Venetian Boats II

My love of poetry began at a very early age when my mother used to read poetry from her favorite tome, “101 Famous Poems.”  To this day it is the finest small anthology of some of the greatest 17th and 18th century poetry.  One of my favorites was “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes with its sultry beginning lines of, “The wind was a torrent of darkness upon the gusty trees, The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas…”  Oh, they just don’t write them like that anymore.  And of course, I was mesmorrized by Edgar Alan Poe’s “The Raven.”  The list goes on and on.  I highly recommend that if you enjoy great writings from those centuries, to go out and purchase a copy and then blog your responses.  It even contains the Gettysburg Address!

My first book of poems was published by Triad Publishers from Atlanta, Georgia.  It was titled “Shades of Love.”  I was not happy about the way the book looked physically and vowed to self publish after that so that I could have total control over the way my books were produced.  I plan on republishing it with new illustrations and a whole new format sometime in 2012.  My other poetry book is also a monograph (which is a fancier way to describe an art book about a specific artist).  It’s titled “Painted Poetry” and is available at the Lighthouse Center for the Arts or my gallery or on Amazon’s website.  Currently, I’m working on two completely different books, which I will keep the readers of this blog updated on in the months to come.  But today we are talking poetry.

The following is a sampling from my book, “Painted Poetry.”  It is a poem written to describe one of my paintings from the ‘Venetian Boat’ series.  All of the images from the book have a corresponding poem.  Here is the one for:

“Venetian Boats II” (see image above)

Erotic vapors linger in the noonday sun,

Hear them writhe and twist

To lick each moss-stained stone.

As we slip quietly up the stairs,

A cat finds refuge in a dim lit ally.

We close the shutters till only slivers

Are left to creep across the dark stained floor:

Into a bed of cool clean linens we slide,

A perfect nesting place

For an overly sunny Sunday afternoon.

<dl id=”attachment_72″ style=”width: 235px;”><dt><img title=”Venetian Boats II” src=”http://jbberkowblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Venetian-Boats-2-225×300.jpg” alt=”Venetian Boats II is available as a limited edition print” width=”225″ height=”300″ /></dt></dl>
<div><dl id=”attachment_72″ style=”width: 235px;”><dt></dt><dd>Venetian Boats II is available as a limited edition printor an overly sunny Sunday afternoon.</dd></dl></div>