O Frabjous day! My inspired impressions continue this very morn – that is, my comments inspired by the portraiture of Amy Sherald coupled with the profundity of Emily Dickinson! In uffish thought I stand, my beamish reader, with vorpal keyboard in hand – so beware the artsy-talky, my friend, as I go galumphing on!
Today’s post is more than most special, too, for it includes not one, but four of Sherald’s paintings. Plus, as an added bonus beyond and above the words of Dickinson, I will incorporate a smattering if not a scattering of perspicacious perspectives from the brainy badinage of E. E. Cummings.
Shall we begin?
The quartet of paintings is shown below (click the images to enlarge), and one commonality each shares is an intriguing title. Nothing mundane among them, like “Woman in Hat” or “Man in Bowtie.” No, the monikers are much more – mesmerizing (I needed one more “m” word, and “mesmerizing” was the best I could do).
Today’s post is more than most special, too, for it includes not one, but four of Sherald’s paintings. Plus, as an added bonus beyond and above the words of Dickinson, I will incorporate a smattering if not a scattering of perspicacious perspectives from the brainy badinage of E. E. Cummings.
Shall we begin?
The quartet of paintings is shown below (click the images to enlarge), and one commonality each shares is an intriguing title. Nothing mundane among them, like “Woman in Hat” or “Man in Bowtie.” No, the monikers are much more – mesmerizing (I needed one more “m” word, and “mesmerizing” was the best I could do).
 |  |  |  |
| The titles (from left to right) are as follows: 1. Listen, you wonder. You a city of a woman. You got a geography of your own (taken from Lucille Clifton’s poem “what the mirror said," shown at the right -- click the image to enlarge). 2. The Rabbit in the Hat 3. It Made Sense . . . Mostly in Her Mind (a short discussion of this painting from the Whitney Museum is HERE). 4. Freeing herself was one thing, taking ownership of that freed self was another (taken from Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”; also, the wall placard at the BMA included this information: ”Sherald’s subject embodies that transition, standing in the space between freedom and the full acceptance of it.”) |  |
The paintings, the titles, and that fourth work’s description all called to mind several quotations from E. E. Cummings to which I alluded earlier:
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
“To be nobody-but-yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”
And – playing off the theme from yesterday’s post (HERE):
“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”
I gathered all of this – yesterday’s and today’s posts, the corresponding paintings, Sherald's various clever – and meaningful – titles, the quotes from Cummings, the poems by Whyte (yesterday) and Clifton (today) – and I lobbed it all into my Mix-A-Lot-Blend-O-Matic Dickinson word processor and came up with this, "The Soul unto Itself":
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
“To be nobody-but-yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”
And – playing off the theme from yesterday’s post (HERE):
“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”
I gathered all of this – yesterday’s and today’s posts, the corresponding paintings, Sherald's various clever – and meaningful – titles, the quotes from Cummings, the poems by Whyte (yesterday) and Clifton (today) – and I lobbed it all into my Mix-A-Lot-Blend-O-Matic Dickinson word processor and came up with this, "The Soul unto Itself":
 | Emily, I (and my soul) stand in AWE! Just eight lines and the work encapsulates a fundamental truth about human nature – and so Jung at heart! Jung, you may recall, focused his philosophy on achieving "individuation,” the lifelong process of integrating conscious and unconscious parts of the mind to become a whole, authentic self. On a blog that offered an analysis of “The Soul unto itself,” I saw this whimsical bit of repartee: “Emily Dickinson could have written Carl Jung's books but Carl Jung could've never written Emily Dickinson’s poems.” |
And here is the best part
You have a head start
If you are among the very
Jung at heart!
BONUS POEM BY DICKINSON ("taking ownership of that freed self"):
Me, change! Me, alter!
Then I will, when on the
Everlasting Hill
A Smaller Purple grows –
At sunset, or a lesser glow
Flickers upon Cordillera –
At Day's superior close!
Me, change! Me, alter!
Then I will, when on the
Everlasting Hill
A Smaller Purple grows –
At sunset, or a lesser glow
Flickers upon Cordillera –
At Day's superior close!
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