyme poem of at least 3 stanzas
  • the rhyme scheme is ABAB; CDCD; EFEF etc
  • We are going to borrow the alternate rhyme pairs from a published poem
  • in the order they were written
  • either a famous poem or one of our own previously published
  • do cite the source (or even post with the original in parallel)

I chose “Reveille” by A. E. Housman from my copy of The Great Modern Poets edited by Michael Schmidt. Drag the arrows to switch between the two poems.

Poetry Month Challenges Day 30: Zeal and Zealousness

Zealousness in Zeal by Maria L. Berg 2023

Zeal & Zealousness

Finding the contradictory nature in today’s abstract nouns was an interesting and challenging exercise. Many would say that zeal and zealousness have the same meaning, however, zeal is a feeling and zealousness is being full of or characterized by that feeling.

I thought writer Harvey Ardman’s answer to the question of how zeal and zealousness differ came closest to what I was thinking when he wrote on quora.com:

“Zeal” means having a lot of energy or enthusiasm for a cause or a task.

“Zealousness” has the same meaning, but with an additional connotation of obsession.

Harvey Ardman

I thought it was interesting that last year I wrote about zealousness as something positive and motivational, but this year because I was looking at zeal and zealousness as contradictory, zealousness took on a negative meaning to me.

This got me thinking about a third continuum of abstract nouns which is bias. During my studies of contradictory abstract nouns, I’ve come to the conclusion that contradictory abstract nouns are the same noun defined along a continuum of perceptual bias. So for today’s graph of all of the contradictory abstract nouns I explored this month, I added a third dimension, of positive or negative bias. Here’s my three-dimensional mapping of the contradictory abstract nouns along the axes of fear, control, and bias:

Three Dimensions of Abstract Nouns by Maria L. Berg 2023
Positive Bias by Maria L. Berg 2023

Today’s Images

To find the zeal in zealousness and zealousness in zeal, I played with the same painting with a flashlight technique I used last year. I set up the tri-pod in the mirrorworld, and used a Kandinsky-inspired sharpie drawing on clear plastic filter. Using the timer, and trying different shutter speeds, I zealously attempted to write a Z and an M. My zeal waned when I got hungry.

Zeal in Zealousness by Maria L. Berg 2023

The Prompts

NaPoWriMo

Today’s prompt is to to “write a palinode – a poem in which you retract a view or sentiment expressed in an earlier poem. For example, you might pick a poem you drafted earlier in the month and write a poem that contradicts or troubles it. This could be an interesting way to start working on a series of related poems. Alternatively, you could play around with the idea of a palinode by writing a poem in which the speaker says something like “I take it back” or otherwise abandons a prior position within the single poem.”

Poem A Day

Today’s prompt is to write a surprise poem.

The Poem

Defining Zealousness

Last year zealousness was positive.
It was active and diligent,
hard to discern from zeal.
But today it’s a negative trait:
it’s too much, excessive, obsessive;
it’s pushy, single-minded and won’t listen;
it is so devoted and convicted that it
is a one way street to aggression and violence.

Last year zealousness was passionate
and full of intense emotion,
but this year that emotion has changed:
from pleasure to addiction;
from motivation to necessity
at all cost; from love to hate.
And that zealousness leaves
a hole, a hunger, a vicious
circular definition like a spinning
magnet attracted and repulsed,
and attracted an repulsed
until the string breaks.

Last year zealousness was enthusiasm,
a feeling of excitement for what’s to come.
But today it’s contradictory, line-crossed
to the fanatic, past the point of discovery
and surprise, to the point of know it all
and everyone else is wrong, and nothing
will be the same, and something must be done
because no one is listening and they all
must see because zealousness is now
all consuming, and the zeal is waning
from hunger.


Poetry Month Challenges Day 29: Yearning and Yield

Yield in Yearning by Maria L. Berg 2023

Yearning and Yield

I still absolutely love the image I made for yearning last year. Much of my current yearning—strong, persistent craving or desire accompanied by tenderness or sadness for something unattainable or distant—to create thought-provoking images that express the contradictory nature of life, began last year during the A to Z challenge with my study of abstract nouns.

Yield can have a concrete meaning: the quantity or amount yielded. A quantity of goods can be counted, touched, measured, but yield has many other meanings: to give up, as to superior power; to give up or surrender (oneself); to give as due or required; to cause; give rise to. With the opposite meanings of “to give up” and “give rise to” also makes yield a janus word.

In The Mind at Mischief, Sadler uses yield in defining security:

Security is the emotion we feel when we yield to our inherent gregarious instinct. Man is naturally a herd animal. He feels safer when he is one of a crowd of his own fellows. This emotion of security is the well-spring of the impulse of self-preservation, and when indulged, yields that feeling of safety which we experience as the result of companionship with those of our kind.

William S. Sadler, M.D.

Notice that the feeling of safety is a yield of the emotion of security. In this way yield is an abstract noun. Yield is contradictory to yearning in that a yield is something in hand, a result, where yearning is something distant, wanting something that may be unattainable.

Today’s Images

For today’s images I created a second reflection ball cage, something I have been yearning to do, but thought I needed more pool noodles. Instead I used an old one that had curved into a U and joined it with a couple broken pieces to close the cage. Then I used my wonder and wisdom transparencies behind my cut-shape filters. What a yield. It really feels like painting with light.

Yearning in Yield by Maria L. Berg 2023

The Prompts

NaPoWriMo

Today’s prompt is to write a two-part poem that focuses on a food or type of meal. At some point in the poem, describe the food or meal as if it were a specific kind of person. Give the food/meal at least one line of spoken dialogue.

Poem A Day

Today’s prompt is to write a sight poem.

The Poem

Yearning for Next Year’s Yield

I. I toil, yearning
to live off the harvest.
I turn the compost, and
dig as deep as I can,
loosening the soil
for the roots of
future plants.
Every year my hopes
soar, certain that
this year will be different:
that I’ve put in more
effort than the year before;
that this variety will
be heartier than the last;
that the birds and insects
and weather will work with
me not against me this year
I yearn for spirals of pole beans
reaching up to tall bright-yellow
sunflowers, bowing their big heads
over plump orange pumpkins, growing
big enough to carve scary monster
faces set to glow on long, dark,
chilly autumn nights, or mashed
into a vibrant pie filling to celebrate
a day of thanks for a bountiful harvest.

II. And the sprouts pop through
green against the dark earth,
a bountiful yield in every row
and I patiently wait for them
to grow, to flower, to fruit
but the sun beats down, and
the leaves are nibbled,
weeds encroach and choke
and they refuse to grow
as if to say,
We would rather die than
nourish you. There is nothing
you can do to make us happy.
But with a creator’s love,
I dress the small, damaged leaves
of the surviving, kale, lettuce, and chard
and savor every bite
of my luxurious yield
while imagining what I
will do differently next year.


Poetry Month Challenges Day 28: Xanadu and Xylography

Xanadu Satellites in Xylography by Maria L. Berg 2023

Xanadu & Xylography

Last year I had a lot of fun with Xanadu, the mythical paradise from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan, and the muse’s roller-rink in the Olivia Newton John movie. I made a rollerskate filter and attempted a shape poem in the shape of a rollerskater. Today and tomorrow, with this wonderful faux-summer weather and my family coming out to enjoy it, this is my Xanadu, right here where I am. My “stately pleasure-dome” with an ice-cold lake and an awe-inspiring view of Mt. Rainier. I’m so glad I mowed yesterday. So how could xylography be a contradiction to an imagined paradise like Xanadu?

How is xylography even an abstract noun? Xylography is the art of making woodcuts or wood engravings; the art, craft, or process of printing from wooden blocks. You may say, I know what a wood block is: I can touch it, I can see it, I can smell it. Yes, it’s a bit of a stretch to say that xylography is an abstract noun (like Xanadu), but right there in the definition it says it is an art. And what is art? There we have the abstract nature of xylography.

Xylography has a permanence. The image carved into the wood, the relief image left on the surface, can be painted or inked and printed again and again. Xanadu is impermanent, a fantasy, always changing.

Today’s Images

To find the xylography in Xanadu and the Xanadu in Xylography, I found some laser-cut wooden puzzle pieces I designed when we were just starting Artifact Puzzles, and tested one of my puzzles on a thinner wood.

Xylography in Xanadu or Moonman by Maria L. Berg 2023

The Prompts

NaPoWriMo

Today’s prompt is to write an index poem.

Poem A Day

Today’s prompt is a title prompt “You Are (blank).”

The Poem

You Are Xylography of Xanadu

Aggression and apathy, 1
Like a woodblock carving of my dream destination

Beauty and barbarism, 3
slathered in every sparkling color and pressed to every surface

Calm and chaos, 4
everywhere I look, you are art, you are craft, you are the first

Desire and disdain, 5
you endure, changing with each replication, creating

Expression and ego, 6
wonder and surprise with wear and tear

Fear and faithfulness, 7
every chip and ding a new depth, an interpretation

Gossip and graciousness, 8
of time, I remember when I carved you

Honor and helplessness, 10
a simple quarter note on a staff

Idiosyncrasy and integrity, 11
the curved blade slipped and somehow turned

Joy and Justice, 12
like a serpent burying its fang deep into my index

Kindness and knowledge, 13
finger, and the blood, and the pulsing pain

Luck and loss, 14
they are all in that wood block to be printed

Misery and mercy, 15
again and again, in every color not only red

Need and nonsense, 17
my only print was all indigo on brown paper

Opportunity and opportunism, 18
thick and textured like paper towels from school

Pleasure and patience, 19
bathroom dispensers, I’ve never understood carving

Quality and quirk, 20
wood without fear, xylography is not

Reality and romance, 21
the art for me, though lovely

Sadness and satisfaction, 22
perhaps my Xanadu is a land

Thrill and tiredness, 24
where I never carved my finger

Urge and use, 25
and carve you in every relief

Value and vanity, 26
to illustrate every fantasy

Wonder and wisdom, 27
in an ever-changing, ever-growing

Xanadu and xylography, 28
book of life, we share in the calm

Yearning and yield, 29
moments between

Zeal and zealousness, 30