the art of poetry

Let me find my peace in the morning light

When the rising sun slips past the night

How often I’ve painted this old town

Brush in hand, I’m on safe ground

And I know it will be all right.

Then I lose the line, and my chest feels tight

And a sorrow fills me, too heavy to fight

Let me find my peace.

The light is coming, almost here, but not quite

To chase these shadows from my sight

A distant freight whistles, how I love that sound

It lifts me, for a moment, however slight

Let me find my peace.

Babette Martino (1956-2011) was a highly-regarded and award-winning Pennsylvania artist. She was born in Philadelphia in 1956, to a celebrated family of 14 artists, including her mother, Eva Marinelli Martino, and her father, Giovanni Martino. She painted every day, town scenes from life, portraying small factory towns and mill towns, like Manyunk, frequently the subject of her and her family’s paintings. A feature of much of her work as is the case in the subject painting here, The Depot at Two Tracks, is morning light, portrayed in the horizon and progressively changing to midday in the foreground. She called it “extended light” in which time was sustained, continued, perpetual. Sadly, her own light went out, before its time, in 2011, at age 56.

I wrote the poem in the form of a rondeau, a fixed type poem of French lyric poetry, featuring 13 lines divided into three stanzas, with five, three and five lines, respectively, in which the first words of the first stanza are repeated as the last line in each of the last two stanzas. Oh, and there’s an internal rhyme scheme as well, but I’ll leave it there if you’re even still with me. I chose this lyric form for what I view as a memorial poem for this wonderful artist who died too young. n

David Stoller has had a career spanning law, private equity, and entrepreneurial leadership. He was a partner and co-head of Milbank Tweed and led various companies in law, insurance, live entertainment, and the visual arts. David is an active art collector and founder of River Arts Press, which published a collection of his poetry, Finding My Feet.

I almost always take lots of bad pictures when I need one, good image. Then I throw the bad ones out. What may be surprising is that my best shot is incredibly similar to so many bad ones. I move the camera slightly to the left, photograph a moment later … one might struggle to identify precisely how the successful photograph differs from the rejects. The difference between them is subtle. But I think subtlety is, in fact, the difference between good and great artwork. It is easy to convey drama. Nuance is far more elusive.