Nouvelle 55: Portrait of Mary Magdalen, or a Poet

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Saint Mary Magdalen at the Sepulchre
by Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo
Mary has just now seen Christ, and the artist paints
radiance reflected on her cloak from the risen Lord,
while Mary's face is in shadow

Portrait of Mary Magdalen, or a Poet

A response to 'Mary Magdalen at the Sepulchre'
by Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo

A veiled face,
cloves cloaked in a sleeve.

Fragrance,
like late summer gold,

leans into the cold of tombs.
Interior lights

– not the apotheosis of the sun—
are the radiants you seek.

Day is where you are,
everything else, shadow.

Break the clove’s shell.
Rub the dark powder

painting your skin,
and smell your breath.

Nouvelle 55 is a poem or fiction in 55 words, based on a piece of art.

Poetry should be heard.

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Nouvelle 55: Nelson's Mandala

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Nelson's mandala "synch-ro-ni-zing"

It never once occurred to me to write a Nouvelle 55 for my 55th birthday. But it did to my brother Nelson who wrote this one for my birthday post today. It is based on this complex and radiant mandala he designed for me in April. When he created it he meditated on the name of my blog, and flights of imagination caught him. I see me at the center. I see the overlapping worlds that touch me. I see crosses . . . perhaps the religion of my past. I see XOXO - the symbols of hugs and kisses which commenters and I use for one another. I see memories, stories, all that has made me who I am. I see the worlds of others around the country and world whose lives have come into mine through blogging. I see vibrancy and life, and most of all color.

Nelson is the oldest of eight kids, I'm the youngest. We didn't bump into each other much at home, since he went off to college before I began kindergarten. He did have a part in naming me. He was sweet on a certain girl, so when Dad asked what they should name me if I was a girl, Nelson said her name, "How about Ruth Anne?"

It wasn't until 1995, the year I turned 40 (the age of my parents when I was born) that our friendship began. When Dad died of cancer six weeks after his diagnosis, Nelson and I were given the task of designing the funeral program for him. The family had to take special care arranging the funeral of a minister who had conducted countless funerals in our little town. While Nelson and I sat with our heads together at the dining table over the typewriter designing the printed program for the service, gradually, and unrelated to our task, out trickled traces of our own stories, revealing similar feelings about growing up in our home. It hadn't always been easy.

Since then, we've grown to be close friends. We talk about the mysteries of the soul, and we're both deeply optimistic about that. "Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward." Do you know which Nelson said that?

The haiku-esque stanzas of Nelson's poem are like layered stairs of time, bearing our separate-yet-interconnected steps toward spiritual freedom.

These gifts live and move.

Nouvelle 55: Eight Twenty-two

An age ago
Sophia undraped Ruth,
baby number eight.

   Soon number one
   teased out smiles and, later,
   steps from her stances.

      Then he hid in ivied halls;
      when he emerged
      she dropped petals for his bride.

         That couple drove
         into the sunrise
         and Ruthie blossomed.

            Presently
            she soars under stars,
            inspiring him onward and upward.


            Mandala and Poem © Nelson Hart, 2011

Nelson's Note: Ruth describes Nouvelle 55 as a flash fiction or poem in 55 words based upon a work of art. Nelson describes mandala as a symbol of the relationship between the larger world and our inner world; the image accepts life's tension and ambivalence. Carl Jung believed them to arise out of “the unconscious self." For information on mandalas in the Indian subcontinent, see this.

Ruth’s note: Sophia is a feminine aspect of God in the Gnostic tradition. Some say She fell from grace and created the material world, still expressing the light of God. She’s the deep mystery of wisdom (and the wisdom of mystery?). Lately when I pray, I pray to her. I don’t think Nelson knew that when he wrote his poem.

Us 8 kids in 1961 (?)
bookended by Ruthie and Nelson, 

with Ginnie (Boots) 3rd from right;
I loved my matching dress and sweater set,
and velvet shoes

Nelson and Peg's wedding in 1964; I was junior bridesmaid;

our brother Bennett who passed away in 1996 stands next to Nelson;
and our Dad is next to Bennett

Dad married Nelson and Peg in his Baptist church

 my college graduation in 2001 when I was 44,
with Ginnie (Boots) and Nelson,
a sister and brother of the soul as well as the blood

Nelson and me at our great-niece Katy's wedding in May 2011

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Nouvelle 55: Vulnerability

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Vulnerability

The world is not delicate
on the whole. I feel it here
in my sternum, my ribs,
lying on my back under you,
stars distant, tree immense.
The world is not delicate
and the plum leaf is strong,
even when the beetle nibbles
her into lace, making room
for more stars to be
strung between her veins.

Painting: Georgia O'Keeffe's 'The Lawrence Tree,' painted on her first visit to New Mexico, when she visited D.H. Lawrence's ranch. This tree was in front of his house, with a bench under it, and she lay back on the bench to paint the tree. 

Nouvelle 55 is a flash fiction or poem in 55 words based upon a work of art.

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Nouvelle 55: Four Directions - The Star

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"Four Directions" by stained glass artist Stratoz

My friend Stratoz invited me to write a Nouvelle 55 based upon one of his stunning stained glass pieces. This poem is the result. I feel drawn to connect Stratoz' piece with art by Marc Chagall and Carl Jung (who found in mandalas representations of the Self), two people whose souls exploded in creativity, as bright and wild as Stratoz' "Four Directions." This piece is a square mandala, when most manadalas are a circle (some with a square inside). Read Stratoz' post about the healing ways of mandalas here.

The story of Israel — of Jews, of Arabs— of the great conflicts that never end, was made more poignant for me this morning when I read that the large Arab population in the Galilee region of Israel is predominantly Druze. Some believe that the Druze people descended from the Tribe of Zebulun, one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Oh that the tribes of the world could be joined as skillfully as Stratoz melds the living colors of his stained glass, and as Chagall did his stained glass, and as Jung did the colors of the unbreakable self.

The Star

prompted by Stratoz' "Four Directions"

Break the mirror.
Four-square hands
reunite in sacred sand.

Gather saturation,
arrowed imagination

east-ended by the sea
a sky-blue Galilee

in the colors of this dream.
Gate my red
leaf-paint the green

Bright my heart—
     good this art
circling the sacred soul apart.

Pull into light, my star—
Self, borne into near
and far

Lithograph, by Marc Chagall

"The Tribe of Zebulun"

from The Twelve Maquettes
Of Stained Glass Windows
For Jerusalem, 1964

found here

The Red Cross, Carl Jung's illustration from The Red Book

Nouvelle 55 is a flash fiction written in exactly 55 words, based on a piece of art. 

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Nouvelle 55: The Storm

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The Storm, by Pierre-Auguste Cot

Metropolitan Museum of Art

HE:    “What do you mean, love: ‘Hold on to me, we’re going to fly!'?"

SHE:  “I mean that if we stay, my father will banish you.
I would rather sail up together into the storm of the sky
rushing toward us now, than live out hell on earth
   —without you. The old Duke wants to marry meeee-eeee-- ~ - ~ - ~!”

*Nouvelle 55 (nouvelle cinquante-cinq - I love how it sounds in French, humor me) is a form of flash fiction, in exactly 55 words, based on a work of art.

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Nouvelle 55: The Girl by the Window

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The Girl by the Window, 1893
by Edvard Munch

Art Institute of Chicago

The Girl by the Window

Afraid, gulping bitterness,
she padded to the windowed moonlight,
to see if it were really so.

“You see? She is leaving. Look at her trunk.”
Grandmother’s voice was a triumph, like a horn.
Grandmother didn’t know her own trunk
was packed for just such a night as this.

She was afraid she would never leave.

This is my first nouvelle 55, a flash fiction.

I wonder if you're like me at the moment. My attention span is shorter than ever. I feel restless. I can barely make it through a news article or op-ed without feeling that there is something else I should be doing, thinking or saying. Living in the moment, this moment, now, has never been more difficult. Strangely though, yesterday I read longer in War & Peace than I have up until now, go figure. I had my laptop open, looking up facts about the Napoleonic Wars. I couldn't get enough. Tolstoy's beautiful writing, where I ride each sentence like I'm tubing a slow-moving river, kept me riveted for hours. It also inspired me to write fiction. Very, very short fiction.

Flash fiction, micro fiction, what the French call nouvelle. Steve Moss challenged people to write them in 55 words, no more, no less. I'm in the mood for Paris, so I made up this genre: nouvelle 55, which is flash fiction, based on a piece of art, in 55 words. This particular nouvelle 55 is a meditation on Edvard Munch's painting "The Girl by the Window." I'd love it if you'd try one. There are helpful tips for micro fiction at Heelstone here. Go ahead, find a piece of art for inspiration, and write a nouvelle 55.

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