The Red Shoes Project Redux

 This is a repost from back in January 2011 called  Red Shoes. It took some encouragement from Annell Livingston to convince me I could write a poem about shoes for inclusion in her artbook, The Red Shoes Project, but she ultimately prevailed, and without her this poem would never have been written.  The book will include original poems from many women poets active on the web, and Annell’s lively artwork on the red shoe theme, discussed further after the poem. I reposted it  here as her work on the project neared completion.  

The book is now available from LuLu.com as The Red Shoes Artist Book Project, by annell livingston

I’m very grateful to have been asked to contribute, and feel lucky to be included with the many talented people involved.

 Red Shoes 

A Rondel

She danced through the night. Her shoes were red.

She rang her bell of tulle and ribbons, dress of dreams.

The master cued her moves and sewed her seams

and made her body over like a doll’s without a head.

He choreographed her pas de deux, a masque of the dead.

She must be only air, her bones hollow as moonbeams.

She danced through the night. Her shoes were red,

stiff her bell of tulle and ribbons, dress of dreams,

She danced through the night. Her shoes were red,

though cream when she began the final themes.

She rang her bell of tulle and ribbons, dress of dreams.

Violins bowed the razor while she bled.

She danced through the night, her shoes were red.

January 2011

Image by Annell Livingston,  

Somethings I think About 

Here is a bit more information on the project in Annell's words:

“ The artists' book is a work of art that is conceived as a book and doesn't exist in any other form or format… The Red Shoe book project is the seventh project in a series of artists' book projects I have completed...

Sometimes the stories that are told by book projects are secrets and go beyond words, but books are inherently optimistic; they express the belief that communication will be received later and elsewhere....at sometime, and somewhere they will be read.

The red shoes are a symbol of creativity for women and our legacy.  It is this legacy that The Red Shoes artists book project addresses.  

 I have asked sixteen artists to join me in The Red Shoe project.  The writings of these women are diverse in language, style, approach and form.  They each seem to be remaking, renewing, renaming, re- experiencing and recasting old ideas about the Red Shoes, and the meaning in their lives.

 I conceived the idea of a Red Shoe artist book project, while reading the Madwoman in the Attic, by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar.  They explain that the women of the nineteenth- century had what was called “anxiety of authorship,”  --a fear that she could not create, and the act of creating would isolate or destroy her.  The symbol of the red shoes is often used in fairly tales as the symbol for the creativity of women, i.e. Snow White, The Wizard of OZ, Cinderella and others."

If you'd like to read more of the poems in this project, you can visit Annell's website,  

Somethings I think About, where she has posted some of the other contributions as well as more of her own  artwork.

FURTHER COMMENTING DISABLED ON THIS POST DUE TO SPAMBOT ACTIVITY

The Old Woman, Going

The Old Woman Prepares to Go

A rondel

Don’t come too close she’ll soon be gone;

don’t speak, she can’t be evergreen. 

Don’t hold her when the rains convene    

and bulbs all come and bloom like dawn.

The roosting roadrunner shy as a fawn

will scatter twigs and clack and preen               

but find no seed for she’ll be gone.

Don’t speak, she can’t be evergreen.

Out on the cedar speckled lawn

the redbud’s face will rouge unseen

and dot the eye, clear cruel and clean

with shadow snow that melts at dawn.

Don’t come too close she’ll soon be gone.

Don’t speak; the world is evergreen

March 2011

Revised to follow correct rhyme scheme: 

ABba/abAB/abba AB

Posted for  One Stop Poetry Form  at the inimitable One Stop Poetry

Since this is all about writing form, I thought it might be interesting to some to show how a free verse poem turns into a form poem in Hedgewitch’s kitchen, and also I have to admit an attachment to both versions. So, I’m posting both the derived rondel and the original verse it’s based on.  

Here's where I started(free verse):

The Old Woman Goes

Don’t get too close to her.

Soon she’ll be gone, never to see 

the redbud bloom again

dotting the eyes with soft purple, 

or the bold marauder charge of the bulbs

upward green to a flaring yellow.

The roadrunner will come roost on her porch

with its haphazard scatter of twigs

and odd clicking chatter to be chased off

by someone else.

The feral guinea hens will find no seed

beneath the empty feeders, and with

the thincheeked minimalist squirrels, dimly mourn

something,

hungry in mindless confusion.

All the books and the vinyl will be sold,

the illegible scribbles, the antic photographs

thrown in the dumpster 

after the poorly attended

estate sale. She'll be forgotten 

faster than snowmelt on the vernal equinox

except perhaps in a far crumbling house

where an old man dreams of seed and birds 
and spring

remembering shelter.

March 2011

Photo: redbud, by joy ann jones, March 2011

Nothing Exists Except Atoms & Space

 

"Sweet exists by convention, bitter by convention, colour by convention; atoms and Void [alone] exist in reality." ~ Democritus

Nothing Exists Except Atoms And Space

A rondel

Come ride the atoms where I walk.

Be real before you blow like smoke.     

Be dreams but then be dreamer woke.       

Be acts not sacks of empty talk.

Call back the dogs, call back the hawk.

Do the thing you can’t revoke.             

Come ride the atoms where I walk.

Be real before you blow like smoke.

Unpick the stitch, unlock the lock.

Unthread the needle words we spoke.

Take form and be the antidote

to poisons, not the killing shock.

Come ride the atoms where I walk.

March 2011

Posted for OneStop Poetry Form at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

~Okay, I fudged the rhymes a bit in the final stanza. Young padawans--don't try this at home.

Image: Spinward,  by nmsmith, courtesy deviantART

The Snow Thrall

The Snow Thrall

The north wind blows and writes a tale

on night black air, her ink ice-pale,

runes flowing from her pen of snow.

The storm’s her music made to blow

the story singing down the vale.

She cries the one-eyed god’s own tale:

nine days he hung and dared not fail

to learn the things a god must know

who lives in thrall to singing snow.

The north wind blows.

Thought and memory leave no trail

raven high on white winds’ tail,

raven black on books of snow

and helpless as the god below

to change the ending of the tale

the north wind blows.

January 2011

Posted for OneShotWednesday at the inimitable OneStopPoetry
now more inimitable than ever at their newly revamped site.

This poem is written in the rondel form.

Odin was the ruler of Asgard in Norse mythology, the god associated with wisdom, war, battle and death, as well as  magic, poetry, and  prophecy. He placed one of his eyes in the well beneath the world tree, Yggdrasil and also hung from the tree for nine days in order to learn the wisdom which would give him power in the nine worlds. He had two ravens named Huginn and Muninn(Thought and Memory.) He is destined to be slain by Fenrir, the father of wolves, at Ragnarok.

Image: Odin by dislodge, courtesy deviantArt

Red Shoes

 Red Shoes 

A Rondel

She danced through the night. Her shoes were red.

She rang her bell of tulle and ribbons, dress of dreams.

The master cued her moves and sewed her seams

and made her body over like a doll’s without a head.

He choreographed her pas de deux, a masque of the dead.

She must be only air, her bones hollow as moonbeams.

She danced through the night. Her shoes were red,

stiff her bell of tulle and ribbons, dress of dreams,

She danced through the night. Her shoes were red,

though cream when she began the final themes.

She rang her bell of tulle and ribbons, dress of dreams.

Violins bowed the razor while she bled.

She danced through the night, her shoes were red.

January 2011

Red Shoes Photo by Lara Hartley, courtesy google image search

This was written for Annell Livingston and her Red Shoes Project

Also posted for the One Shoot Sunday photo prompt, which was this picture by KJ Halliday: