Excerpt Wednesday – I am Singing the Cold Rain – Henson

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i am turning in the gray morning 
of my life
toward home
Lance Henson

I am indebted to Mr. Leonard Durso for introducing me to Lance Henson’s work on his most excellent poetry blog (if you aren’t familiar with Mr. Durso’s blog, click here to rectify that oversight!). I bookmarked his post featuring I am Singing the Cold Rain way back in October of last year, but I did not have the medium to realize my illustration for it. Enter transfer printing, introduced to me recently by my illustration class instructor. The line quality was exactly what I was looking for – I made a number of attempts for this verse, but this was the one that clearly spoke the words of the poem. To read the whole poem, also in the Cheyenne language, head over here. Mr. Henson has a blog as well – his poems are haunting and will stay with you for a long time. Illustration (ink transfer onto newsprint) by me.

14 comments

  2. Beautiful piece of art (poem too, thank you!).

    I love it when we learn techniques that we can still apply to “I couldn’t have done it back then” problems!

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    1. Thank you, Alice! I loved this poem the moment I read it on Mr. Durso’s blog – and only now did my skills catch up to my artistic vision.

      Definitely – that iterative solving process is very satisfying to the scientist inside of me! 🙂

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  3. Beautiful. I love Leonard’s blog too – the exposure to translated poetry, that is often so “pure” – the only way I can think to describe it. Like this one. Thanks for the links too. 🙂

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    1. Thank you kindly! I have learned about so many poets from Mr. Durso, I feel like his blog is a little window into the world – a world made a bit more accessible by poetry!

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    1. Thank you, Kerfe! As I mentioned in the post, I had a number of transfers I tried, but this one was “it”. Mr. Henson’s work is great – what I need is more hours in the day to really explore his site! There is so much there.

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    1. Thank you, Sheldon! I love the singularity of the transfer prints – the hand of chance plays a roll in both the application of the ink and the press of the paper!

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