Photograph of Marsden Hartley by Alfred Stieglitz (1915-1916) |
"My work is getting stronger & stronger and more intense all the time.... I have such a rush of new energy & notions coming into my head, over my horizon like chariots of fire that all I want is freedom to step aside and execute them."
— Marsden Hartley
American Painter, Poet
1877 - 1943
Have you ever experienced that moment when the ideas flowed and you had a hard time keeping up with them? Your hand couldn't move fast enough. People often talk about not being able to create — about being blocked, but they talk less about the moments when they can't stop working. When they are in a zone and the work continues to flow. These moments also happen. Celebrate them when they do. They are a gift.
Mountain Lake - Autumn (1910) |
Here is a poem by Marsden, a prolific poet.
As the Buck Lay Dead
As the buck lay dead, tied to the fender
of a car
coming down the Matagomon way,
I saw dried blood on his tongue of
a thousand summer dreams and winter
cogitations —
the scratches on his hooves were signatures
of the many pungent sticks and branches.
The torn place in his chest was made
by a man
letting out visceral debris to save weight-giving
morsels to many a greedy fox or other wild
thing —
over the glaze of his half-shut eye
hung miscries of superlative moments
stuck dumb