Ryder's Jonah
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Ryder
(by John Haines) The moonlight has touched them all… The dream hulk with its hollows driven black, the ancient helmsman, his handbones glinting with salt and memory. Under the sail of sleep, torn and flapping, night’s crowded whale broaches, heaving another Jonah to the shoal of a broken world. Jehovah’s arm outstretched like a locust cloud at sea, and the moon itself, a pale horse of torment flying… (Haines, John. Twenty Poems. Second printing. edition. Santa Barbara: Unicorn Press, 1973. Print.) |
Albert Pinkham Ryder, Jonah, oil on canvas mounted on fiberboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly
(detail)
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This video from the Smithsonian discusses Jonah as well as another of Ryder's artworks (Flying Dutchman):
