Weston Morrow

Check out these incredible poems by Liz Harms (@lizharms.bsky.social) at MQR
sites.lsa.umich.edu/mqr/2023/10/...

Please go buy their journal! It's a really tremendous literary magazine
behrend.psu.edu/school-of-hu...

I’m immensely grateful to George Looney and Celine Gauge at Lake Effect for supporting this work. Not only did they publish this poem, but they also published the very first poem I wrote for this manuscript back in 2021.

In an ironic twist of fate, Constable would finally be recognized for his contributions to British art and elected to the Royal Academy the very next year.

A year and a half after the completion of "The Cornfield," following Maria's years-long struggle with tuberculosis, she passed away.

Despite these additions, and Constable’s hopes, the painting would not sell during Constable's lifetime.

quoted text, "Constable remarked to his friend Fisher: "I do hope to sell this present picture--as it has certainly got a little more eye-salve than I usually give them." By "eye-salve" he probably meant picturesque details such as the drinking boy, the donkey's grazing the bank dotted with poppies and cow parsley, the flock of sheep, distant village and meandering river."

No one wanted to buy his paintings, and he was struggling to cover the family’s expenses. Perhaps in a kind of desperate response, he added elements to this painting that he thought might entice buyers.

Though today Constable is considered by many—along with JMW Turner—to be one of the most important landscape painters in the history of Western art, his career to this point had not gone well.

quoted text from the National Gallery, "The lane still exists but the countryside shown beyond it was largely conjured up in Constable's studio. The church tower and cluster of red-roofed houses 'never existed,' as the artist's son Charles Constable was later to point out--Constable invented the village."

As the National Gallery notes, this “wooded lane leading to a more sunlit landscape” was a common theme in Constable’s work. And, though the path depicted in “The Cornfield” is a real one, the village to which it leads was invented by Constable.

Maria had contracted tuberculosis several years prior, and her health had deteriorated significantly in the ensuing time.

The painting depicts a real path from Constable’s childhood home in Dedham Vale, though he painted it from London—mid-winter—from memory and old sketches, as the health of his wife, Maria, was deteriorating.

"The Cornfield," by John Constable, 1826

The Cornfield, John Constable, 1826 It opens on the countryside, a boy who from a distance seems dead, head tipped forward in the stream as if drowned. Or is he looking down, through the silt, for something beneath the surface? Surely, there is nothing there to see. No, drawing closer it seems he's only drinking the dark water, slaking his thirst before crossing Dedham Vale. You think

this child might bring the scene to life; meanwhile, in a bed, tucked between Brighton and Hove, your wife is dying. No one will buy this painting. To them it is lifeless, even with the addition of the boy and his dog, the little poppies blooming on the hillside undisturbed by loss. The sheep march onward to be shorn. The farmer hangs, in his corn, a warning to the sparrows, a corpse of cloth and stuffed straw. But the birds know what the man won't admit— the body is a frail imitation of its god, betrayed by every cough of wind. Its small truths riddled with fraud. What now remains? The road persists, but the village you claimed you saw, beyond the lane, never existed.

I’m thrilled to have a poem in Lake Effect about John Constable’s 1826 painting “The Cornfield,” a painting that’s dear to me, with its own fascinating and tragic story that I’d like to tell here.

I should be able to burn calories by charging my phone with myself

win/win if you ask me

Alfred Lord Tennis-shoe

Yes! That's the one. Thank you! Love J Robert Lennon, so will definitely check those other two out as well.

@tmcallister.bsky.social Tom, on a couple of the recent Bookfight eps you've mentioned good crime novels you've been reading, but I can't for the life of me find where in the episodes you mentioned them. Do you remember what they were?

I'm just happy to be here!