So on with the Silly Saturday.
This morning (more like last night) at 3, I woke up wide awake with this poem in my head that I had to get down on paper. First of all, this has never happened to me with poetry - it's only been prose that has woken me up in the middle of a dead sleep - so that was strange to begin with. Second - it was about my great great grandfather - whom I hadn't been thinking about at all yesterday, or for a couple of days for that matter. It was very odd. I blame it on my friend, Jory - who just released his chapbook on Thursday in Moscow (which everyone NEEDS to buy - Slow Depth! Go buy it!). I went to his reading and release and afterwards felt inspired to write poetry - like I always do when I hear him read. So maybe I was subconsciousnessly thinking about it. Well actually, I guess I was if I woke up in dead sleep to write it. It was just so odd because the poem was so clear in my mind, (I never wake up with anything clear in my mind - except maybe Joel), and I haven't written poetry since like Sophomore year in College. Back in like 2005. I started out writing silly prose when I was in like 3rd grade. By the time middle school came, it wasn't silly prose anymore, just prose. Then in high school I wrote a lot of poetry (I like to think that a lot of people write poetry in high school, I don't know why. It's just one of my romantic notions about how high school should be like.) Then I reverted back to prose - mostly - except for 2 classes at Penn state that required me to write a poem or two. But I had never really written it seriously since high school. So to wake up with this one in my head, was just odd.
I would like to think that it's a great poem and everyone will love it. However, I try to be a realist about writing and know that it probably isn't a great poem at all. It would probably be called amateur poetry at best. But that's why I write Prose ... So without further ado - and before I ramble on anymore and bore you all to death - here is the 3 am Poem.
Dedicated to Ralph Albert Blakelock – my great,
great grandfather and inspiration in many things
The Schizo Painter
He was …
a son – the oldest
a brother – grieved the death of a sister at the age of nineteen
expected – to study medicine
a husband – loving and caring
a father – did everything that he could for his kids
- grieved for his
six month old daughter.
He painted…
moonlights – Brook by Moonlight
indians out West – Indian
Encampment Along the Snake River
seascapes – Marine, Seal Rock
portraits – The Guide
shanties – Old New York, Shanties
at Fifty-Fifth Street and Seventh Street
exotic locations – Jamaican
Coastal Scene
still lifes – all untitled
romanticism
tonalist
hudson river style
draftsman-like
- with passion and imagination.
They called him then…
the immigrant’s son- poor
not in the right circles – later, not in the right state of mind
eccentric - insane – mad
young
– amateur.
He believed in…
swedenborgianism
mysticism
transcendentalism
the poetry of Ralph Waldo Emerson
the spirits of the Indians
an America gone
his paintings
- himself.
He is…
grouped with painters Inness, Ryder, Homer and the Barbizonian Dupré
the “American Van-Gogh”
compared to poets Whitman, Poe and Coleridge
an American visionary
one of the most celebrated American artists
the “mad genius”
copied the most out of any American artist
inspiring
loved, respected, and famous
my great, great grandfather
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