Blue Horses: Saying the Unsayable

Blue Horses

One Christmas I received as a gift the Mary Oliver book, Blue Horses, and was absolutely blown away by it. First of all because of Mary Oliver’s writing which I’ve admired for ages, and secondly, because of the book cover. This features a painting of four horses, their forms rounded and graceful, all looking to the left as if something interesting is there. A fox or a dog returning their gaze, perhaps, or a person. The horses are beautiful and blue, the background in shades of yellow, spangled with stars, as are the horses themselves, their heads and bodies starry.  So whether the horses are of the earth or the heavens, we are not sure.

Franz Marc
The painting is by Franz Marc, an expressionist painter and part of the “Blue Riders” group of artists in Germany in the early 1900’s. Marc was talented and influential, but his career was cut short after serving in the army in World War I. In 1916, flying shrapnel struck him in the temple and he was killed instantly. He was just 36 years old.

I imagine Mary Oliver, mesmerized by the painting,  and as she describes in her poem “Franz Marc’s Blue Horses,” “step[ping] into the painting.  The horses going to her and touching her with their noses. She thinks about the horses and the man who imagined them and painted them, and who died too soon. “I would rather die than try to explain to the blue horses what war is,” she writes.

Oh, yes. This is a beautiful poem about a beautiful painting. More and more, I find myself intrigued by visual art, loving it for itself, and interested by what I see as the connection between painters and writers. Both groups working out of an image or thought or essence at the corner of their minds. A certain something which is elusive, but which we catch glimpses of from time to time.  When the work goes well, when we’re in the flow. And both of us—artists and writers—trying to grasp onto that essence, capture it, get down on paper or canvas, before it flits away.

Saying the Unsayable
David Whyte says that “all poems are….an attempt to say the unsayable.” And Brian Patten goes on to write that “one of the many things a poem can do is remind us of what we forgot we knew.” There are the truths at the edge of consciousness, I believe, that we try to “get at” with our art. And our writing. Something that is vitally important but which often eludes us. This is what we struggle with, and why we keep at it. We do our work. We grow closer, and once in a while we succeed. And, as Mary Oliver writes, “maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God inside each of us.”

Writing/Creativity Exercise

1. Go to an art gallery or museum and look at the art. Or search online and find a painting which “speaks” to you. Consider it carefully, looking at the colors, the images, the mood the piece evokes in you.
2. Close your eyes and imagine “stepping inside” the frame so that you are in the painting. What do you do there? Do you meet anyone? What do you feel?
3. Now, set a timer for 20 minutes and begin writing. You may start with the phrase, “Stepping inside the painting….” and go from there. You might be surprised at what emerges!

For more inspiration, check out our website www.thewritingandcreativelife.com.

Or follow this link to purchase our latest book, The Fire Inside.