Hi Carl,
And welcome!
And Yeh, maybe I'm getting a bit closer to what this is about... the words
playing with paint and painting. But I'm still a little confused (I mean a
lot confused) cos "trade colours" for me implies paint bought in big tins
for smearing on walls (but it's years since I went near any shelves with
paint on them!) and turps is used with such tins and brushes, but some of
the other words and images (to my unpainterly brain) seem to connect to the
world "out there" with three dimensions. So I'm still confused! - Maybe
becuase I can't make the words after the word escarpement and the full stop
flow too well through my brain.
Perhaps if you hadn't used caps at the start of lines I might have found it
easier to read...
Perhaps I've just got to be more wide awake than I feel at the moment to go
the way of such oblique language. I'm not giving up, tho! (... just asking
for a bit of help...)
Bob
>From: Deborah Russell <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Trade Colors
>Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2003 12:38:23 -0400
>
>Sounds like a landscape palette, perhaps he has mixed his turpentine with
>burnt umber, sienna, ochre and a bit of titanium.
>
>****************
>
>There's lots I like about this Carl but the first line trips me up.
>Somehow,
>turpentine's never reminded me of coffee, either white or black, not even
>when it's been used to clean burnt umber, so I get the feeling that you've
>used the image for the music of the words rather than the truth of image +
>music of sounds. Perhaps that's not true, but it's how it reads to me. I
>like what you're writing about and your crisp language.
>bw
>christina
>
>
> > Trade Colors
> >
> > Dirty turpentine of coffee
> > Slowly stains the beige enamel
> > Cup without a drain, awash
> > In slurried color rinse. Magenta
> >
> > Rings the sky that shortly pales
> > To clustered films of milk: grayed-out
> > Lands, throttling oxbows stilled,
> > Slip-off slopes, escarpments. Far-off
> >
> > Tribes long colonized provide this
> > Sweat, this oily slick, a stray hair
> > Cuts a bridle path, or coastline,
> > Or bristle torn from tracing jaundiced
> >
> > Buy/sell zigzags in olive and carmine.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Deborah Elizabeth Russell, Artist/Poet
>
>Post Poems | Inside | Cityslide
>Shadow Poetry | Parallels Words For The Wind
>
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