“i carry your heart with me” 20×20, oil on canvas $340.00 [creativ_button url=”http://www.dailypaintworks.com/fineart/denise-hopkins/i-carry-your-heart-with-me/442034″ icon=”” label=”Buy Now” colour=”red” colour_custom=”” size=”medium” edge=”straight” target=”_self”] SOLD

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

BY E. E. CUMMINGS

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                     i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

I had a good day. I sold some paintings that were on display at Eat New Orleans in the French Quarter and made a trip over there to replenish their walls. My mom came along and we had a lunch at 1000 Figs which is, to say the least, a culinary delight.

So when my painting time finally arrived, I set out to create an abstract of less uplifting poem. A sadder one, but I think the flowers from yesterday wouldn’t leave my head and this e.e. cummings poem kept coming to me. So I let it. I made today’s painting about it instead of the other. I was thinking of the people I carry in my heart– my mom, my son, my boyfriend whose kindness never ceases to amaze me. Those three in particular. But there are many others.

And then I couldn’t help but think of some English teachers I’d had over the years and how much some of them loved rules and grammar and how funny it suddenly became to me that many of them would inevitably have to teach e.e. cummings and account for his interesting take on punctuation and syntax. They would have to explain why it was okay for him to break the rules and not their students. There are very obvious reasons why, of course, but I wonder how people who believe language to be rigid and somehow fixed, done well or done poorly regardless of context, would explain it.

I have been blessed to know  and teach with another type of English teacher: the kind that appreciates language and the way it can move from context to context, effectively, artistically, profoundly.

All of that is just an aside. Today’s painting, I hope, is joyful. Although I certainly did not intend it, I can’t help but picture it in a baby’s room.