Poets and Poems: Damien Donnelly and “Eat the Storms”

In his new chapbook Eat the Storms, poet Damien Donnelly has staked a solid claim to being the poet of color. Each of the 20 poems is shaped by a color or shades of a color – yellow, scarlet, purple, black, ruby, red, cerulean, blue, gray, brown, gold, and green. 

I’ve long associated color with emotions and feelings (feeling blue, red with embarrassment, green with envy), but the poems go well beyond only the emotional. They prompted me to take a look at the idea of color, and what color can mean beyond the emotional. I discovered there’s an entire psychology of color, one that adds considerable layers of nuance and understanding to what Donnelly conveys in his poetry.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

“My Favorite Color is Blue. Sometimes” by Roger Hutchison

Can colors help you deal with grief?

It sounds like an odd question, but it is the question posed indirectly by author and illustrator Roger Hutchison in My Favorite Color is Blue. Sometimes: A Journey through Loss with Art and Color.

What Hutchison does in this small, beautiful book is paint the colors of grief and healing. The words are relatively few; what draws our attention are the paintings and illustrations.

“Blue is my favorite color.

Just not today.

Today I feel blue—the swirling blue of a rainstorm.

The storm is inside me.

I am angry.

I am sad.

My heart is hurting.”

What those words are paired with is a n abstract painting of shades of blue, black, white and a post or two of yellow – and it precisely depicts an interior storm.

And so Hutchison writes and paints. Love and anger. Quiet, listening, and remembering. The silent night sky. The yellow of a shooting star. The brown of summer dirt. The moon low in the evening sky. Snow falling in a winter sky. Orange, And the green of new life.

Roger Hutchison

These are the colors of grief, because there are the colors, the sights, the sensations, and the smells of the one who is lost. At the end, Hutchison includes a list of ways to remember and celebrate the life of one who’s been lost, and a list of resources on grief and loss.

Hutchison is an artist and author, and also director of Christian Formation and Parish Life at Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas. He is the author of The Painting Table: A Journal of Loss and Joy (2013), Under the Fig Tree: Visual Prayers and Poems for Lent (2015), and the forthcoming Jesus: God Among Us (February 2018). He and his family live in suburban Houston.

Before this little book, all of 34 pages, I’d never thought of grief and loss as color, or considering color as a way of dealing with loss. This book changes that.

Top photograph by Stefan Gunnarsson via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Of Color, Beauty, the Alphabet, and Fun: “A is for Azure”

How do you describe a book about color?

Saying “it’s colorful” seems slightly redundant and more than slightly unhelpful.

How do you describe a book about color and the alphabet?

If I say, “It’s appealing and interesting,” that doesn’t quite tell you anything. It’s like saying a poetry collection is “luminous” or “breathtaking.”

How do you describe a book that is about color and the alphabet and may also help with literacy programs, or simply help teaching children to read?

I know how I would describe that book.

Something wonderful.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.