I had been planning to focus on steps this month. I had all sorts of ideas about what I might do. Then I reread Wallace Stevens’ poem Tattoo and thought about light as an insect, which reminded me of Alice Oswald’s references to Dante and spirit visivi and then led me to color. The last line of my entry for 1 april: I think I should return to my color poems! And that’s what I did. On april 10, I finally landed on a focus: I would create 7 sonnets on color, made up of lines from other poets!
On 22 april, I was finished with color and moved on the mushrooms, mycellium, and entanglement.
- rust (1 april)
- orange (3 april, 7 april
- brown (8 april)
- ROYGBIV (10 april)
- indigo (12 april, 15 april)
- blue (20 april)
a useful synthesis on where color is according to scientists and artists
Chemists tend to locate it in the microphysical properties of colored objects; physicists in the specific frequencies of electromagnetic energy that those objects reflect; physiologists in the photoreceptors of the eye that detect this energy; and neurobiologists in the neural processing of this information by the brain.
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For artists, the precise scientific nature of color is more or less irrelevant. What matters is what color looks like
note: I didn’t write as much (as I have in other months) about color or my process. I was too busy writing the poem, and becuase I’d like to get it published — and I can’t if I put “publish” it on my blog — I didn’t post any of it on here.