Quotes about sketch, page 2
Παντα ρει· ουδεν μενει
Upon the water, in the boat,
I sit and sketch as down I float:
The stream is wide, the view is fair,
I sketch it looking backward there.
The stream is strong, and as I sit
And view the picture that we quit,
It flows and flows, and bears the boat,
And I sit sketching as we float.
Each pointed height, each wavy line,
To new and other forms combine;
Proportions vary, colours fade,
And all the landscape is remade.
Depicted neither far nor near,
And larger there and smaller here,
And varying down from old to new,
E’en I can hardly think it true.
Yet still I look, and still I sit,
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poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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A Bull For Me
I think, Sirs, and most inimitable Ladies
I think I prefer to look at a bull
The sketch of a bull, the head of a bull perhaps
even if but a study by an artist
rather than some fancy prophet in glorious paint
or in grand chapel or some miracle recounted
in paint and colors and with consummate skill
or even God descending
ah, all these do not take my fancy
they smack too much of the Elevated;
there’s too much
of the grandstanding in these
Grand Divine Themes
but the face of a bull, ah give me a sketch
of the face of a bull
just the bull, all marks of nature in it
and just itself
no symbolism, no conceit, no artifice
no High sounding theology, no Revelation
but just animal nature in its nudity
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poem by Raj Arumugam
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A Question About Art
Our world forgets – has never known, perhaps –
that questions are a treasured magic wand:
the question asked, the answer may, most like, come freshly said
out of a space that’s new alike to teacher and to taught;
your question is today – how factual should I leave
my verse, or should I seek to ‘colour’ it with metaphor? …
this image comes to mind: ‘old master’ in his studio,
famed painter of Madonnas with attendant Child;
demand’s incessant; so he draws the outlines in,
and passes on the canvas to his studio hand;
coloured then, maybe he adds the master’s touch of life -–
the smile of angel’s sweetness on the Madonna’s face;
the glimpse of future in the Christ Child’s eyes;
and off it goes to some great patron’s church,
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poem by Michael Shepherd
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A pencil sketch of Mozart
It’s a snapshot, except
before the age of the camera
yet more of a decisive moment
than any posed painting;
as any photographer,
lighting director, would see,
he’s next to you, could be
round about the fifth row back
of the stalls;
looking so straight ahead
that it doesn’t seem to be
the stage box; and it must surely be
a grand theatre, the lighting’s strong
on his white neck-stock,
his powdered hair, even catching
the lower white of his focussed eye;
he all there, he’s all here, and
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poem by Michael Shepherd
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Lisbeth and the Artist
Lisbeth stands watching
The artist as he prepares
To sketch. Her elder sisters
Stand in shadows whispering.
Her younger sister plays
With her doll on the floor.
Their father said to do as
The artist instructed and
Don't misbehave or be rude.
The artist stares hard his
Dark eyes searching their
Every move and expression
And body gesture. The elder
Girls mutter in shadows
Their hands over their mouths
Their blue eyes like shallow
Pools. Ready? The artist
Asks putting charcoal to
Paper his fingers blackening.
Lisbeth says just as we are?
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poem by Terry Collett
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Poem
About the size of an old-style dollar bill,
American or Canadian,
mostly the same whites, gray greens, and steel grays
-this little painting (a sketch for a larger one?)
has never earned any money in its life.
Useless and free., it has spent seventy years
as a minor family relic handed along collaterally to owners
who looked at it sometimes, or didn't bother to.
It must be Nova Scotia; only there
does one see abled wooden houses
painted that awful shade of brown.
The other houses, the bits that show, are white.
Elm trees., low hills, a thin church steeple
-that gray-blue wisp-or is it? In the foreground
a water meadow with some tiny cows,
two brushstrokes each, but confidently cows;
two minuscule white geese in the blue water,
back-to-back,, feeding, and a slanting stick.
Up closer, a wild iris, white and yellow,
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poem by Elizabeth Bishop
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Eureka Rings A Bell
“Eureka! ” moments sometimes may result
from outright theft, with Graham Bell the worst
example. For he traveled to consult
the patent of Elisha Gray, the first
to find a way to speak by telephone,
and aided by a drunken patent clerk,
got credit for the patent which alone
should have been Gray’s, who did the major work
before the son of the professor Bernard Shaw
would use as Henry Higgins’ model stole
his great invention and used patent law
to take not part of credit but the whole.
Could it be that Archimedes, too,
stole from a competitor the math
enabling him to figure out what you
and I’ve been told he found out in his bath?
Marjorie Kehe reviews The Telephone Gambit, by Seth Shulman, in The Christian Science Monitor, January 9,2008:
How often does a detective story upend history? Probably about as often as a science and technology journalist pens a page-turner. But with this month's release of 'The Telephone Gambit' by Seth Shulman both these unlikely events are coming to pass at the same moment. This slender volume (252 pages, with notes and credits) is a work of nonfiction - although the strangeness of truth definitely overtakes fiction here as Shulman explains how he unraveled Alexander Graham Bell's claim to have invented the telephone. We may never be absolutely certain, but 'The Telephone Gambit' presents compelling evidence that Bell snuck a look at rival inventor Elisha Gray's patent application, stole a crucial element from it, and then lived an uncomfortable lie for the rest of his days. This is not the work of a muckraker. No one wanted to reach such a conclusion less than did Shulman, a longtime admirer of Bell's. But that's exactly why this book is such a good read. Shulman carefully spells out not only the steps he took to piece together his story, but also the reluctance he battled en route. Why would Bell - a man whose good character was noted by all who knew him - behave so dishonorably? How could he have stolen from a rival he had never met? And is it even possible that such a high-profile crime could have gone undetected for so long? The answers to these questions unspool neatly throughout Shulman's narrative but they read more like the stuff of thrillers than of the history of science. Figures in this real-life drama include (it would seem) an alcoholic patent clerk, some unscrupulous attorneys, and a beautiful young woman whom Bell yearned to marry. Shulman's first glimpse of the story came in 2004. He was enjoying a yearlong research fellowship at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There, he was studying recently digitized reproductions of the private papers of Bell. Shulman was thrilled to be able to follow so close on the heels of his hero - yet puzzled by something he saw. Shulman knew the story of the invention of the telephone as well as anyone - or at least he thought he did. Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray filed patent applications on the very same day in 1876. (Gray's was actually a 'caveat' - but it would have served the purpose of staking Gray's exclusive righ”The Telephone Gambit, ” by Seth Shulman in The Christian Science Monitor, January 0,2008: t to continue research in this area.) According to the official story, Bell filed a few hours earlier than Gray and so was awarded the patent. Then, the next month, he had the breakthrough moment we've all read about in the history books. (After spilling acid in his lab, Bell shouted, 'Watson, come here, I need you.' Watson, in another room, heard him through the device they were experimenting with and thus was born the telephone.) Or so we've always believed. But what troubled Shulman was that Bell's 'eureka moment' depended on an element that had been completely missing from Bell's research until only two days earlier. Then, this crucial link suddenly appeared in Bell's journal in a sketch remarkably similar to a drawing found in Gray's patent application. In the days just before this sketch appeared, Bell had not been working in his lab. On the contrary, he'd been in Washington, filing his patent claim. I won't spoil the fun (and it is fun) by explaining exactly how Shulman proceeded and what he discovered as he worked backward from that point. Bell, he ended up concluding, was a great innovator who had made much progress toward the telephone, but he is not its creator. Instead, it seems, he was a talented, decent man, who lived with guilt ever after being pressured into an unseemly act of theft. Shulman does a neat job of painting, in rapid brush strokes, a portrait of the thrilling era of innovation in which Bell lived and also of the interesting circumstances of his life. (His speech professor father was the real-life model for the Henry Higgins of George Bernard Shaw's 'Pygmalion.') Shulman also manages to lace his work with just enough technology to tell his story without losing the interest of any low-tech readers. As a result, 'The Telephone Gambit' succeeds splendidly as an edge-of-your- seat historical tale. Yet it also manages to go somewhere deeper, leaving readers with intriguing questions about the ways in which truth may remain undiscovered, even when lying open in plain sight.
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poem by Gershon Hepner
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Dinner With Gershwin
I want to have dinner with Gershwin
I want to watch Rembrandt sketch
I want to talk theory with Curie
I'mpossible I guess
I want to talk moods with Picasso
On a rendezvous
I want to fly double with Earhart
I want to get next to you
Next to you
So close
Just as close as I can get
The rain of your worry
Can't effect
What I feel is what I feel
One touch
Of your greatness
Is what I need
My circle of fantasy
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song performed by Donna Summer from All Systems Go
Added by Lucian Velea
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Anchorless and Engulfed
Two who each other barely knew -
though both drew down delinquency
some streets apart, are past, and few
shall etch sketch wretched memory.
Two travelled on lines parallel
while wheeled real reel of history,
banned reel ran out span's tocsin bell
tolled once to tell eternity
‘Bonjour, ma mie, je t'aime, adieu! '
The mocking bird of Destiny
nests but a moment. All falls through
before each earth-bound entity
grasp pain's pain glass a second, spell
life's sensitivity to see
things in perspective ere Death's knell
engulfs hopes in Styx misery.
Confined upon Earth's ark our zoo
builds up its bars too readily.
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poem by Jonathan Robin
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The Golden Legend: IV. The Road To Hirschau
PRINCE HENRY _and_ ELSIE, _with their attendants, on
horseback._
_Elsie._ Onward and onward the highway runs
to the distant city, impatiently bearing
Tidings of human joy and disaster, of love and of
hate, of doing and daring!
_Prince Henry._ This life of ours is a wild aeolian
harp of many a joyous strain,
But under them all there runs a loud perpetual wail,
as of souls in pain.
_Elsie._ Faith alone can interpret life, and the heart
that aches and bleeds with the stigma
Of pain, alone bears the likeness of Christ, and can
comprehend its dark enigma.
_Prince Henry._ Man is selfish, and seeketh pleasure
with little care of what may betide;
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poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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