Appreciation of Literature and Film

judith gentileschi

From valley deep to mountain high went she 

God’s might she bringeth unto thee 

The people writhed and wept and suffered 

But she knew no reason was there to flee 

A woman’s right hand to deliver them 

Adorned with precious metals and shining gem 

But the key was her faith within 

The Most High knew she was right to send 

God answered her each and every prayer 

The foolish king, for her, drew up a chair 

Smitten with lust and drunken pride 

He drifted off, and she vanquished him there 

The king of wrath lay still with sloth 

Wrapped lazily in rich, red cloth 

Blessed be her righteous deed 

The light that smote the heedless moth 

No matter the blood, the loss, the slaughter 

God proclaimed her as His daughter 

For such lustful, foolish, prideful heathens 

Must meet their ends when come deep water 

When writing this poem, I focused on telling the story depicted in the painting, which is Judith Slaying Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi. This painting is based off of the Book of Judith in the Bible. I tried alluding to the larger abhorrent nature of men at large to touch on the likely perspective of the artist, whom many think was inspired to paint this particular figure and story after she was tragically raped and had a public trial which led to the exile of the man who raped her a few years prior to creating this painting. I tried to generalize the story in an attempt to show how she may have related it to her own life. I also tried to underscore the impressiveness of Judith successfully killing Holofernes as a woman, which I tried to accomplish by using pronouns liberally. Stylistically, I tried to employ the use of Biblical language with words such as lust, greed, wrath, deliver, prayer, etc. Technically, I used an AABA rhyme scheme and read the poem out loud frequently while reading to maintain a rhythm and flow to its pacing.

I did not use generative AI to create this poem 

David, Jacques-Louis. The Death of Marat. 1793. Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Belgium.

Blessed Be the Death of Marat

Olivia Lytle

In a too-dark scene, he’s cold to the touch,

if one were ever so lucky as you.

Suspended by the last tick of the clock,

the scratch of quill on parchment.

An unspoken reply, a knife in place of a feather.

Once the ink dries, what is left of poor Monsieur Marat?

He’s but the thing that killed him, and he’s a Saint

in Memorium, entombed to his reddened tub.

And Charlotte, oh Charlottle.

Nothing tastes so sweet as the death of the soul.

And your soul, black as the ink of your victim’s quill.

Your final move, The Terror, what was it all for?

But he smiles as if he knows, and he knows.

Beyond the grave, you hear them chant,

Blessed be the Death of Marat,

France’s great martyr. 

I decided to focus my ekphrastic poem on Jacques-Louis David’s 1793 painting, “The Death of Marat”. This painting has always impacted me in a very specific way that I cannot quite place, and I think exploring it through poetry aided me in this endeavor. “The Death of Marat” is a very historically impactful painting as it depicts the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat at the hands of Charlotte Corday at the height of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. Corday, a member of the Girondist faction of moderate republicans, believed Marat, a Jacobin, to be the cause of countless deaths during this tumultuous time in France’s history. So, to prevent the onset of further deaths, she assassinated him herself. With Christian iconography and a helpless depiction of the victim, Marat appears to be both a hero and a Martyr, making the painting a very obscure piece of propaganda. I wanted to incorporate the impact of this Christian iconography, so I made sure to compare Marat to a Saint in line 7 and to mention the conflict of the soul, especially Corday’s after her decision. I wanted to speak to Charlotte Corday directly within the poem, as I would want to speak to her in real life to ask her why she did what she did, even if I know the supposed reason. I find the painting so interesting as it depicts the helpless moments after death, the cruelty of its onset, and the crucially still moments beforehand, and I wanted my poem to cover these themes. The painting just feels so stuck, in both time and place, so in my poem, I tried to put the reader inside this one moment, almost as if they are in the room with Marat. I also like to think I am speaking to Charlotte after she killed him as we both gaze upon her final purpose: the death of Marat. I also simply think it is a beautiful painting and I am happy I got to experiment with ekphrastic poetry.

Wilderness Way By Bob Ross (1994)

The trees whisper in silence of the valley,
An unbeaten path curving through the bushes hidden from the world,
Mist that flows through the leaves to create a glossy glow,
Mountains looking up towards the sky.

Life begins to flows with the stroke of a brush,
Golden accents in the tall pine leaves.
A stream flows in the distance resembling a mirror,
Reflecting the beauty of what the untouched world holds.

Nothing is out of place.
Every rock and every leaf has a place to stay.
Watching him gently glide over the canvas,
Finding peace and tranquility in his work,
This is where nature sings,
In Wilderness Way.

There I stood peering into his eyes, 

while he waited on every brush stroke. 

He stood silent, glancing up briefly, 

to take note of my uniform. 

Eventually, as my hands feel sticky,

Grasping at my father’s knife,  

my conscience drifts back, 

to the muddied fields of the country. 

Where my hands drip with someone else’s blood.

My uniform’s vibrant colors, lost, 

replaced with a coat of red.

All I can do is watch as my compatriots fall. 

As my eyes burn and my ears ring, 

I feel the cold touch of fear.

Overwhelmed by the trembling of my legs,

I fall almost instinctively, staining our flag. 

Frozen in the mud, I listen to the screams, shaking. 

It seems like an eternity until someone helps me up, 

patting my shoulder, saying 

You’re a lucky one. 

Now home, I was even more alone. 

People praised me as a hero, 

unaware and uncaring, 

of my true suffering. 

Just then, he spoke up,

his soothing tone cleared my mind. 

Repeating himself he said, 

You can go, I am done.

Artist Statement: 

The main purpose of the poem is to show PTSD in veterans. Though I reference features of the artwork, the poem doesn’t necessarily need the artwork to function. The form of my poem is meant to display how PTSD can turn calmness into panic. The short structured 4 line stanzas show when the narrator is calm and the longer unorganized 3rd stanza shows when he is panicked. The second stanza demonstrates how something as little as stickiness on one’s hands can cause a traumatic flashback. The 3rd stanza stays in the present form to symbolize the narrator feeling physically back in the war. The 4th stanza is supposed to show that people rarely appreciate veterans fully, and especially during the time didn’t understand the full effects of PTSD. I ended with you can go now I am done to further the theme of unappreciativeness.  Also, the poem isn’t based on a specific battle in the eighties year war, just what it could have been like. 

I did not use generative AI to create the poem

Liquid Time by Meghan Merlino

The clocks dissolve like candle’s breath,
Dripping time in golden death
The hands stand still with the world in motion
Time itself is nothing but illusion

An olive tree branch reaches out
Like times with friends you not doubt
Things beyond the surface make an impact
While the moving hands remain intact

Mountains sleep in distant haze,
While minutes warp in molten glaze.
A blank canvas suspended, and still,
Where time itself bends to the will

Of something deep, unseen, untold
Manifest anything you behold
The clock says we decay
My dreams tell me we get to stay

Is this a dream or something more?
A glimpse beyond an unseen door?
Memory persists yet fades,
A desert drowned in melted days

The sun has set but has left no mark,
A frozen hour, a time grown dark
Soft watches pool like liquid glass
The past still lingers, will it pass?

I chose the painting Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali as inspiration for my poem. I chose Dali as my poet because I was intrigued by his character in the movie Midnight in Paris- it is one of my favorites, and he has a brief appearance but is extremely notable. Also, I found it coincidental that I am majoring in psychology with hopes to counsel in the future- and Dali was immersed in Sigmund Freud’s work at the time of his painting. He was interested in Freud’s research about the subconscious and how it plays a role in our day to day lives. The year prior to painting the Persistence of Memory, Dali developed his “paranoiac-critical method,” where he induced himself in a subconscious state and then would later paint what he saw. The melting clocks in his paintings are known to be a symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist belief on the debunking of a fixed cosmic order. While writing the poem I focused more on the artist and his belief system rather than the art itself. Dali denied the painting having any connection to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, however with Dali’s obsession with time, the subconscious mind, and memories, it seems that maybe he was hinting to parallel time dimensions- it’s hard to be sure. I included a rhyme scheme with every two lines rhyming each other, and emphasized the clocks since they are a focal point of the painting.

I did not use generative AI to create this poem.