horse poem - in progress

For my next exhibition I'm going to combine words and images. Here's a work in progress. Not sure what the final format will be. I've posted it on my fiction page:

http://opheliasfiction.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/horse-poem/

colour in poetry

Keats remarkable description of a woman transformed into a snake

'She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,
Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;
Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr’d;
And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed,
Dissolv’d, or brighter shone, or interwreathed
Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries— '

Keats - Lamia

gericault's Mazeppa

A brief respite from the subject of the bushfires (still waiting to give a big hug to Juno - whether she likes it or not!). 

Here is Gericault's Mazeppa. A man is strapped to the back of a wild horse as a punishment. The horse carries him through the wilderness and back to his 'people' the other wild horses. It is a sublime and terrifying journey, that could be understood as expressing the wild power of desire. 

'The steeds rush on in plunging pride;

But where are they the reins to guide?

A thousand horse and none to ride!

With flowing tail, and flying mane,

Wide nostrils never stretched by pain,

Mouths bloodless to the bit or rein,

And feet that iron never shod,

And flanks unscarred by spur or rod,

A thousand horse, the wild, the free,

Like waves that follow o'er the sea,

Came thickly thundering on ...'

Byron, Mazeppa

inspiration - song and poetry

Words can create beautiful images and be an inspiration for artists. Here are Leonard Cohen's moving words from the Ballad of the Absent Mare:

'Oh the world is sweet the world is wide and she's there where the light and the darkness divide and the steam's coming off her she's huge and she's shy and she steps on the moon when she paws at the sky

And she comes to his hand but she's not really tame She longs to be lost he longs for the same and she'll bolt and she'll plunge through the first open pass to roll and to feed in the sweet mountain grass
...

And he leans on her neck and he whispers low "Whither thou goest I will go" And they turn as one and they head for the plain No need for the whip Ah, no need for the rein'

- Ballad of the Absent Mare, Leonard Cohen