The last few days of the summer have been especially pleasant in my neck of the world, and Mary Oliver seemed the perfect poet to express the sense of wonder and mystery in the beauty of a summer's day. Two poems come to mind. The first poem is The Summer Day, a lovely meditation on a grasshopper. Here the poet's keen attention to nature becomes a form of prayer as she kneels, "idled and blessed" in the grass to study the insect.
The second poem, Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith, develops further the poet's close observation of nature, especially its power to evoke spiritual wonder. Instructed by the tireless work of nature to create, the poet feels uplifted: "And, therefore, let the immeasurable come./Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine." The final verse is a hymn to the reassuring fertility of nature: "One morning/ in the leafy green ocean/ the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body/is sure to be there."
The paintings in this post are by Tino Rodriguez, whose art education began with his love for the paintings of saints and angels in Mexican churches. The mythical qualities in his work stem from a childhood raised in an oral storytelling tradition, hearing stories ranging from European fairy tales and Mexican legends to Aztec and Mayan myths. You can see more of his absolutely stunning work on his website (for which you'll need Flash) and MySpace page.
What absolutely beautiful paintings!! I loved the poems too, especially about the grasshopper...and know how wonderful it is to gaze into the eys of an insect , I was doing this only the other day with an irridescent blue damselfy I saved from the surface of my pond. Somehow he had fallen and got trapped on the surface of the water but I managed to reach across with a twig to resuce him...and as he sat on the tip of the twig to dry I watched him clean his glowing blue eyes with delicate forelegs...a magical moment before he flew off with sunlight glimmering on diaphanous wings.
Posted by: Suzanne | July 02, 2007 at 03:50 AM
Beautiful poems, beautiful art.
Posted by: Sara | July 02, 2007 at 08:33 AM