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Posted tagged ‘Photogene App’
Giving It A Rest
May 4, 2016Diabolically busy week continues….
January 25, 2012
apace.
Image, Simile, Metaphor in Poetry–A Keel To Float Your Poem–(“Family Finishes”)
December 1, 2011
DVerse Poets Pub has a prompt today by Gay Reiser Cannnon asking for poems that trade in image, simile, metaphor, allegory, figure. The poem below was based on an exercise that tended to force one into metaphor (though frankly almost any poem has some basis in these elements.) The picture, done on my iPad 2, was “filtered” on the Photogene App above. (Below is the unfiltered image.)
Family Finishes
I.
The perfectionist sands her offspring to her image, or
an image, filing away the
unsightly, the angry, the unspeakable.
Drills a face fit for a pageant, as
smooth as balsam, as modeled as
a keel; then (the child carved
to measure), she steps
down into that keel, careful
of any unseamed tar.
II.
A family levels itself to just folks with enough distance;
an occasional pageant – picnic or funeral – joins the blood,
a biennial application of glue,
occasions muddled with the stickiness of blood;
mother hammering the grandmother, son
nailing father, the family portrait gathering a rich patina.
III.
Steeped in the traditions of the portrait hall,
the young mother thought
to measure out love in spoonfuls,
smoothing away excess, screwing it into a tied-up sock.
Blasphemy to mount to ecstasy over your child. No.
Passion fit the furniture
like a bowl of tulips or tea set, shaped to
its interval. But the small white fist that gripped her finger
leveled training,
proper restraint transmuting aged wine to deep wellspring,
casks burst to loose a flow of sparkling clarity.
Repetition Raises A Villanelle (“Shattering”)
September 24, 2011
This is another post inspired by dVerse Poets Pub, a really supportive website for online poets. The prompt this time concerned poems that deal in repetition. As followers of this blog know, I’m devoted to the villanelle, a poetic form that is based on repeating line sequences. This villanelle is part of a pair–its companion piece, “Burned Soldier” may be found here, as well as a discussion of how to write a villanelle. Both poems were inspired by the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Any thoughts or suggestions most welcome.
Shattering
The shattering of lives should take some time.
It shouldn’t come in flashes, clods of dirt,
no moment for altered course, for change of mind.
The actual choice ahead should be well-signed–
pre-emptive smoke, perhaps a blood-soaked shirt–
the shattering of lives should take some time.
He knew that road was risky, heard a whine,
but in the end those warnings were too curt,
no moment for altered course, for change of mind.
Hard to foresee your own true body lined
with metal plates and plastic tubes of hurt;
the shattering of lives should take some time.
So many hours after to refine
what happened in that second’s blinding lurch,
no moment for altered course or change of mind.
Or was it fate? A studied path, not whim?
His heart tried hard to measure out the worth
of shattering lives. It would take some time,
with no moment for altering course or mind.
(All rights reserved.)
P.S. – I’ve posted a lot of villanelles, which is a favorite form for many years. I love the music- and yet, the repetition. They can be found by checking out that category from home page.
Hard time focusing (i.e. focusing in hard time)
September 20, 2011
Unable to Change or Fix Life Poem–Yellow Glads–Grasping At Straws (And Contentment)
September 17, 2011
The political scene seems too grim to even contemplate these days, so turning back to poetry. Poetry! And iPad Art! Although this poem is fairly serious too– Any suggestions, comments, are most welcome, particularly with respect to title.
There
There is so much in life
we cannot change or fix:
your dear friend stacked
with flowers, yellow glads
and lilies white, the green baize
cloth that masks the upturned
earth; the tumor that
takes over a torso, the still
familiar face that can’t digest
the body’s betrayal;
time spent more carelessly
than cash (loose minutes
rarely found in turned-out pockets);
all those difficult years
when contentment was there–
there–there within our grasp if we had just
grasped less; the
flotsam jetsam straws we clung to,
drowning rafts, that
sparkle now in the current of all that’s past,
catching against far shoals, banks, shores–
there–there–there–
(As always, all rights reserved. Karin Gustafson)
(If you are a reader from the wonderful dVerse Poets Pub, the link to the train poem which I should have written and posted today to participate in the Pub is here.)
AND NOW! I am posting this one to the dVerse Poets Pub Open Link night and also to the ver supportive Promising Poets Parking lot (blogspot). Thanks for the opportunity.
After A Long Summer Weekend (With Elephants)
July 5, 2011
Back to the circus….
Shedding a Light on Filters (Photogene)
June 26, 2011
My sense is that the Photogene App is mainly for photographers, wanting to organize and frame and retouch and highlight their digital photos. But it allows for pretty cool iterations for digital drawings as well. (For those of you who wonder why this blog has been so focused on iPad art of late, it is NOT my concern over my Apple stockholdings, so much as the fact that I am trying to finish a kind of silly novel on the side, which has made it difficult to do any other writing.)
At any rate, the above is an unfiltered digital drawing. Below, only a few of the different iterations available through Photogene “filters”, including Dream, Painting, Comic, Posterize, Charcoal, Sepia, and RAINBOW (for those interested in designing old LP album covers.)
Oops. Forgot Night Vision.
The Weekend. (At last!) Time to Reflect? (With Elephant)
June 24, 2011
Face, Cow, iPad
June 23, 2011
I’ll tell you straight out. This is going to be one of my blatantly pro-iPad diatribes.
Yes, the device is a bit awkward for typing, even with the bluetooth keyboard.
Yes, its wireless is not as strong as a laptop, and its camera is not as good as a Canon.
Nonetheless, it’s a wonderful device. The idea that I can just sit there with it in my lap listening to someone on the phone, and draw a face, and shade it in, and give it hair, and erase some of the contours just enough so that they look sort of graceful.
And then, as the call continues, the iPad also lets me paint a cow. A cow! I don’t know why I chose a cow, but there it is, a cow! Which is part painting, part photo, part erasure, part drawing–an act of concentration, and yet as I’m working on it I am also better able to listen to the call.
This morning I used it (on the subway) to scribble down the poem, but I’m only brave enough to look at the face and cow.
Which is enough for me for now,
(I’m milking them anyway.)
ManicDDaily 
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