I received an email last night that I almost deleted without looking at, since that’s generally my habit with unknown people who contact me. I didn’t, though, and was interested to read that the author of the email had come across a poem of mine and wished to have permission to reprint it on the website he curated.
I checked out the site, and immediately recognized it. So, I quickly wrote back and gave my permission to reprint my poem. I’m very honored by this and so I’m sharing this with you.
The site is a memorial dedicated to the life and works of Alton S. Tobey. From the front page:
Alton S. Tobey was one of the most prolific and diversified artists of the past century. For over six decades Tobey’s murals, published works and thousands of paintings have taken millions of people on amazing visual journeys through world history, science, archaeology and dozens of other subjects.
That hardly begins to describe Tobey’s work, but you’ll find this site is much more extensive than you’d expect. My first exposure to Tobey’s work was through the artist’s magazines my mother subscribed to and my dad’s Life Magazine subscription. As a child, the richness of color and the dramatic scenes Tobey painted caught my eye. As a kid, I rarely read the articles about the artists in my mother’s magazines; I only wanted to look at the pictures. I took the time, though, to read. Eventually, the particular art magazine was one I “borrowed” from my mom. I did a terrible thing and mutilated the magazine by cutting the paintings featured out of the magazine!
My mother forgave the transgression and a few days later I journeyed with her to Jefferson City, MO to the museum where some of his artwork was being featured. There is nothing to compare to the feeling one gets when you see a painting in person that you’ve fallen for. That was one of those memorable days I’ve never forgotten.
My poem, “Bloody Sunday” came about one afternoon as I was thumbing through my scrapbook of art I’d clipped from several magazines. This was sometime in the early 70s and my poetry back then may not have been well written, but it did have emotion.
That scrapbook was mostly forgotten until years later when I became part of the Blogosphere. I posted my poetry (not all of, just ones I thought were good) and one of those poems was “Bloody Sunday”. I scanned the old, crispy magazine photo of the painting and uploaded it to my blog.
And so it was that my poem was found by the curator of the Alton S. Tobey site. To view the painting and the poem together, go HERE.
You’ll also see another painting on that page by Tobey called “The Mutiny on the Potemkin”. I also wrote a poem inspired by that painting, too.
