books read:
The Shades/ Betty Brock (kids’ book / a childhood favorite)
Casting Deep Shade/ C.D. Wright (poetry, lyric / bought years ago, looking for a chance to read it)
written May 3rd: How has it taken me this long to devote a month to shadows? Since the beginning of this log, I’ve written about shadows. First, my shadow — friend, foe, my dead mother. Then the shadows of trees and street lamps on the paved path. Then, for the past few months, the shadows of birds crossing my path. Where will shadows take me this month? I’m excited to find out!
Like January’s Windows and April’s Wind, May’s Shadows begin with a playlist, which was very fun to put together. I did it on Wednesday, with the help of shadow searches on Apple Music, my memories, Scott, and this Readers recommend post. That night, after dinner, Scott and I listened to it.
I’m Shadowing You
- I’m Shadowing You / Blossom Dearie
- Me and My Shadow / Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.
- Shadowboxer / Fiona Apple
- My Shadow / Keane
- Shadow Dancing / Andy Gibb
- Shadow Song / Screaming Trees
- Shadows and Light / Joni Mitchell
- Silve Shadow / Atlantic Starr
- Total Eclipse of the Heart / Bonnie Tyler
- Help Me Make It Through the Night / Kris Kristofferson
- Sunshine in the Shade / The Fixx
- the Shadow of Your Smile / Astrud Gilberto
- Evening / The Moody Blues
- White Room / Cream
- Shadow Stabbing / CAKE
- I’m Beginning to See the Light / Ella Fitzgerald
- Twilight Time / The Platters
- The Shadow Knows / Link Wray
- yesterday / The Beatles
- Moonshadow / Cat Stevens
- Golden Years / David Bowie
- Candle Mambo / Captain Beefheart
- If You go Away / Neil Diamond
- We Will Become Silhouettes / The Postal Service
- Crepuscule With Nellie / Thelonious Monk
- White Shadow/ Peter Gabriel
- Glamour Profession/ Steely Dan
- Hot Lunch Jam. Irene Cara
- Deorc Sceadu (Dark Shadow)/ The Dirty Dozen Brass Band
- We Three (My Echo, My Shadow, and Me)/ The Ink Spots
- The Gloaming/ Radiohead
- Deorc Sceadu (Dark Shadow)/ The Dirty Dozen Brass Band
- Hidden Shadows/ Room 34
- Dancing in the Moonlight/ King Harvest
- Watching the Wheels/ John Lennon
After listening through all of these songs as I ran, I decided to create a condensed playlist of my favorites. I’m calling it
Slappin’ Shadows
- I’m Shadowing You / Blossom Dearie
- Shadow Dancing/ Andy Gibb
- The Shadow of Your Smile/ Astrud Gilberto
- White Room/ Cream
- I’m Beginning to See the Light/ Ella Fitzgerald
- Moonshadow/ Cat Stevens
- Golden Years/ David Bowie
- Glamour Profession/ Steely Dan
- Hot Lunch Jam/ Irena Cara
- Dancing in the Moonlight/ King Harvest
- Evening/ Moody Blues
- If You Go Away/ Neil Diamond
- Watching the Wheels/ John Lennon
So, where to go next? The Readers recommend article offers some suggestions:
Shadow Meanings
from the article:
- like a bad conscience or a faithful dog, they follow us everywhere
- each is unique to the individual
- the brighter the light, the darker their hue
- like eyebrows, we take them for granted, but were they suddenly missing, the world would be very disturbing indeed
- are shadows always associated with darkness, negativity and mutability? Do they have to inspire fear?
- why a shadow of doubt?
- do people inevitably become a shadow of their former selves, or fall in someone else’s shadow?
- is the very substance of ambition merely the shadow of a dream?
- do we really have to walk in the valley of the shadow of death?
- without them everything would be a floating morass of light and colour — drop shadows bring a third dimension to the 2D world
- they constantly change shape, angle and intensity, like moods and emotions, which also gives them a strange beauty — shapes of leaves dance across a meadow, clouds caress the landscape
- they could be seen to cast another side of us, our subconscious, our underlying self, stretching out with a different perspective and shape across life’s daily glare
from my tagged log entries (tag: Shadows)
written May 12th: Tagging my shadows posts took some time. 23 pages of entries to read through. Now that they’re tagged, I’m rereading them to create a list of meaning for shadows.
- hulking shadow of the big orange buoy — is it actually the buoy with the color drained, or its shadow?
- my shadow = me, looking strong
- bird shadows
- the shadows of leaves, dancing in the breeze
- a friend
- an enemy
- my dead mom
- a ghost self (Joyce Carol Oates), trespassing, bearing witness in spaces where you’re not supposed to be
- a guide, showing me the way, pointing things out
- an anchor, heavy, dragging me down
- a heavy thought, worry, that won’t leave me alone, like this one from 30 april 2017 that taunts me: why not just stop and give up?
- a bad idea/ bad angel on my shoulder trying to get me to run faster and tire myself out
- as teacher and the implied I in my writing/running exercises, instructing the student (me) as the You — see 2 feb 2020
- fence post
- trestle
- street lamp
- sign
- a bee
- another runner, approaching from behind, running into the sun — their shadow alerts me to their presence
- bridge railing
- a different version of me — altered? another possible version of me?
- with a pony-tail that swishes
- of trees, darkening the river at the edges
- as evidence of something (more/unseen) there
- an obsession
- of clouds
- the groundhog’s on feb 2
- a pair, mine with Scott’s
- winter shadows: of my breath in the cold air, of snowflakes on the pool floor
- of the lane line — a long, dark, solid, thick line on the pool floor
- a double shadow = me + 2 shadow selves, a trick of the light on the track
- a faint form captured in a photograph, holding a camera
- illusion
- of the burst of small, new leaves on a tree: an explosion of fireworks
- the gentle touch of
- a trace
- a memory
- silhouettes behind shades
- trees casting shadows into the water like fisherman
- on the pool floor, faint and from the leaves on the trees through the windows, making the bottom of the pool look alive
- in front, leading me
- beside, joining me
- not next to, but inside of a shadow
- behind, slowing me down or looking tired or hiding or encouraging me from the back
- almost above, pushing me down, rooting me too firmly in the ground
- below, down in the gorge, near the river or deep in the ravine
- passing under tree shadows, sharing the experience with anyone else out there passing under them too
- out of the corner of my eye, not actually there or not quite there, but the hint of something there, almost
- in the frame, during a race watched online — someone holding a camera and following Sparta racers through the rough terrain
- Glittering shadows on the pavement: light through leaves moved by wind
- on the wall, the water, the path, the side of a building, the lawn
- under an object
- in the water, the gorge, the tunnel of trees
- above, from a bird, a bike on the bridge, a plane, a cloud
- lucky and free, able to go to places that I cannot: through closed doors, down the steep slopes of the gorge, leap from treetop to treetop
- not seeing it, but hearing it — what does a shadow sound like?
- embodying sorrow, sadness
- stretching
- dancing
- staining whatever it touches
- criss-crossing
- obedient, relentless
- reckless
- stalking
- sprawled
- draped
- flicker
- flutter
- flash
- frozen, fixed
- in perpetual motion — whirring, wheeling
- broken up by a rough surface
- eating, gobbling up the light
- obscures, darkens
- excited that Biden and Harris won
- casting
- throwing shade
- sharp
- solid, real — sturdy
- strong
- soft
- faint, wispy
- straight
- crooked
- long
- short
- muffled, muted
- sudden, accompanied by cool air, water
- small
- huge
- distorted
- never flat, empty
- deceiving
- illuminating
- menacing
- shade — wanted, welcomed
- my running shadow once scared another runner absorbed in conversation, as I neared her from behind — Oh! she exclaimed as she jumped
- sometimes my shadow abandons me when it’s too windy, or hot (and sometimes she likes the heat)
- shadows — flying birds, waving trees — moving across the glass on my desk — are these shadows or reflections? What’s the difference? The position of the light, Scott says (18 nov 2023)
- sometimes I greet her with a wave or hello friend!s
- what Plath’s mushrooms feast on: crumbs of shadow
- Schuyler’s gray depressions — craters causing dark shadows
- almost, not quite, only a hint
- dark shadows on a pale path
- of twisted trees on white snow
- sometimes almost black, mostly gray
- absent when gloomy
- creating necessary contrast
- not speckled shadows, but speckled light
- always in relation to the light
- shadow boxing — boxing with your shadow
- shadowboxing — isolating someone, putting them on display
- light sources: the sun, a lamp (on a table), a street lamp
- associated with death
Shadow Poems
- Still Life with Window and Fish / Jorie Graham (recording + full text in my 4 may 2022 entry)
- In Wiry Winter/ James Schuyler
- Dear One Absent This Long While/ Lisa Olstein
- Breathe. As in. (shadow)/ Rosamond S. King — in the about this poem section, she mentions a method, shadow poems
- A Kind of Meadow/ CARL PHILLIPS
- AND SWEPT ALL VISIBLE SIGNS AWAY/carl phillips
- Ways Things Vanish/ TODD DILLARD
- Doors/ Carl Sandburg
- December/ David Baker
- TO CAST/ Yesenia Montilla
- September First Again/Phillip Levin
- To the Light of September/ W. S. MERWIN
- Late-Night Inquiry/ Charles Simic
- Beginning/ JAMES WRIGHT
- Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird/ WALLACE STEVENS
- Under Pressure/ Tomas Tranströmer
- Sea Poem/ Alice Oswald
- 5 Poems/ Amorak Huey
- The Swimmer/ Mary Oliver
- Seven Types of Shadow – an extract / U A Fanthorpe
- Left Open / W.S. Merwin
- The Wings of Daylight/ W. S. Merwin
- Presentiment/ Emily Dickinson
- Mushrooms/ Sylvia Plath
- The Chipmunk/ Ogden Nash
- The Enkindled Spring/ D.H. Lawrence
- Spirits of the Dead/ Edgar Allen Poe
- Psalm with Near Blindness/ Julia B. Levine
- Owl/ Anne Haven McDonnell
- Pot of Gold/ Ingrid Wendt
- A Stranger/ Saeed Jones
- After the Snow/ Linda Pastan (from Insomnia)
- The Birds/ Linda Pastan
- Lark-Luster/ Eamon Grennan
- IV / Laura Gilpin
- Talisman/ Luisa A. Igloria
- Psalm with No Cure/ Julia B. Levine
- Above Pate Valley/ Gary Snyder
- Bat/ D.H. Lawrence
- Good-Night/ Seamus Heaney
- Louisiana Line/ Betty Adcock
- The Cave/ PAUL TRAN
- Vow/ DIANA KHOI NGUYEN
- Obit/ Victoria Chang
- There’s a certain Slant of light (258)/ Emily Dickinson
- Poem with No Speaker/ Franz Wright
- In the Fog/ Giovanni Pascoli
- When I Tell My Husband I Miss the Sun, He Knows/ Paige Lewis
- Door/ W.S. Merwin
added may 15: I read through all of these poems and picked up some favorite lines and descriptions or uses of shadows. I’d like to do something more with them, but I’m not sure what yet:
1
The whole world outside
wants to come into here,
to angle into
the simple shapes of rooms, to be broken and rebroken
against the sure co-ordinates
of walls
(Still Life with Shadow and Fish/ Jorie Graham)
Shadows and ghosts go through shut doors
(Doors/ Carl Sagan)
as if I’d been called late to wander,
to feel by way of edges and texture
around lintels and doors, hallways
of shadow now broken open with stairs
(Psalm with No Cure/ Julia B. Levine)
2
The breeze–the breath of God–is still–
And the mist upon the hill,
Shadowy–shadowy–yet unbroken,
Is a symbol and a token–
How it hangs upon the trees,
A mystery of mysteries!
(Spirits of the Dead/ Edgar Allan Poe)
You can see beauty only from the side, hastily,
The dense grain on the field, many colours in a yellow stream.
The restless shadows in my head are drawn there.
They want to creep into the grain and turn to gold.
(Under Pressure/ Tomas/Tranströmer)
3
Down here this morning in my white kitchen
along the slim body
of the light,
the narrow body that would otherwise
stay forever the same thing
the beautiful interruptions, the things of this world, twigs
and power lines, eaves and ranking
branches burn
all over my walls.
(Still Life with Shadow and Fish/ Jorie Graham)
but the shadows carry the whole story
at first daybreak they open their long wings
(The Wings of Daylight/ WS Merwin)
4
a woman who was both light and every shadow the light pierces
(A Stranger/ Saeed Jones)
I don’t just miss the sun, I miss seeing my own shadow
(About this Poem: When I Tell My Husband I Miss the Sun, He Knows/ Paige Lewis)
A puddle, cobble-stones, jambs and doorstep
Are set steady in a block of brightness.
Till she strides in again beyond her shadows
And cancels everything behind her.
(Good Night/ Seamus Heaney)
5
shadow meaningless except to those who want for shade and find it there
(And All Visible Signs Swept Away)
She switched
places with her shadow because
suffering changes shape and happens
secretly.
(Obit/ Victoria Chang)
6
Have you found a seat in your room
For everyone of your wayward selves
To withdraw into their own thoughts
Or stare into space as if it were a mirror?
Do you have a match you can light
To make their shadows dance on the wall
Or float dream-like on the ceiling
the way leaves do on summer afternoons
(Late Night Inquiry/ Charles Simic)
Shadows the color of a mirror’s back
(Louisiana Line/ Betty Adcock
7
the seed of restlessness
that made you, finally,
swim toward the world,
kicking and shouting
but trailing a mossy darkness–
a dream that would never breathe air
and was hinged to your wildest joy
like a shadow.
(The Swimmer/ Mary Oliver)
you’d almost see the long silver ribbons of song the bird braids as if binding lit air to
earth that is all shadows, to keep us (as we walk our grounded passages down here)
alive to what is over our heads–song and silence–and the lot of us leaning up: mind-
defeated again, just harking to it
(Lark-luster/ Eamon Grennan)
8
Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn
indicative that suns go down,
The notice to the startled grass
That darkness is about to pass
(Emily Dickinson)
The moon drops one or two feathers into the field.
The dark wheat listens.
Be still.
Now.
There they are, the moon’s young, trying
Their wings.
Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow
Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone
Wholly, into the air.
(Beginning/ James Wright)
9
When it comes, the Landscape listens —
Shadows — hold their breath —
(There’s a certain Slant of Light/ Emily Dickinson)
We diet on water, on crumbs of shadow
(Mushrooms/ Sylvia Plath)
10
We are watching them
as they swoop and gather–
the shadow of wings
falls over the heart
(The Birds/ Linda Pastan)
Inquire
of the skinny mosquito
on your wall
stinging its shadow
(Poem with No Speaker/ Franz Wright)
And one Canada goose so low in passing
above the barn you still hear the shadow
(December/ David Baker)
11
shadows
of tree limbs
like pages
of inked calligraphy
(After the Snow/ Linda Pastan)
the things I know:
how the living go on living
and how the dead go on living with them
So that in a forest
even a dead tree casts a shadow
(IV/ Laura Gilpin)
12
and the sun and its reflexion
throwing two shadows
what is the beauty of water
sky is its beauty
(Sea Poem/ Alice Oswald)
a white dog trailing a smaller one: ghost and noon shadow, two motes
disappearing into surf
(Vow/ Diana Khoi Nguyen)
13
Further north you can see from a summit the blue endless carpet of
pine forest
where the cloud shadows
are standing still.
no, are flying
(Open and Closed Spaces/ Tomas Tranströmer)
He’s like the shadow of a cloud,
Or Emily Dickinson read aloud.
(Chipmunk/ Ogden Nash)
to remember
- the shadows of new leaves on a tree looking like fireworks (1 may)
- shadowboxing (sparring with shadow), shadow boxes and shadow-boxing (putting someone on display, in a shadowbox) source to check out: Shadow Box — The Art of Assemblage (3 may)
- menacing turkey as shadow-self (5 may)
- allegory of the cave (6-7 may)
- chiaroscuro (7 may)
- Kara Walker and silhouettes (8 may)
- silhouette theory (9 may)
- creating an erasure poem based on the form of almost all shade with pin pricks of light (11 may)
- image: street lamps (17 may)
- The Shades and Casting Deep Shade (20 may)
- throwing shade (22 may)
- James Bond and silhouettes (28 may)
- silhouettes and concrete poetry, including Diana Khoi Nguyen and this interview (30 may)
assessment
This was a great month of wandering and wondering and getting lots of inspiration for future projects. Creating a playlist is a great way to explore a theme more deeply, especially how it is understood in the popular imagination.
more shadow poems
- The Conversation/ Cid Corman (added 11 june 2024)