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On Alma Tadema’s Coign of Vantage
Flora peeks over the marble parapet,
a dizzying perch above the azure Aegean.
The Roman fleet is returning. ‘Tis the season
to flirt, to catch a lover in her net.
Julia and Livia stand close, her bosom friends.
Tomorrow they’ll break their sisterly pact—
each flaunting girl-flesh in the public baths,
vying to beguile wealthy centurions.
Lying prone, his back turned, a lion of bronze,
neck adorned with forsythia. His tail flicks.
If asked his opinion, he’d lazily yawn,
contented to bask in the warm sunlight,
surveying human follies from this sheer height.
Bright sun, blue sea. The galvanic, dazzling ships!
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The Education of Wisdom
Athena at sixteen: a taciturn girl,
inattentive in class, instead she’s obsessed
with War and Peace, concealed under her desk.
Hers is not Edith Hamilton’s myth. The whirl
of college, her doctorate; she flails about,
non-tenure-track, staring down career doom.
A Burmese cat and a booklined bedroom
soothe her. Drinking wine alone, her escape route,
she morphs into a drunk, “recovers,” but then?
AA’s fatuous platitudes cannot nourish
an idea-besotted mind. So, what to do?
Scribble sonnets! urges Euterpe, her friend.
Welcome to our bardic tribe. We cherish
Tolstoy’s wisdom: the rare, the beautiful, the true!
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Mary Jane Myers resides in Springfield, Illinois. She is a retired JD/CPA tax specialist. Her debut short story collection Curious Affairs was published by Paul Dry Books in 2018.
Mary Jane: Very descriptive, expressive, image-filled poems. You didn’t just “scribble a sonnet,” you wrote a beauty!
Thank you Paul. It’s such a delight to have my poems appreciated!
Love the Tadema sonnet! The way you animate that lion – obviously one couldn’t talk about this picture without addressing it (like the elephant in the room) – but I don’t know if it would have entered my mind to give it a consciousness. Great way to contrast the licentious frivolity with a sterner perspective on the world.
Do you know the site? “ekphrastic.net” They would eat this up!
Thank you Jeremiah. That lion is irresistible–more fun even than the girls!
Sincerely Mary Jane
Delightful wit that tops Jane Austin even at her best. How you can be terse, florid and seriously amusing at the same time is an absolute wonder and all while chasing tenure, PhDs and moonbeams! Quite an accomplishment.
Enjoy the wine, dear Athena—but don’t sell AA too short. You may yet have need of it!
As for you, Mary Jane, I want more and more after that!
Dear James–
To be compared to Jane Austen is a compliment I never could have imagined. Thank you!
I was a denizen of Al-Anon for a few years. They are the folks who sit around in a basement room quietly sobbing while “their” alcoholics are as usual in party mode, making a lot of noise. Somehow alcoholics always figure out a way to have their cakes and eat them too. (Just kidding–AA is a remarkable organization).
Most sincerely
Mary Jane
Two enticing and well-written sonnets.
Thanks for the reads, MJ.
Thank you Paul. It is such a blessing to have appreciative readers!
Sincerely
Mary Jane
These top-drawer poems fairly defy my ability to explain why I like them so much. They are vivid, yet subtle, almost the ideal of what it means to say something well — in vino veritas.
Dear C.B.
I am genuinely humbled by your praise. Thank you. Perhaps we “classical poets” could create an expression: in poetria veritas.(I’ve forgotten how to decline Latin nouns! in any event, “poetria” meaning “poetry” is medieval Latin!)
Most sincerely
Mary Jane
Even though the scene in your sonnet is the total opposite of the scene in his, I have to ask if you had Philip Larkin’s ekphrasis “The Card-Players” in mind when you wrote your “Coign of Vantage” poem. The form, rhythms, especially the ending, reminded me of something and that was it.
Anyway, I think it’s a pity that none of your poems have appeared here since January!
Monika
Yes, I was using “The Card-Players” as a model. My tutor Kate Potts assigned me to write an ekphrastic sonnet based on Larkin. I wrote this sonnet, and a companion sonnet in the same format for another “classical” Alma Tadema painting Alcaeus and Sappho. I titled the pair ” Two Visions of Alma-Tadema. The final line of the paired poem (titled Lesbos Idyll) is:
Sun, song and sea! This becalmed, wounding place!
Thank you for your kind words. I am truly gratified by the sophistication of this website. If I can get my act together, I’ll submit additional poems.