Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit terrific Tracey at Tangles and Tails for Roundup.
Will a poetry title win the Newbery this year? Here's a post that evaluates MY HEAD HAS A BELLYACHE by Chris Harris as a contender. (We'll find out at ALA Youth Media Awards on Monday, January 22, 8 am est!)
Today's ArtSpeak: FOLK ART poem features work by Louisiana folk artist Clementine Hunter (1886-1988).
You can read more about Clementine in a picture book Art from Her Heart: Folk Artist Clementine Hunter by Kathy Whitehead, illus. by Shane W. Evans.
The poem is a variation on a triolet (one of my go-to forms...but I often like to switch up those repeating lines, at least a little bit!).
We Bring Flowers: A Funeral Song
We bring flowers to say goodbye—
Goodbye, dear one, why did you have to go?
For their beauty, for the way they perfume the sky—
we bring flowers to say goodbye.
Lilies sing when we can do nothing but cry,
roses soften the tidal wave of woe.
We bring flowers to say, Goodbye,
goodbye—O dear one, why did you have to go?
- Irene Latham
Two books on my nightstand that may have influenced this poem:
I love your triolet, Irene! It feels like the perfect form for that artwork. Beautiful! Also, I am so excited that My Head Has a Bellyache is under consideration. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE that book. I wish I had written it. Yay, Chris Harris!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Irene! I find triolets so comforting with the line repetition.
ReplyDeleteI love how the triolet is just right for this image. I'm a huge fan of Clementine Hunter art. I have a set of plates, a tray, and even an ornament (a gift this year). One year my students and I did a deep dive into her story and art and we painted a door of her art. Each student did a single pane of the door. I'm afraid it's gone now, an accident with the custodian. But the memory of the engagement of my students remains.
ReplyDeleteI'm sitting with "Lilies sing when we can do nothing but cry" -- It makes me think of a plea I read not long ago by a Palestinian who begged others to hold a space for peace because right now he could not, it was too painful. Perhaps that is the gift of flowers, to sing when we cannot. Thank you for this, Irene.
ReplyDeleteIt's wonderful to think of flowers as loving goodbyes when we are too heartbroken to do so, Irene. One of my volunteers just wrote me that she had to miss working because a dear friend of hers had passed. I will share this poem with her, know she will find goodness in it. As Patricia loved "Lilies sing when we can do nothing but cry", so do I.
ReplyDelete"the way they perfume the sky" so lovely!
ReplyDeleteA perfect form for this poem and this painting. Flowers doing for the mourners what they cannot do. This image will stay with me. Just beautiful.
ReplyDeleteClementine Hunter is an inspiration for late-to-art me!
ReplyDeleteLovely in every way. I love the line, "Lilies sing when we can do nothing but cry." Clementine is truly an inspiration! I highlighted a "latecomer" too — Anne Porter didn't get serious about her poetry until she was in her 60s, wasn't published till she was in her 80s. :D
ReplyDeleteOh, that's lovely, Irene. That metaphor of lilies singing is pitch perfect :>)
ReplyDeleteAh, flowers do perfume the sky. These beautiful lines brings such rich visuals: "Lilies sing when we can do nothing but cry,
ReplyDeleteroses soften the tidal wave of woe." Irene, the words to your poem do such justice to the artwork.