Marsden Hartley

Photograph of Marsden Hartley

by Alfred Stieglitz

(1915-1916)

"My work is getting stronger & stronger and more intense all the time.... I have such a rush of new energy & notions coming into my head, over my horizon like chariots of fire that all I want is freedom to step aside and execute them."

— Marsden Hartley

American Painter, Poet

1877 - 1943

Have you ever experienced that moment when the ideas flowed and you had a hard time keeping up with them?  Your hand couldn't move fast enough.  People often talk about not being able to create — about being blocked, but they talk less about the moments when they can't stop working.  When they are in a zone and the work continues to flow.  These moments also happen.  Celebrate them when they do.  They are a gift.

Mountain Lake - Autumn

(1910)

Here is a poem by Marsden, a prolific poet.

As the Buck Lay Dead

As the buck lay dead, tied to the fender

of a car

coming down the Matagomon way,

I saw dried blood on his tongue of

a thousand summer dreams and winter

cogitations —

the scratches on his hooves were signatures

of the many pungent sticks and branches.

The torn place in his chest was made

by a man

letting out visceral debris to save weight-giving

morsels to many a greedy fox or other wild

thing —

over the glaze of his half-shut eye

hung miscries of superlative moments

stuck dumb

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