Lesson Plan

          after Joseph Wright’s The Corinthian Maid, c. 1782 – 1784

 

Who remembers our discussion of myth from yesterday?

 

            we lied and said the world began with light

 

In Wright’s composition, what is Butades doing on the wall?

 

            she steals her lover’s silhouetted face

 

And why does she sketch his profile hastily in charcoal?

 

            his death has come to mock that boyish spear

 

When in history is this painting set?

 

            in ancient Corinth girls would swoon for shades

 

Where did Joseph Wright flourish as an artist?

 

            he cupped such shards rinsed clean by English rain

 

Can you describe his color palette?

 

            a smashed amphora’s belly stained from wine

 

How best can we understand the Neoclassical impulse?

 

            they searched an earthquake oracle for moans

 

Can you connect this painting to other works we’ve studied?

 

            all history is a child whose grave’s unmarked

 

Are there any questions before we take our quiz?

 

            how long until she smudged his trace away

 

 

Hamlet Before Dawn

          after a print by Dean Meeker, 1982

 

a killing for a killing is the crown

we call a country always

this Danish boy pacing

a scabbard on his hip lost

inside the terror breaking

night imagine the tower

his bearded father cloaked

in shadow raising the dead

bones of his fingers jabbing

at windswept moon his last

raw commandment butcher

your uncle this treachery

inside my green ear reeks

of maggots when you glare

back into the forsythia

of his wine-sick eyes ignore

how much his face resembles

mine we have such precious

little time etcetera the aura

of pale cerulean is the only

hue Meeker grants this

lithograph it lights

our prince glowing his dainty

arm pledging to avenge

the god he makes the name

a court blacksmith forged

in the ricasso of his sword

 

 

 

A Man with a Cigarette

     William Orpen, 1917

 

green ghost what’s left to kill

so gaunt inside the trench

that France became: blue smear

of sky streaked white as if

the smoke from mortar rounds

could be your century’s clouds:

the rest the earth your torn

fatigues are symphonies

of brown: Brodie helmet

rust-rimmed your eyeless face

shrunk withered as a prune:

the jacket where one arm

withdrawn inside balloons

so in its hidden sling

resembles pregnancy:

a joke too strained to work:

one pant leg tattered gone

is dangling there above

your bandaged calf that leads

the eye down to your boot

made laceless by the fight

to trudge half-deaf and starved:

here shivered wretch let’s end

our dream of portraiture

with bones a limp the smoke

you hold inside your lungs

until it burns then swirls

and breaks against the cold

like steam that rises from

a boy who hugs his guts

and shrieks before he fails

to slop them back inside