To My Dear and Loving Husband

To My Dear and Loving Husband by Anne Bradstreet

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.

If ever wife was happy in a man,

Compare with me, ye women, if you can.

I prizeprize Value thy love more than whole mines of gold,

Or all the riches that the Eastthe East East Indies, southeast Asia, including India; the English East India Company began in 1600. doth hold.

My love is such that rivers cannot quench,My ... rivers cannot quench Compare the Song of Solomon: “Muche water can not quenche love, nether can the floods drowne it." (Geneva Bible) Also, quench could mean to satisfy.

Nor oughtought Anything but love from thee give recompenserecompense Return payment; reward.

Thy love is such I can no way repay;

The heavens reward thee manifoldmanifold In abundance, I pray.

Then while we live, in love let’s so perseverpersever Both to continue steadfastly, and in the Theological sense to remain in a state of grace. An earlier spelling of the word “persevere.”,

That when we live no more, we may live ever.

I love this poem for many reasons. This poem shows an extremely genuine and passionate love. Not only does it show the love they share, but it also conveys the connection and chemistry they have between them as she mentions that they are one. It gave me butterflies reading this and truly made me emotional. It's a love that most people long to have and personally I hope I love someone this much and that someone will love me back just as much. To be able to say these things about a person and the love that is shared is such a wonderful thing. It just makes me happy seeing other people happy.

It Doesn’t Get Much Better Than Kat Stratford

My ideal piece of art is a scene from the 1999 film, 10 Things I Hate About You, a modern day adaptation (of sorts) of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. In it, Kat Stratford (the Shrew), played by Julia Child is reciting the sonnet she creates for English Class shortly after having Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger) break her heart. This poem is my ideal work of art for a handful of reasons. For starters, It’s a sonnet, and if I’m being completely honest I have a bit of a soft side for Shakespeare and sonnets in general. On top of that, It’s a sonnet that’s well written and conveys the message that Kat so badly wants to convey to Patrick. However, it’s the performance of the poem itself, combined with its message that makes it my ideal piece of art.

Kat’s poem is directed at Patrick, listing a number of things that she hates about him and/or their relationship. She begins the poem composed, calmly reading in front of the class, only to make eye contact with Patrick halfway through. It’s here that the poem truly becomes powerful because Kat’s true emotions take over. As she continues to bring herself to state another thing she hates, her voice cracks and the audience truly gets a glimpse at kat’s inner self. You pick up on the raw emotion immediately, feeling for Kat because you can tell she’s in pain and that she loves Patrick and that she doesn’t really know who she is anymore. You can feel the vulnerability in Kat’s voice and demeanor, and you just want to follow her and hold her when she concludes the poem and storms out of the class in tears.

The emotion makes the piece of art ideal. To me, if a poem can deliver such raw emotion without necessarily trying to, it deserves to be iconic. The rawness of Kat’s performance has done just that. If a piece of art can make you feel something that you didn’t even know was there, that provides you with a connection to the piece that you never could have imagined, you’ve done it. You’ve found yourself an ideal piece of art.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGV4hxhxW8o

Bedtime Story #1

—Seoul, Korea 1971

Father gave her a little extra. How could she not

         fall for him? He was handsome

but still a boy. In the depot where soldiers

         took such women, his skinny body clung

too close to hers and his narrow ass still

         belonged to his mother. The other men

knew the routine and how much to pay.

         She loathed their accent and American swagger.

The sweat would barely cool and dry

         before another shook the cot and bucked his hips

out of rhythm—in some other time zone.

        --However, he began to offer other things

besides money. He brought sweets from the base

         and the minute he touched his pocket

the face she reserved for his English crumbled

         like sweet toffee. Because he didn't know how

to say what he wanted to say, no time

         was spent on uneasiness. Chocolate,

caramel and peanuts spoke best, secured

         his place. He hooked his arms through hers as if

they could stroll the lane like an ordinary couple:

         the unassuming black and the Korean whore

in the middle of the Vietnam War.

          The poem that I chose is Bedtime Story #1  by Sjohnna McCray. I selected this poem because it depicts love (in some sense) and war existing within the same realm. Love and War have a tendency to go together like oil and vinegar so I thought the concept for this poem was very interesting. I love how the poem serves a double purpose. While on one hand the poem reflects realities of the Vietnam War and visuals from the perspective of a sex worker, the end of the poem depicts a romantic relationship that not only exists within a war zone amongst people who otherwise would not cross paths, but is also not strictly based off of the physical. Something about an attraction/relationship that defies language barriers and social expectations just makes me really happy. I felt like I had to choose this poem

Love Without Words

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and

my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility:whose texture

compels me with the colour of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens;only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

- e.e. cummings

I have always loved cummings' love poems. Part of it is the inherited love that I got from my parents, who read a cummings poem at their wedding. Most of it, however, is the unconventional language that somehow provides the most incredible images and the most beautiful feelings. This poem is one of my favorites, because of the image of the beautifully fragile woman who has the power of the universe over the man who loves her. But it's not a malevolent power; it's the power to make him as lovely as a flower, the power to make him open and close. He loves her more than all the world: "nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals / the power of your intense fragility." And the last stanza makes my heart ache. "only something in me understands / the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses." I'm usually pretty good at expressing how I feel about art, but this poem makes me feel so intensely that I don't have words for it. It's the kind of feeling that is expressed in music and dance, and the ability that cummings has to capture this in words is unparalleled.

Second book for my project

For my second source, I used the book An Anthology of Russian Folktales by Jack V. Haney. This book differs from my previous because my first book was a book of actually Fairy tales themselves. This book talks more about the background of the start of Folklore. It talks a lot about how Stalin and WW2 were a huge impact on the writing of Russian Folklore, due to the massive amount of killing and exile that occurred. It also talks about how many Russians feel that folklore was first started in rituals, dances, customs, spells, incantations, and music. As of now, Folklore is only shared in very few remote places like the Far North, and a small region called Lake Baikal. In this book, it also has a collection of  fairy tales but I enjoy this book because it has a huge background on the culture of the Russian people.

Decorated Skin: A World Survey of Body Art

The second source that I used for my research was a book called Decorated Skin: A World Survey of Body Art by Karl Groning. This was a book that I grabbed off the shelf at the library in a rush after school. When I opened it, I realized that the book predominantly pictures, with captions and small paragraphs in the margins. So, for this blog post, I'm taking an "interpretive risk" and combining what I got out of both the images and text.

Decorated Skin mostly focused on tribal body art. The countries featured in the book were not ones that were talked about frequently in the news or online and I found it really interesting to see the many different tribes' techniques and unique patterns. Oceania, Nepal, Indonesia and Japan were some of the most interesting countries I read about and saw art from in the book. My favorite part about the book was that it focused on cultures other than our own. It is pretty easy to talk to people in America about why they have tattoos and what their tattoos mean to them, but it is not quite so simple to learn about the origins and purposes of body art in other cultures.

One thing I noticed while looking at pictures of the many tribes and cultures and reading about them was that the body art the do on themselves and each other is not always beautiful, and often serves a purpose in protection or representation/expression. Most people in the U.S who have tattoos now get them because they like the look, not as a rite of passage, etc. In other cultures that practice body art, it is almost an expectation for these people to adorn themselves in the expected, culturally accepted manner.

My favorite page in this book showed pictures of women from the Wodabe tribe in Africa and their "male beauty contest" that they practice. The caption reads "The Wodabe, sometimes known as the Bororo, are nomadic herdsmen living in the Republic of Niger and neighboring regions. For most of the year they traverse the barren regions of the southern Sahara in small groups, mowing from one grazing ground to another with their herds of camels, cattle and donkeys. Once a year - in the rainy season, when there is enough vegetation to feed many animals in one place - the Wodabe gather in large numbers. At this important meeting they get to know each other, consolidate existing relationships, foge new links and hold feasts. For the young people, in particular, this is their main opportunity to find a partner. The one-week geerewol festival with its 'bridegrooms' parade' dance is the centre-point of these large gatherings. On this occasion the Wodabe men make a special effort to enhance their appearance; they spend hours adorning themselves with paint and make-up in front of small hand mirrors to make themselves look as desirable as possible to the women."

I liked this part of the book because it was about men decorating themselves to attract the attention of women rather than the other way around. Overall, this book was a good eye opener to tattooing and body art, and the cultural significance of the practice worldwide. The most important think I learned was that while tattoos may seem like a special, meaningful practice in America, the cultural ties are even stronger in other parts of the world.

My Girl Frida

While doing research on my topic I found that Frida Kahlo had a very interesting and tragic life. Instead of focusing my research on her art and her artistic style I have been looking deeper into her life and found that she had a few very life changing events in her childhood and young adult years that were huge factors in inspiring her art. I am starting to learn that Frida's art isn't just random displays of bizarre misery and odd images, her art is representative of the pain she felt and what she went through in her life. 

Frida's art style is mostly surrealism, however i have found a difference between her and other surrealist movement artists. Where most artists, who are looking to make a strange surrealist painting, look for inspiration in dreams or ideas, Frida uses events of her life. Such as being hospitalized for months after contracting polio when she was only nine years old. In her painting, The Broken Column, she made a self portrait of herself in some sort of brace holding her body together, she is split open form her chin to her belly button revealing a crumbling greek style column representing her spine. She also painted nails and needles sticking into her body and face representing the pain she went through during her rehabilitation. Although the painting was much like other surrealist works artists have done, it is interesting that her paintings aren't just bizarre but also symbolize parts of her life and have a much deeper meaning. 

Now when I try to analyze her paintings, instead of just tying her to the surrealist art movement and her as a Mexican artist, I look at her life and what was going on around her that may have influenced her art, things like the rise of communism in the 1930's greatly influenced her life and art. Also her background, having a German father and Mexican mother influenced her as a person especially in the 1940's. Looking at the new information I have gathered about her life I now have a much better understanding and a much different perspective of her art and that has changed the entire focus of my paper.