It’s the invisible enemy.<\/em><\/p>\n\u2014 Richard Diebenkorn<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He made this image<\/p>\n
(carved it and smoothed it over)<\/p>\n
expressing it by marks<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
in his mind; wordly and unseen<\/p>\n
as quickly written over, stretched into full words<\/p>\n
and the marks only at first suggested<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
in his ear she\u2019d whispered \u2014 \u201cbird\u201d<\/p>\n
(but he wasn\u2019t listening, did not hear)<\/p>\n
and he flapped his wetted wings<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The painted image is just that,<\/p>\n
the thing painted, not some standing in.<\/p>\n
An adequate description<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
would have to trace infinitesimal specifics<\/p>\n
of length, width, and thickness,<\/p>\n
pick a shade of color from the chart,<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
note granularity and sheen,<\/p>\n
locate it with calipers on the canvas<\/p>\n
alongside similar patterns not the same,<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
and on and on the never finished, never ending<\/p>\n
depictions,<\/p>\n
and then to have just that repeated<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
because it\u2019s nothing else.<\/p>\n
When the painted image told a story<\/p>\n
we could capture that<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
in words and sentences because<\/p>\n
well, narrative is narrative;<\/p>\n
but when the painted thing\u2019s unrecognizable<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
what we call a splotch or blob,<\/p>\n
oh, it\u2019s tempting to define it<\/p>\n
by his exertions painting it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Charles Tarlton<\/strong> is retired from university teaching and has been writing tanka prose (and poetry more generally) full time since 2006. His wife, Ann Knickerbocker, (http:\/\/artistinanaframe.blogspot.com<\/a>) is \u00a0an abstract painter and they and work in Northampton, Mass.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Erasures I go to great pains to mask the agony. But the struggle is there.\u00a0 It’s the invisible enemy. \u2014 Richard Diebenkorn He made this image (carved it and smoothed it over) expressing it by marks in his mind; wordly and unseen as quickly written over, stretched into full words […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9082"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9086,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9082\/revisions\/9086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}