crow

A new photograph, photoshopped, with an old poem. I've been meaning to play with this idea for some time:

Haiga is a traditional Japanese art form composed of brush painting and calligraphy of haiku poetry . . . [in] the modern English haiga school . . . the image may be a digital image, a graphic image, a painting, a photograph.  [from Haiga]

There are some wonderful examples there, including another crow. And of course, there is our own crow poem dance, and For the Love of Crows, Crows.net, and The Corvids, which opens with this lovely line from Niall Williams:

Blackbirds like small priests walked in the silent fields.

And one of my favorite poems, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, by Wallace Stevens.

Crows are fascinating, but I still prefer Raven.

Comments

[msdedi]

like this new direction, and this haiga

[SB]

Am I going in a new direction?

I've been wondering, but unable to identify it; so I'm intrigued that a reader sees something I only glimpse...

[Cathy]

Hey!!!!! no stealing my ideas please ;) Ok I wrote about the idea in diary not in the blog. So I hope to see more. I need to just take more pics and then find a poem to go with it.

[Jilly Dybka]

One of my top 5 favorite poems. Plath.

Black Rook in Rainy Weather

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, not seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Lean incandescent

Out of the kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then ---
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largesse, honor,
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); skeptical,
Yet politic; ignorant

Of whatever angel may choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait's begun again,
The long wait for the angel.
For that rare, random descent.

[Ken]

And, for a Celtic reading of the Crow and the Raven:

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/m/morrigan.html

Oh, and for good measure, James Hillman's recent book: "A Terrible Love of War," tells the same story of the connection between Mars and Venus.