Renga Poem | By Jorrell Watkins (JW), Abby Ryder-Huth (AR), Claretta Holsey (CH), ‘Gbenga Adeoba (GA)
Wind anew
leaves, through our headphones
tassels twist (JW)
Bent knuckles, we turn
see flecks of day in trees (AR)
One bud, then
another swept sea --
we grass, a-grin (CH)
We bend the pines, feel
the air, furtive, blow through (GA)
Spring again--
the waves carry bright
leaves beyond. (GA)
Shadows hold tight the bee,
two hands -- let it loose. (CH)
Eyeing bloom
sun greets moon with light
guides us home (JW)
In stains crossing us
dusted, a bright stamen (AR)
Starlights on
the horizon--we
are still here (GA)
Facing the night
with or without rest (JW)
My eye a looking
glass -- moon
hides her blank face. (CH)
Many wintry nights,
there is nothing to see (GA)
Hours print
on walls, fade-- hands skim
the water (AR)
Baby owls re-
sound, alarm. (CH)
A feathered
being, a small box of
sounds in flight (GA)
Churning cirrus
puffing contrails (JW)
April showers us
silver -- scene cut
the rain, drops short (CH)
See the puddle,
the bend of roads ahead (GA)
Stretched deeper,
the crevice where I
dropped a stone (AR)
Dandelion shaken -- she
knots the shed stem (CH)
Quiet field
Wild flowers sag windward
She passes (JW)
We will be here when
they are in full bloom (GA)
Crescenting
up to find the day
galactic (AR)
I pulse and breathe
Moons away (JW)
Sky exhales a second
wind. bent trees
bare, as thread (CH)
In between the wound light
where green broke out (AR)
Starlings scat
I dial down Al Green
Lighter tunes (JW)
Thumping the streets
Tomorrow's bright voices (JW)
Sea laps over -- moon
a shock
of blood -- red eye (CH)
See the gulls, too;
they come in waves (GA)
When some are
heaving with sky
others rain (AR)
Horizon line -- my earth
speaks only two tones (CH)
Black or brown,
I break the earth, or
it breaks me (GA)
Minutes of grass
rushing in pieces (AR)
Towards some site
Where found kin gathers--
Candles, fists (JW)
Then in mornings, all
the names for light (AR)
Mark Rothko
No. 14, 1960, 1960
Mark Rothko’s search to express profound emotion through painting culminated in his now-signature compositions of richly colored squares filling large canvases, evoking what he referred to as “the sublime.” One of the pioneers of Color Field Painting, Rothko’s abstract arrangements of shapes, ranging from the slightly surreal biomorphic ones in his early works to the dark squares and rectangles in later years, are intended to evoke the metaphysical through viewers’ communion with the canvas in a controlled setting. “I'm not an abstractionist,” he once said. “I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.”
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