Monday, May 23, 2011

Marsden Hartley




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