Release from Deception

“I will burst thy bonds asunder, / being fettered with the bonds of darkness, and a long night, / that you will not be condemned with this world.”
~the inscription (in Latin) on the book at the bottom of the sculpture Disillusion

For Art Thursday, a marble statue that deserves its own post: Disillusion (or Release from Deception) by Francesco Queirolo (1704–1762). Queirolo carved the angel, the fisherman, and the incredible net from one piece of marble. Disillusion was commissioned by Raimondo di Sangro as a memorial for his father in their family burial site, the Sansevero Chapel.

It reportedly took Queirolo seven years to fabricate this marble net, which he crafted without a workshop, apprentice, or other form of external assistance. The Sansevero Chapel Museum notes that this is because even the most specialized sculptors “refused to touch the delicate net in case it broke into pieces in their hands.” (Kelly Richman-Abdou)

A drawing of Disillusion, 1894
by Franz Robert Richard Brendámour

National Poetry Month wrap-up

Fairy tales were not my escape from reality as a child; rather, they were my reality -- for mine was a world in which good and evil were not abstract concepts, and like fairy-tale heroines, no magic would save me unless I had the wit and heart and courage to use it widely.
~Terri Windling

My theme for National Poetry Month was poems inspired by short stories, so each week I found a different short story and used it as a springboard. I found that, since human nature is timeless, the age of the story did not affect how relevant it was. Old stories can be viewed in fresh ways.

This could be a nice approach for teachers to support reading comprehension and critical thinking...let students pick a story (or folk tale or fable) and respond to it with a poem.

My collection:

*The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls by Marcel Aymé (Two poems)
*The Widow's Cruise by Frank Stockton (Mrs. Ducket's Adventure)
*The Changeling collected by Lady Wilde (Changeling)
*Federigo's Falcon by Giovanni Boccaccio (How to Woo a Woman)
* The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe (If I Could Write Like Poe)
* The Thousand and One Nights (Scheherazade)

This looks like a good story source : World Folklore

Haiden Henderson

I'd be lucky
To be the gum she scrapes off
The bottom of her Jimmy Choos
~Haiden Henderson

For Music Monday, Haiden Henderson with "Fresh Blood":



More Haiden:
Bleachers
hell of a good time

Le Passe-Muraille

I tend to be attracted to characters who are up against a wall with very few alternatives. And the film then becomes an examination of how they cope with very few options. And that's, I guess, what interests me in terms of human behavior.
~William Friedkin

Happy Poetry Friday! Continuing my National Poetry Month project of using short stories as inspiration for poems...Today's story is The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls (Le Passe-Muraille) by Marcel Aymé (1943), translated by Karen Reshkin. I'm going to give you the shortest summary I can, haha!

In it, a 42-year-old Frenchman named Dutilleul discovers he can walk through walls. He goes to a doctor, who prescribes "two doses a year of tetravalent pirette powder containing a mixture of rice flour and centaur hormone." Dutilleul only takes one and then leaves the other in a drawer. When he becomes annoyed with his contemptuous boss, Dutilleul starts sticking his head through the wall into his boss's office to make him think he's crazy. After that success, Dutilleul robs banks, jewelery stores, wealthy homes, etc., leaving behind notes from "The Lone Wolf."

Although he becomes one of the richest men in Paris, Dutilleul still keeps working at his regular job and one day brags to his coworkers that HE is the Lone Wolf. They laugh and he winds up proving it by letting himself be caught. No prison walls can hold him, of course, so he drives the warden crazy. When he's had enough of prison life, Dutilleul escapes and changes his appearance, planning on leaving Paris.

He falls in love with a woman he sees on the street, which makes him want to stay. She is married to an evil man who watches her every move and locks her up at night. Dutilleul visits her one night, walking through the walls of her room, and they have an affair. He has a headache the next day and takes medicine, accidentally taking the anti-wall-walking pill. After he visits his paramour, he gets stuck in a wall outside her room. "He is there to this very day, imprisoned in the stone."

I wanted to write a poem where Dutilleul is able to use his power to help the locked-up lady, but I went another direction.

photo by Neal Sanche

Walking through Walls

When I imagine
walking through a wall,
it's made of stone
not drywall or plaster,
nothing a fist could find
its way through.
Maybe molecules parted
for M. Dutilleul,
but I picture
moving into
that stone
feels like pushing
through a thick curtain
of slug—
gray-brown jelly
that squishes
and fights back a little—
and you, plunging forward
holding your breath
as tight
and still
as someone who doesn't
want to be
called on in class,
with your hands
searching
in front like
antenna, shuffling
til you slip out
the other side
like a baby being born
gasping
your first breath,
eager
to begin.

********************

Addendum for my later visitors (4/28) I mentioned before that I wanted to write a poem about rescuing the lady but I was as stuck as Dutilleul. Here's the draft I wrote this morning:

It seems like, if you can walk through walls,
it would be easy to save a woman who's been imprisoned
by her jealous, violent, rich husband but then
when it comes down to unlocking the door
and letting her out, you find you don't have the key for
"I'll keep your kids," or "you'll be on the street,"
maybe you think you have the one for "I'll find you,"
but then you spot the row of locks that her parents added
during her childhood that all say "Submit"
and you're not sure how you're going to get her out
when all you can do is walk through walls.

What If You Could Walk Through Walls (a "What If" video)

There is no such thing as a Godforsaken town has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Ruth!

Osbourne's pictorial alphabet

To her royal highness Princess Alexandrina Victoria...This pictorial alphabet, combining the beauties of art with the first elements of instruction, is, by permission, respectfully dedicated; by her royal highness's humble servant Charles Osbourne, aged 16 at the time of making these series of designs.

For Art Thursday, images from Osbourne's pictorial alphabet (1835) by Charles Osbourne.

The letter F, "A Roman Soldier on the Battlements trying to corrupt the Garrison"

The letter G, "A Greek Galley, on the River Tiber, with Troops on board"

The letter J, "A Persian Magi, or Astrologer"

The letter N, "A Bearer of the Imperial Roman Eagle, wounded, leaning on his Spear"

The letter S, "An Emblematical Figure of Sin"

The letter Z, "The end of all things is Death"

All the ways

Let’s just write the songs honestly as we can, and trust that they’ll reach whoever they’re meant to reach.
~Laura Rogers

For Music Monday, here's a song I heard in a thrift store. "What is this?" I asked the person who was playing the music. "The Secret Sisters." Ah, wonderful!

"All the Ways" by The Secret Sisters feat. Ray LaMontagne:



(I am reminded of this poem. What are all the ways? Let me count...)

Mrs. Ducket's Adventure

[Stockton's] most famous fable, "The Lady, or the Tiger?" (1882), is about a man sentenced to an unusual punishment for having a romance with a king's beloved daughter.

Hi folks! Happy Poetry Friday! I am continuing with my National Poetry Month project, writing poems inspired by short stories. I lucked out the first two weeks because it didn't take me long to find stories that I wanted to write about. This week, however, I read a bunch of stories that fell flat. Finally I happened upon The Widow's Cruise by Frank Stockton. Stockton wrote a juicy part for a woman, which I appreciated :)

Winslow Homer's A Fisher Girl on Beach

In "The Widow's Cruise," four elderly sailors stop by the Widow Ducket's house for dinner and a rest stop on their way down the coast. After dinner, they take turns telling stories. The Widow Ducket has asked for true stories, but the sailors tell one fantastical tale after another. Once they are done, she asks if she can share a story of her own. Hers is the most outlandish of them all, causing the men many a yawp of surprise. ("Madam!" exclaimed Captain Bird, and the other elderly mariners took their pipes from their mouths.") The Widow Ducket may have been annoyed with the men for stretching the truth in her own house after she had fed them so well, but in the end, she felt like she evened the score.

My poem for "The Widow's Cruise" is a retelling of her tall tale, as it needs no embellishment from me.

Mrs. Ducket's Adventure

As Mrs. Ducket had oil and love for lit lamps and safe husbands,
when her sister-in-law had a dry lamp and a dark window,
Mrs. Ducket set off to cross the bay. She had no oars or sailing
knowledge, just a rudder and her own hands to spin it.

She was spinning her way along the water when a mighty storm
rose before her and behind her and crashed into itself atop of her,
so she poured a bit of oil on the water and calmed it like a mother hen
getting an angry chick to unruffle its feathers. Smooth the bay was then,
in a boat-shaped space.

Mrs. Ducket looked down, calculating that the oil could not flatten
a path across the bay and still light the dry lamp. Below her,
she spied a crack in the boat's bottom. The water underneath
-- while full of sharks -- was calm. Placid enough to walk across,
drawing air from her oil tin? She thought about it, until she
abandoned the plan for fear of running into vicious turtles.

Maybe electricity would do the trick. Mrs. Ducket rubbed the soles
of her shoes back and forth on a dusty seat until she fairly crackled
with electricity. Fully charged, she swam through the storm to shore,
buoyant with current. She might not have even needed oil to light
the lamp at journey's end with all the sparks she ferried.

***************

My Juicy Little Universe has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Heidi!