Mike,
This is an impressive poem, especially the first part. I can read it quickly
with vivid images tumbling out as I work my way down the page. Usually I am
not so keen on poems that describe what a painting looks like (as they feel
like an inferior version of the original work of art - why not just go to
see the painting?) or those novels where a page is spent describing a
person's face, without allowing the possibility of instant recognition that
faces have when we meet them in life. But to my mind this poem manages well.
Maybe it is because I am a fan of Gauguin, particularly his ones with a
Tahitian theme, and I already have a fair idea of what the painting might
look like, or maybe it is your choice of imagery. I don't know.
I don't know this particular painting, though I may have seen it in books
and forgotten. Is it a girl or a woman, or a girl on the edge of womanhood?
I think you might want to make this apparent as it may affect how the reader
imagines the scene and how it might relate to the theme of innocence. Is it
a Maori or a Tahitian scene? The Maoris live in New Zealand and Tahiti is in
(French) Polynesia thousands of miles to the East. Of course both are
Polynesian cultures, but they are not the same and why would a Maori be
wearing a Tahitian skirt? ( a bit like an Irishman wearing a kilt - it's
Celtic at least).
I would delete or replace the last line of S1. I don't know what "finely
balanced features" look like. Is that another way of saying that her face
was symmetrical?
S2 adds depth to the poem but the last line of S2 is almost a disaster
IMVHO. Fortunately it would be easy to delete or replace. Wouldn't involve
taking the poem apart. The problem is that it narrows the poem down just
when it is broadening out to good effect. Is it Madam Bovary that Flaubert
commented on? As far as I recall he made a number of (indirect) comments
about her. The reader may not be dead from the neck up ands still struggle
with this line. Maybe they read Flaubert five years ago and appreciated him
as much as you, but have forgotten enough to make the reference opaque.
I like the poem though. It travels.
BW,
Colin
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Horwood" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, March 07, 2003 12:49 PM
Subject: New sub: Self-Portrait
Self-Portrait
(Girl with a fan, 1902)
Gauguin painted several self-portraits
but the least known depicts
a Maori girl with a fan of feathers
balanced on her thigh.
She sits on a French carved wood chair
awkwardly, as if sitting were a balancing trick,
leaning her body to the left,
supporting her weight on her left arm,
gazing beyond an off-stage fire that lights her face
and the copper in her hair;
a Maori girl with a classical beauty
and a white Tahitian skirt, wound and tucked.
Only the support of her left hand
prevents her sliding off the canvas,
a departure that may have its appeal
to judge by the look of melancholy
on her finely balanced features.
Gauguin knew what she was seeing
for he had seen it himself.
The gap between us and the girl,
between her and Arcadia,
between Polynesia and France
is in the eye of a girl whose portrait enacts
Flaubertīs comment about his heroine.
Mike
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