Wind: A Little Scrapbook in Art

Hey! Sorry this blog post is going up so late; I was... well, I was just wasting time to be perfectly honest. After this blog post I still have three cantos of Purgatorio to read.

So, I initially wanted to do a scrapbook in art (if you don't know what those are, see these four posts) about the month of February, but I realized there's not really a lot of art that's specifically about February. Instead, when I heard the wind rushing so forcefully outside that despite my window not being open, the door to my room flew open from it, I decided to make this season's little scrapbook in art about wind.

Hope you enjoy!
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The Wind took up the Northern Things (by Emily Dickinson)
The Wind took up the Northern Things
And piled them in the south -
Then gave the East unto the West
And opening his mouth

The four Divisions of the Earth
Did make as to devour
While everything to corners slunk
Behind the awful power -

The Wind - unto his Chambers went
And nature ventured out -
Her subjects scattered into place
Her systems ranged about

Again the smoke from Dwellings rose
The Day abroad was heard -
How intimate, a Tempest past
The Transport of the Bird -

 (Brian Crain)

Excerpt from The Eolian Harp (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
And that simplest Lute,

Placed length-ways in the clasping casement, hark!

How by the desultory breeze caressed,

Like some coy maid half yielding to her lover,

It pours such sweet upbraiding, as must needs

Tempt to repeat the wrong! And now, its strings

Boldlier swept, the long sequacious notes

Over delicious surges sink and rise,

Such a soft floating witchery of sound

As twilight Elfins make, when they at eve

Voyage on gentle gales from Fairy-Land,

Where Melodies round honey-dropping flowers,

Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise,

Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untamed wing!

O! the one Life within us and abroad,

Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,

A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,

Rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere—

Methinks, it should have been impossible

Not to love all things in a world so filled;

Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air

Is Music slumbering on her instrument.

    And thus, my Love! as on the midway slope

Of yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon,

Whilst through my half-closed eyelids I behold

The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main,

And tranquil muse upon tranquility:

Full many a thought uncalled and undetained,

And many idle flitting phantasies,

Traverse my indolent and passive brain,

As wild and various as the random gales

That swell and flutter on this subject Lute!

    And what if all of animated nature

Be but organic Harps diversely framed,

That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps

Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,

At once the Soul of each, and God of all? 

 

 

(Susan Gardner)

 

Desolate February (by me)

Wind washes & whooshes over

February wastelands.

When I wake,

yesterday's snow is gone.

 

Is it March yet?

Is it still February?

Has the world

wandered away from the year

to a place without seasons?

 

Who is alive in the wind?

The dead come alive

in a February wind.

Who can survive

in the waste?

Grey rain,

of frozen earth,

mud makes.

 

Who sleeps there

down in the mud?

When our sunrise is missing its sun.

 

 

(Bridget Beth Collins)

(Winnie the Pooh)

Excerpt from The Graveyard by the Sea (Paul Valery)

No, no! Arise! The future years unfold.
Shatter, O body, meditation's mould!
And, O my breast, drink in the wind's reviving!
A freshness, exhalation of the sea,
Restores my soul . . . Salt-breathing potency!
Let's run at the waves and be hurled back to living!
Yes, mighty sea with such wild frenzies gifted
(The panther skin and the rent chlamys), sifted
All over with sun-images that glisten,
Creature supreme, drunk on your own blue flesh,
Who in a tumult like the deepest hush
Bite at your sequin-glittering tail -- yes, listen!
The wind is rising! . . . We must try to live!
The huge air opens and shuts my book: the wave
Dares to explode out of the rocks in reeking
Spray. Fly away, my sun-bewildered pages!
Break, waves! Break up with your rejoicing surges
This quiet roof where sails like doves were pecking.

(Morris Graves)

(Maddji)

 

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Thank you for reading through this. As always, if you have any of your own favorite artworks about wind, please share in the comments.

See you next week,

Ariel