I've chosen this intriguing painting by Rick Mobbs to highlight Jo Hemmant, a participant in Rick Mobb's invitation to readers to write poems for his paintings. I also chose Jo Hemmant because I want to tell my readers about a superb new online literary journal, Asphalt Sky, of which Jo is an editor. Asphalt Sky is an elegantly appointed journal that is "committed to publishing emerging and established artists and giving a place for thoughtful and engaging poetry, prose, and art work." My thought is to present a juxtaposition between earth and sky, highlighting the poet whose feet are firmly grounded on terra firma who has the ability to guide us into the heavenly through the written word. Asphalt Sky has just stepped into the world of online publishing. A very impressive first issue revels in earth's nature while taking the reader up, up, up and away into self-mesmerizing day-dreamy thoughts and images provided by these exceptional writers, poets and artists. I love that this first issue reminds me of all things earthbound but takes me into quiet contemplation that speaks to otherwordly thoughtscapes. I find myself scultping images into solid landscape and bucolic meanderings. I say kudos, and a cartwheel to Asphalt Sky's first foray into online literary journaling. Artists Cris Halverson and Catherine Farmer further attest to the otherworldly glimpses I experienced while reading this splendid issue.Jo Hemmant's editorial essay, Beginnings, featured in Asphalt Sky, is as fresh as a newborn babe's first slap and hits you as strong as that first slap's wail. Please read it. Here's just a snippet of the essay, followed by Jo's poem written for Rick Mobb's painting gracing the top of this post. Enjoy!
Beginnings
"Language surrounds us, defines us, is how we express our selves, how we try to decode the universe. When I visualize it, it is as water flowing, meaning always and endlessly deferred, passing through the connections, the spaces between words and moving on, understanding contextual. And this deferral means that there can be no endings as such. Yet still the records are made, and they come out of two very different beginnings -- origin and starting point."
To which Jo goes on to describe these two very different beginnings.
Hallowed ground
he has exposed history for us,
fortified walls arc over earth
as deceptive as love, territory
cross-sectioned, the blade finding
the soft beginning of the belly that
mounds then slitting the fundaments
from pubis to throat.
Note the foreground, a woman’s head
resting on an arm as if sleeping,
a child close, tender shorn,
these two recognisable in a scree of
faceless figures, a continuum,
ribcages scored like the knife’s
sliding through skin, muscle,
bone to marrow’s...
Please follow the linked last line to read the remainder of this poem at Jo Hemmant's blog florescence.
