Poetry Challenge ‘American Gothic’

 

 

‘It’s American Regionalist artist Grant Wood‘s birthday today and it’s being celebrated over on Echostains!  American Gothic is one of the most iconic painting in the USA.  Much has been written about this painting, but in some ways it remains an enigma.  To read about the artist Grant Wood please see my corresponding post on echostains

The American Gothic House – also known as the Dibble house

Wood  got the idea for the painting American Gothic from a cottage he saw which had been built in the Gothic revival style.  The cottage can be seen in the background with its gothic upper window.  Wood tried to imagine the sort of people who would live in such a house.  He decided upon this rather stern and prim looking couple (modelled upon his own sister and his dentist).  The man holds a pitchfork and stand besides his spinster sister – though some see these two as man and wife.  if you look closely, the pitchfork shape is echoed in the farmers overall, the shape of the window behind him and even the shape of the mans face..  The pitchfork represents hard work.  Nan (Wood’s sister) is the model for the farmers spinster sister.  She is dressed in a Colonial print apron which mimic 19th century Americana.  American Gothic has been parodied a great deal, but I thought it would be challenging (and fun) to write a poem about this picture.  The poem can be long, short, a Haiku or even a limerick.  How do you see this couple?  kind? threatening? secretive?  Make the poem as serious or humorous as you like.  You may use my American Button if you want to 🙂

 

Grant Wood

Usual rules apply;

The idea behind the challenges is to publicise Bookstains  –  as well as having creative fun, so it is imperative that the poet link to Bookstains to further the challenge so you MUST have a URL.. BUT, echostains is about communication – so this is a two-way street:

In return for your poem  (which is always accredited to you) your poem is copied to the challenges particular page which is open indefinitely and the poets own website mentioned with a link and the poem critiqued on not only Bookstains but also on the poets own blog or website.  I shall give your poem a Tweet on Twitter to further promote it. I also update my Echostains blog frequently, regardless on what  the post is about –  I mention  if there is a new poem in the challenge.

Please note – and I only mention because I have had some of these….. If you wouldn’t put the poem on your own blog, please don’t send it to mine and expect me to promote it.  This is a genuine challenge – so please play fair 😀

Images from here here and here

Here’s a humorous one from Pamanner’s Blog by WordyWoman! Her blog is  about poetry, relationships, life, nature, and whatever else procreates on her computer screen.  Worth checking out 🙂

forget Mary and

your four kids

keep staring at her

perky milk jugs I

swear I’ll find a

new use for that

pitchfork

©Pamela A. Rossow

Well I stared and I stared at this painting for inspiration, and I looked into the couples faces hoping that they would tell me their own story.  I had a bit of a job getting them to spill the beans but don’t let those closed faces fool you – there’s a lot going on behind those net curtains:-

On your way stranger!

There aint nothing for you here.

You’re only courting danger,

I’m king of this frontier!

You’re talking to the fork!

And it won’t hear no blaspheming!

You’d better start to walk

(My sister – stop that screaming!)

 

Compose yourself my dear!

We just don’t want no trouble.

Supplies will last all year

And we got more than double.

Remember when the law came by

Twas I that they did question.

Then you produced that hot meat pie

That gave em indigestion.

I aint seen no missing folk!

I told em loud and clear.

Yet still they all would prod and poke

Which filled me full of fear.

 

Stranger why you standing there?

Be gone into the rain.

And while you ride, just say a prayer

That you don’t  pass this way again.

©Lynda M Roberts 2011

This contribution is from Adam Dustus who has the most wonderful poetry blog, full of challenges and delights!  Well worth checking our here AND with the added bonus of actually hearing the poems read by the author!

Approximately 650 miles from Winesburg, Ohio
Much nearer sticks to hospitable care
When boring wood lampooned beliefs
You may feel free
Bury me there

Ulysses & Grant would go home again
Iowa forgiving prodigal pride
Blond Emily Dickinson stares into oblivion
Poseidon’s prop gripped by father time

Behind them lies someone’s home
Spring arresting American plum
Sprouting hawthorn of unmentionable kinds
Reckoning they did die here too

©Adam Dustus 2011

Our next unique poem is from  poet and writer Jenne Rodey Andrews who has several blogs here and they are all well worth checking out too especially if you love poetry!

You search those sere faces

for any quiet declaration
like laugh lines

of wincing,  spending

mutual hunger

Just as holding the porcelain tea cup

on your knee in its quivering saucer

at Aunt Bessie’s just so, Mother watching,

Uncle Roy slumbering in the family graveyard

under the Sandia mountains

You wondered

about the rosy Venus  she had surely been

having conceived strapping sons

now a yew-crooked hostess pouring oolong

in mute and tremulous decorum

 

So it is with American Gothic

Miles, or Jared.

He stands composed, in solemnity

as if he slept in his suit

and had never cracked a joke

in all his days

And she, Naomi,  or Mary+

had babies via

spontaneous combustion

A pop of the tractor’s exhaust pipe

and presto

an infant in a christening dress

in the drawing room hand-hewn oak cradle

and everyone singing, old pipe organ

belching resurrected dust

shall we gather at the river.

Now or later.

One day in the country

an old man I knew went running

down the road talking to his hands

shaking them

as if they were bound with cobwebs

At his back

his small, plain clapboard house

the lawn freshly barbered.

Then I saw the coroner’s van

pull in and I conjectured

that she who lived behind the curtains

unwrapping store-bought cinnamon rolls

every morning

Had settled into the good sleep

under the quilt she and other

girdled Lutheran women made one spring

in the hen-house coffee-scented

ambience of farm wives

together.

But did those hands of the archetypal

rural patriarch

that grip the trident of his pitchfork

in that painting that scares us all

about the Puritan strain

we bear within us

Ever please her

ever tend, placate

or wipe away a tear of hers.

 

copyright Jenne’ R. Andrews 2011

 

What I love most about the challenges is how everyones who participates brings their own  special  and original style and interpretation to the poems.  This next one is by Olivia from

Olivia’s In-Mind  Whirls is called ‘Conflict’.  Please be sure to visit her blogs 🙂

 

  

Aspiring Big throughout our lives;
Then losing it all at once!
It may be an American Lifestyle
To Me, it’s a Gothic trance.

 

I am left with this pitch- fork-
To dig my own grave..
It may appeal to you as American,
But I live in a Gothic cave!

 

© Olivia 2011

 

Another wonderful poem has entered the challenge!  This one is from Kavita who has a great poetry blog full of humour and thoughtful posts.  Please look at How I write is mine…How you  read is yours

 

Square Feet of Roofing

He: Change is a good thing
when it is for the better
She: What use is this quiet
if it becomes another fetterHe: Our boring lives will now
take on a brand new color
She: If blue turns to grey,
things can only get duller

He: Wind plays many tricks
on creaky wooden stairways
She: There’s more than just wind
in the deceptive empty hallways

He: For my safety, I have
a pitchfork turned candle holder
She: But it’s always safe
to look behind your shoulder

He: It is now all ours;
this giant old house
She: But here’s known to live
the ghost of a vicious mouse

 

©Kavita 2011