Mourning Picture, Adrienne Rich
“…shadows, crystals, ceilings, meadows, globes of dew…”
“…visible and invisible, remembering and remembered…”
The poem expresses very contradictory, two-sided concepts, such as dark and light, which I believe capture the essence of the painting of the same name by Elmer.
Why does Rich choose to put this poem, and therefore Elmer’s painting, into the context of a dream?
“Contemporary Poetry and Painting”. Fred Moramarco.
“The paradoxes expressed in the last two lines extend the one conveyed by the painting—where Effie is visible to the viewer but invisible to her mother and father, remembering her past and remembered by her grieving parents.”
“The Effie of the painting, immortalized in art, has a kind of permanence that our fragile and transient lives can never have”
This analytical piece gives more context to both poem and painting of the same name, alerting the audience that Elmer painted this piece shortly after his young daughter passed away, giving the painting more meaning. Moramarco highlights Rich’s influence on the popularity of Elmer’s painting, identifying the same “paradoxical” nature of the poem that I identified, along with the balance it strikes between permanence and fragility, between the ghost of the dead daughter and the scene inscribed in immortality.
Moramarco gives the popularity of Elmer’s painting to Rich’s poem, how would Elmer feel about that? Is this a good example of forwarding or imitation?
