TEACHING POETRY & AMERICAN ART

  • Introduction
    • Why Poetry and American Art?
    • Strategies
    • Disclaimer
    • About Me
  • Romanticism
    • Intro to American Romanticism (1820-1900)
    • John James Audubon
    • Thomas Cole
    • Asher Durand
    • Daniel Chester French
    • Winslow Homer
    • Albert Pinkham Ryder
    • Augustus Saint-Gaudens
    • "Illuminated Gems of Sacred Poetry"
    • "Indian Summer: Autumn Poems and Sketches"
  • Realism / Social Realism
    • Realism >
      • Intro to Realism (1900-1920)
      • George Bellows
      • Edwin Dawes
      • Thomas Eakins
      • Edward Hopper
      • Thomas Hovenden
      • John Sloan
    • Social Realism >
      • Intro to Social Realism (1920-1940)
      • Walker Evans
      • Dorothea Lange
      • Ben Shahn
  • Regionalism
    • Intro to Regionalism (1920-1940)
    • Thomas Hart Benton
    • Maynard Dixon
    • Grant Wood
  • Modernism
    • Intro to Modernism (1910-1940)
    • Stuart Davis
    • Charles Demuth
    • Marsden Hartley
    • Georgia O'Keeffe
  • Harlem Renaissance
    • Intro to Harlem Renaissance (1920-1940)
    • Aaron Douglas
    • Meta Warrick Fuller
    • Jacob Lawrence
    • Faith Ringgold
    • Carl Van Vechten
    • Hale Woodruff
  • Abstract Expressionism
    • Intro to Abstract Expressionism / New York School (1940-1960)
    • Morris Graves
    • Red Grooms
    • Philip Guston
    • Grace Hartigan
    • Kenneth Patchen
    • Dorothea Tanning
    • Walasse Ting
    • Cy Twombly
  • Postmodern/Contemporary
    • Intro to Postmodern / Contemporary Art (1950-present)
    • Visual Poetry
    • Louise Bourgeois
    • Joseph Goldyne
    • Elizabeth Murray
    • Jeff Schlanger
    • Kiki Smith
    • Jaune Q. Smith
  • More Resources
  • Introduction
    • Why Poetry and American Art?
    • Strategies
    • Disclaimer
    • About Me
  • Romanticism
    • Intro to American Romanticism (1820-1900)
    • John James Audubon
    • Thomas Cole
    • Asher Durand
    • Daniel Chester French
    • Winslow Homer
    • Albert Pinkham Ryder
    • Augustus Saint-Gaudens
    • "Illuminated Gems of Sacred Poetry"
    • "Indian Summer: Autumn Poems and Sketches"
  • Realism / Social Realism
    • Realism >
      • Intro to Realism (1900-1920)
      • George Bellows
      • Edwin Dawes
      • Thomas Eakins
      • Edward Hopper
      • Thomas Hovenden
      • John Sloan
    • Social Realism >
      • Intro to Social Realism (1920-1940)
      • Walker Evans
      • Dorothea Lange
      • Ben Shahn
  • Regionalism
    • Intro to Regionalism (1920-1940)
    • Thomas Hart Benton
    • Maynard Dixon
    • Grant Wood
  • Modernism
    • Intro to Modernism (1910-1940)
    • Stuart Davis
    • Charles Demuth
    • Marsden Hartley
    • Georgia O'Keeffe
  • Harlem Renaissance
    • Intro to Harlem Renaissance (1920-1940)
    • Aaron Douglas
    • Meta Warrick Fuller
    • Jacob Lawrence
    • Faith Ringgold
    • Carl Van Vechten
    • Hale Woodruff
  • Abstract Expressionism
    • Intro to Abstract Expressionism / New York School (1940-1960)
    • Morris Graves
    • Red Grooms
    • Philip Guston
    • Grace Hartigan
    • Kenneth Patchen
    • Dorothea Tanning
    • Walasse Ting
    • Cy Twombly
  • Postmodern/Contemporary
    • Intro to Postmodern / Contemporary Art (1950-present)
    • Visual Poetry
    • Louise Bourgeois
    • Joseph Goldyne
    • Elizabeth Murray
    • Jeff Schlanger
    • Kiki Smith
    • Jaune Q. Smith
  • More Resources
Richard Rolle
(by Marsden Hartley, p. 295 of Collected Poems)

Sunclad, steel-shod eremite
Richard the blinding-white
Richard the filled-with-light
hunger-fed, God-encountered Richard
he who sought the flaming heart,
Richard the engulfed-with-love
loved the burn, craved the smart,
crowned with singing murmurs of
the Dove.

His home is in a morning cloud
and in his sackcloth-transported
shroud,
he sings his molten migratory hymn,
up to the floating cherubim;
prisms are his sunlost eyes,
and his silences are melodies
which only summer birds may sing
whose hearts are made of morning fire
and skies, the house of their imagining.

Richard sings of the inviolable love
and the pristine burden thereof;
he strums a magic, shimmering lute,
that shall nevermore be mute--
Richard, the clothed-in-white;

YHESU--thou God-grown sweet,
I would be thy sacred intimate.
Picture
The Transference of Richard Rolle, 1932, oil on board

 Discussion points / questions / activities
 
  • This painting (and poem) is an homage to the fourteenth-century British hermit, mystic, and religious writer Richard Rolle, who wrote The Fire of Love, a recounting of his mystical experiences with the divine. Hartley clearly identified with Rolle's hermetic and wandering existence out of which came an ecstatic experience of God. Rolle's work seemed to hold out the promise of finding even in intense isolation a sensation of love and well-being. At the center of The Transference of Richard Rolle, in the midst of a fluffy cloud, a triangle frames Rolle's initial. It is fused with the letter Y, to stand for his union with God, that is YHESU, a derivative of Jesus. The letter R repeats in the clouds that hang over the red desert, symbolizing his ascension into the heavens. (Adapted from Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser's Marsden Hartley, 2002 )
  • Marsden Hartley wrote to Adelaide Kuntz about "his combining of 'two expressions' in The Transference of Richard Rolle--poetry and painting." He hoped that it would result in a "fresher kind of self-expression." ​(Jonathan Weinberg in his essay "Marsden Hartley: Writing on Painting," included in Kornhauser's Marsden Hartley)
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