Friday, December 27, 2013

Poetry Friday: Clean Laundry, Finnish Art, and a Happy New Year!!!

First let me say Happy New Year to everyone. By the time next Friday drives up and honks outside my house, it will be 2014.

Today I am answering a Facebook call from Diane Mayr: "Let's fill Facebook with beautiful art." All I had to do was let Diane know I was interested, and she assigned an artist: Elin Kleopatra Danielson-Gambogi. ("Don't you love the name?" she asked. Yes, I do! And why have I never heard of this wonderful painter????) Danielson-Gambogi was Finnish, born in 1861, died in 1919.  Look her up online - she painted many quiet moments, many women. I love these three especially (and I'll toss a poem into the mix for that third one): 


Sisters



On the Beach

In honor of Poetry Friday's last Friday of the year, here's a poem that converges with Danielson-Gambogi's lovely painting titled "A Sunny Day" (even though the painting is unseasonal for Seattle!): 


The Clothes Pin


How much better it is
to carry wood to the fire
than to moan about your life.
How much better
to throw the garbage
onto the compost, or to pin the clean
sheet on the line
with a gray-brown wooden clothes pin!
               
                                        - Jane Kenyon
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Poetry Friday today is being hosted by Mary Lee Hahn, the woman who keeps Poetry Friday organized, over at A Year of Reading. Head over there to see what other people have posted.


7 comments:

  1. I think I may still have one or two of those gray-brown clothes pins. I remember my mother and our neighbor conversing over the clothes line many, many years ago.

    I knew you would like Elin Kleopatra!

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  2. I love the light in these paintings! And that Jane Kenyon poem is the perfect pick for the woman at the clothesline!

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  3. Oh, Diane - I misspelled your name earlier. Corrected it this morning - so sorry!

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  4. By the way, I still hang my wash on the line outside during the summer months in Seattle. The smell of sheets dried outside on the line is absolutely intoxicating, as far as I'm concerned.

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  5. I love how decisive and pragmatic this voice is. No time for whining. No time for crying. Let's do the laundry and put the clothes up! Busy hands, busy heart! :) Love it. Beautiful images too!

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  6. Beautiful paintings and complementary poem! When I first moved to Sydney, I was shocked that the majority of folks still hung clothes on the line to dry. After a few years there, though, I appreciated the task almost as a form of meditation.

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  7. Very nice. thank you for the moment of the Kenyon poem.

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