Graham's poem about Klimt

Analyzing paintings is a difficult task for me unless it is something that really grabs my attention. If it is too abstract, I lose patience. For a poet to have the desire to look deeply at a painting, especially to the point of creating a poem in response to their observation of the painting, is wonderful. It helps to add such depth to the understanding of what may have been going through the painter's mind as they created a piece of art. It is like a critical analysis that has turned into a type of commentary on their work.

At first glance at Klimt's painting, Beech Forest Buchenwald 1 (1903), I would never have been able to interpret anything close to what was captured by Graham in her poem, "Two Paintings by Gustav Klimt." The mere mention of Buchenwald makes this painting and poem intense and emotional. Graham notes Klimt's artistic style of incorporating shiny, glittery paints into his paintings in the lines of her poem that state, "Although what glitters on the trees; catching the light; and yellows glittering." It also appears that she many be connecting her concerns about the annihilation of the environment and nature as we know it to the annihilation of the Jews during the Holocaust. This seems evident when she states, "the sum of these delays is the beautiful, the human beautiful, body of flaws; stand in rows, anonymous." All of these beautiful people were killed because Hitler viewed them as flawed and they stood in rows (lines) waiting to be killed in cremeatories and gas chambers. There is a relationship that has been intertwined between the destruction of the trees and the destruction of the Jews with both being tied to, "The injustice of the world." Graham captures the visual features of the painting such as the colors "the blue air, the yellow trees," the glistening features of the paint, the shadows of the tree limbs "into the avenue of mottled shadows," the trees, and the season being autumn "one autumn afternoon." However, she goes deeper than just the physical features by creating a parallel relationship between the forest and the concentration camp, "crossing this yellow beech forest, this buchen-wald."

After mentioning Klimt's death, the poem takes a turn in a different direction focusing on a painting of a woman. The focus is on her vagina "a woman's body open at its point of entry; between her legs; over this mouth of her body." A simile is then incorporated in which brings back the mention of the colors used in his paintings, "we are drawn to it, its blues and yellows glittering like a stand." Her use of the word "pleasure" to end this poem makes me think of her use of "lust, desire, and passion" in "I Watched a Snake." Graham seems to connect these human emotions to the intense things that are happening around us or that have happened already.

As I looked at these paintings again after reading Graham's poem a few times, I began to hear the forest speaking to me. I was able to imagine what the trees may be saying if they could speak and the raw emotion that filled that beech forest. I was envisioning all of the trees being bodies marching along falling from time to time as tree leaves and limbs fall to the ground and die. I see the painting of the woman signifying that just as the Jews were viewed in such a limited and negative way, women can be viewed not for who they are or how they appear but just for one use, sex.