Perseus and Andromeda

Nude

in chains

on the rocks

she’s picture-perfect.

Titian’s Andromeda displayed

for us mortals, for hungry beasts, and for Perseus

who dives seaward dressed-to-kill in pink and gold robes to slaughter the slavering monster.

He’s a boy-hero, pointing his scimitar, playing the man-of-action awed by the glamour of a damsel’s distress – he needs to impress.

Her life depends on this handsome man so she exhibits herself in a table-dance

wearing fettish limb-fetters and a dangling earring

she guarantees love at first sight.

In moments of stress

decorum

learns how

to

flirt.

Colin Bell 29/9/2020

I was inspired by the much-praised Titian exhibition, Love Death and Desire, at London’s National Gallery this summer, during the infamous Covid-19 pandemic – so much so that I decided to write a set of Fibonacci poems about them. Poetry based on specific works of art are known as Ekphrastic – my four new poems, Four Ekphrastic Fibs are the result and they have just been published in The Fib Review, that impressive Fibonacci specialist journal. http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/

I thought I would reproduce them here along with the original paintings by Titian, maybe the greatest painter of the nude, known appropriately enough as the Poesie – or Poems. If you want to know more about these paintings read about them on my previous blog Titian Reunited: https://wolfiewolfgang.com/?p=19989

My four new Titian poems join a fifth, Diana and Actaeon, that was already published in a previous issue of the Fib Review in a set of poems inspired, like all of these paintings, by stories from the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I have printed it again here below.

I write these poems using the Fibonacci mathematical number sequence for each line’s syllable count….and now having had 104 of them published by The Fib Review, I guess you could say that I’m hooked as you will probably see if you look back on some of my previous blogs on the subject of Fibonacci and the Fib. https://wolfiewolfgang.com/?p=19

My thanks, yet again, to The Fib Review for continuing to publish my work.

Venus and Adonis

Stay

moans

Venus

love’s goddess

Titian’s writhing nude.

Adonis springs hot from her bed

his blushes define the child out-grown by his body.

He is dressed for hunting, she’s undressed for him, helpless love personified by its queen

who is now tasting the pain she inflicts on us all.

His dogs salivate sensing blood,

the boy is confused:

why this fuss?

Venus sees

the death

of

youth.

Colin Bell 29/9/2020

Diana and Callisto

Chaste

queens

turn mean

at bath time

in Titian’s paintings –

he likes women out of their clothes.

Virgin goddess Diana is nasty when she’s nude

she’s addicted to alfresco ablutions in the woods with her handmaidens naked.

Useful for Titian but bad for the nymph Callisto

pregnant by the king of the gods

strip-searched found guilty

shaming us

who stand

and

stare.

Colin Bell 30/9/2020

Actaeon

Don’t

look,

he thought,

but he did,

fearing what he saw,

alert to the change in himself.

Until now he’d been just a lad hunting with hound dogs.

Eyes know your desires before you do, he discovered in that surprised unblinking glance.

Arousal felt bestial to this embarrassed young man.

The transformation was instant

and the first horn grew.

Love’s not blind,

he thought,

for

stags.

Colin Bell 05/10/2017

The post Titian’s Nudes are the subject of my new Fibonacci poems. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

I am thrilled to be the new Featured Poet International for American poetry publisher, Muse-Pie Press, producers of the three highly-respected poetry journals: Fibonacci poetry specialist, The Fib Review; short-form poetry publishers, Shot Glass Journal; and the spoken-word magazine, Bent Ear Journal.

I have had a few short poems published in Shot Glass Journal, but in the last ten years I have had 99 Fibonacci poems published in 30 consecutive issues The Fib Review, the leading publishers of this very specific poetry form. Writing these short poems to submit to the triannual editions of The Fib Review has now become a a regular calendar event and I’m grateful to have had such support from the journal’s energetic editor, Mary-Jane Grandinetti.

There must be something about writing poetry to a precise syllable count that draws me again and again to what are known as Fibs. The style is named after the medieval Italian mathematician, Fibonacci, who saw a pattern, a code, some have said, in the sequence 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233 etc. where the next number is the sum of the previous two. In the last ten years, I have written many Fibs using the Fibonacci sequence for the syllable count per line. So far I haven’t dared to write a line with any more than 233 syllables, but, maybe, one day, I will venture to 377 syllables and beyond.

Muse-Pie Press asked me to be their Featured Poet International a few months ago, and I was really excited to be honoured like this, but I hadn’t realised that they would publish 25 of my Fibonacci poems on my own featured page where they look, I like to think, true to their Fibonacci inheritance. Seeing them all together, I was delighted to see that they also form a poetic sequence – a digital chapbook – I hope you agree.

If you want to see the whole page, here’s the link – I hope you enjoy the Fibs and that you might even have a go yourself at writing one yourself. http://www.musepiepress.com/index.html

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I have three new Fibonacci poems published today in the Fib Review, the specialist poetry journal for this intriguing style based on the Fibonacci number sequence.

I’ve been writing them now for over ten years and The Fib Review has now published 89 of them. I’m amazed and delighted to have had this long relationship with this pioneering publication. http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/index.html

My thanks, once again, to Mary-Jane Grandinetti, the editor of The Fib Review who has been guiding me on this interesting journey through a sea of numbers.

The post I can’t stop writing these Fibonacci poems. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

I’m celebrating today and it’s not all about numbers. They figure strongly in writing the usually short poetry form the Fibonacci poem which is based on the so-called Fibonacci Sequence of numbers.

The latest issue of  the world’s leading Fibonacci poetry journal, The Fib Review, is published today in its 25th issue on its 10th anniversary and, yes, my four new Fibs  bring my total 66 of poems published by the Fib Review. All these numbers are worth celebrating I think.

It may all look a bit dusty and arithmetical in the diagram but these numbers form a beautiful sequence that can be found in nature, in science,  in engineering and, yes, in art. The sequence consists of numbers where each  is the sum of the previous two, rising in numerical order and which can be seen in natural shapes  made from this ratio of numbers. It is the beauty of the sequence that has tempted poets to use the sequence as a way of ordering words and lines in poetry.

I have been writing Fibonacci poetry for eight years now by counting the syllables in each line so that the lines correspond to the sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34.  Until now, I’ve never dared to go any higher in the numerical order but in two of my new poems I have added 55 syllable lines. I’m delighted that they are to be included in the new publication of The Fib Review. Take a look, not just for my new poems but for the fascinating variations on the form achieved by all the other poets, from all over the world,  published there:

http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/index.html

The Fibonacci Sequence is credited to the Italian mathematician Leonardo Bonacci who was also known as Fibonacci. He introduced this ancient Asian sequence into Western Europe in the 13th Century and it has fascinated mathematicians, scientists, artists, engineers and poets ever since.

The post Numbers count in Fibonacci Poetry – and for The Fib Review’s anniversary issue. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

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This isn’t the first time that I’ve written about my Fibonacci poetry on these pages but today, I’m particularly thrilled that I have ten new poems published in The Fib Review #19 which came out over the weekend. These poems, written to a syllable count taking self-imposed rules from the medieval Italian arithmetician, Leonardo Fibonacci, the so-called Fibonacci Sequence when a pattern is seen in the relationship between  numbers written to the pattern 1: 1 : 2 : 3 : 5 : 8 :13 : 21 : 34  etc. etc.  At it’s simplest the pattern means that each number is the sum of the previous two but you can, of course, reverse the order and do a whole number of variations. I’ve loved imposing this discipline on my poetry and now, thanks to the continuing support of The Fib Review‘s editor Mary-Jane Grandinetti, I have been writing ‘Fibs’ for over five years, forty-five of them published in fifteen consecutive issues of The Fib Review, the World’s leading Fibonacci publisher. Heres’ the link where you will find my ten poems plus a whole lot more.  http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/index.html

This summer I’ve been sorting all my Fibonacci poetry into some kind of order, there are now 62 of them, and found that they sat together happily enough and, without being a literal narrative, they tell the story of my many brief encounters with people in my personal life but also in the years when I worked in television. Sorting them out and writing some to fill the gaps, it was a bit like putting together a photograph album so, it was not much of a struggle to call the collection, Brief Encounters. Some of the latest poems have been about meetings with famous people, some admired, some feared and some disliked. It’s possibly a form of poetic name-dropping but I hope it adds up to more than that. Not all the encounters were with the famous – some are friends, some strangers and, a few, are imaginary encounters with some of my fears and obsessions.

In Issue 19 of The Fib Review,  four of the ten poems deal with my meetings with the famous – vivid memories all. As all four are now deceased, it seemed like a good idea to memorialise those brief encounters among my latest Fibonacci experiments with minimalism. I hope you’ll enjoy them.

The post The Beatle, the Cardinal, the Poet and the Prime Minister – my meetings with famous people memorialised in my newly published Fibonacci poems. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

Maybe we don’t take madeleine cakes enough with weak black tea. I’ve only had the proper French version of these little cakes once but I can see why the French novelist Marcel Proust (1871–1922) rated them so highly in his massive seven volume novel In Search of Lost Time ( À la recherche du temps perdu). In the first volume of the novel, Swann’s Way (Du côté de chez Swann) (1913), the central character, Marcel, experiences what’s known as involuntary memory when he tastes one of the cakes dipped into his tea. It opens his memory to scenes of his childhood which begin the epic and apparently sprawling work that is the longest novel in any language. I’m currently on the third volume The Guermantes Way (Le Côté de Guermantes) (1920/1921) – I’m reading it on my Kindle in the English Moncheiff/Hudson/Kilmartin translation but also, from time to time, comparing the text with the original French which is, sadly, above my reading abilities. I hope to finish this self-imposed but highly enjoyable project by the end of the year.

If you’d like to read my poem, here’s the link:

http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/colin_bell1.html

The Raising of Lazarus, c. 1609 by Caravaggio.  Museo Regionale, Messina

The second Fibonacci poem is Lazarus. It is also about my memory of a vivid moment. Lazarus was the man Jesus brought back from the dead in one of his most dramatic miracles. I had often wondered what it must have actually felt like to find yourself relaunched into life in such a startling way. The thought returned to me once when I was being discharged from hospital after a serious illness. Here’s a link to my poem:

http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/colin_bell2.html

My thanks, once more, are due to Mary-Jane Grandimetti, the editor of The Fib Review, for choosing to publish my work yet again. I have had poems in this publication  thirteen consecutive issues. I’m now putting my mind to writing some more poetry in this style where the syllable or word count has to correspond to Fibonacci’s sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34. Maybe you should have a go too.

———————————————————————————————–

STEPHEN DEARSLEY’S SUMMER OF LOVE BY COLIN BELL

My novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, was published  on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.

It is now available as a paperback or on Kindle (go to your region’s Amazon site for Kindle orders)

You can order the book from the publishers, Ward Wood Publishing:

http://wardwoodpublishing.co.uk/titles-fiction-colin-bell-stephen-dearsleys-summer-of-love.htm 

…or from Book Depository:

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Stephen-Dearsleys-Summer-Love-Colin-Bell/9781908742070

…or from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Stephen%20Dearsley’s%20Summer%20Of%20love

The post Marcel Proust’s rudeness and Lazarus’ shock are the themes for my two newly published Fibonacci poems. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

The latest issue of The Fib Review, Issue #16,  is posted online today and, sorry to brag, it includes three of my Fibonacci poems continuing my unbroken run in this poetry journal since I submitted my very first Fibonacci poem four years ago in Issue #5.

It’s great to celebrate the new issue today, 30th October, which, otherwise, would be just the fifth anniversary of my brain haemorrhage – better known in this house as Haemorrhage Day. Actually, my recovery has been so complete that I hardly even remember it these days. Now though, I do need to say thanks to whatever powers, including the British National Health Service, allowed me to carry on with my life. Thanks!

The long recovering period from that sudden brain injury, a substantial haemorrhage to my left frontal lobe,  allowed me to develop my poetry writing and, sometimes, I  wonder if the haemorrhage actually inspired me to write poetry in the first place. It was during the early days of recovery that I also caught the Fibonacci bug.

If you don’t know about Fibonacci poetry then read the explanation in the photo-shot of the new edition of The Fib Review above. It’s all about making syllables or words comply into a strict arithmetical code without losing their poetic purpose. I love the form and I feel honoured to have so many of my poems included in what must be the leading publisher of this unique style of poetry.

If you want to read the poems here’s the link:

http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/index.html

The Fib Review is now downloadable so you can keep them on your computer if you wish and browse all the other poems at your leisure. You can access all of mine in the Writer Archive section.

Those of you who can access the virtual online world, Second Life (it’s free and easy to join from anywhere in the world) you can also go to my virtual Fibonacci exhibition, Brief Encounters where forty of my Fibs line the walls along with some of my photography. http://maps.secondlife.com/ – it was in Second Life, while still recovering from brain damage that I first encountered Fibonacci poetry thanks to the editor of The Fib Review who also happens to  run workshops in short form poetry in the virtual world. I loved the idea  from the start but would never have predicted that I would have kept writing them.

How knows, you might even get hooked on the style yourself.

The virtual exhibition continues until January so, if you can, go and take a look. Once you’ve entered the world head for Book Island, an extraordinary literary community where everything and everyone is dedicated to writing.

Second Life, poetry, the Fib Review, all of these things I celebrate today on my fifth year of borrowed time. Actually my cup overfloweth, as they say, for tomorrow sees the publication of my first novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love. I’m a lucky guy.

——————————————————————————————————————–

My novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, is published  on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Stephen%20Dearsley’s%20Summer%20Of%20love

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With so much bad news  coming out of New Jersey this week, I was worried when I received a message from a publisher in New Jersey today which had the word “unfortunately” in the first paragraph. Now any writer who has ever submitted work to publishers will know to look for that word immediately as an instant sign of rejection.

I had submitted some Fibonacci poems to the excellent journal The Fib Review which specialises in this style of poetry, based on the Fibonacci Mathematical Sequence, one that particularly attracts me. The Fib Review is published by Muse-Pie Press in Passaic, New Jersey (see Links)  and they have been kind enough to publish a number of my poems over the last three years – in every issue in fact since Issue Three.

We all have to live with rejection so I skimmed the rest of the note with a bit more attention: “Unfortunately I’ve been affected by Hurricane Sandy and I’ve been without power for several days.”

Further on I read that The Fib Review wants to publish three of my new Fib poems in the next edition, Issue Thirteen. I am doubly delighted after that moment of disappointment.

I have been writing Fibonacci poetry now for about three and a half years after first learning about it from the pioneering editor of The Fib Review, Mary-Jane Grandinetti who is a specialist in short-form poetry. I am doubly grateful to her for the inspiration and for the encouragement.

The Fibonacci Sequence was brought to Europe by one Leonardo Pisano Bigollo (c.1170 – c.1250) who is also known as Leonardo of Pisa or, more simply, as Fibonacci. He discovered what was originally a Hindu-Arab form of mathematics when travelling in North Africa and published his findings in a highly influencial book Liber Abaci (1202) or The Book Of Calculations which also introduced into Europe the now familiar Arabic numeral system that replaced the more complicated Roman numerals.

The Fibonacci Sequence is a mathematical formula that identifies the relationship between certain numerical combinations when added together in a specific sequence.

In his book, Fibonacci explains his system using the example of rabbits breeding in a field. He begins with one male and one female and makes the assumption that neither they or their offspring will die. After one year, he asks, how many rabbits will there be in that field. Don’t try this at home, believe me, it could get messy, but Fibonacci calculated that the number of rabbits could be predicted by his system: 1, 1, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 35, 55, 89, 144 etc. You will notice, pay attention at the back, that each number is the sum of the previous two. It was the use of these numbers as syllable counts that attracted me to writing Fibonacci poems. Here is an example of a Fibonacci poem by Jim Wilson:

This is its nature and
ever-expanding essential meaning and centrifugal motion of the exhilarating
Fibonacci!

Jim Wilson.

To borrow your patience a moment longer, you can also use these Fibonacci numbers to make something known as the Fibonacci Spiral where curved lines are fitted into a series of squares with Fibonacci numerical dimensions:

This is one of the basic patterns of Nature and it has its own beauty which we can recognise even if we don’t understand it.

It is used, either consciously or subliminally in the proportions in a work of art too. Like this photo of a rose…..

or this advert for Cognac:

It was also the shape of Hurricane Sandy when it arrived on the shores of New Jersey and took out the electricity of The Fib Review. Now that’s another neat, if inconvenient, Fibbonaci pattern.

For other examples of Fibonacci poetry go to The Fib Review at www.musepiepress.com – you can hear me read some of mine in the video column to the right of this blog. Issue 13 of the Fib Review will be out soon.

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It was a nice Christmas present hearing that another two of my Fibonacci poems are being published by the Fib review today. I use the word “nice”, of course, in its purer mathematical sense meaning fine or subtle – its original meaning.

I have been writing more of these poems that owe their form to the medieval mathematician, Leonardo Fibonacci (c.1170 – c. 1250), whose so-called Fibonacci Sequence has been adopted as a syllabic pattern by poetry giving the medium its own equivalent of fine art’s Golden Section and which I explained in more detail in an earlier blog (8th september 2010 0 find it in the SEARCH window above).

Professor du Sautoy began with Leonardo’s Vetruvian Man  with its own ingenious sequences defining the proportions of the human body.

The last programme concentrated on the diagram sent into space in the 1970’s on Pioneer 10 on a journey to Jupiter  and then onwards beyond our own galaxy to explain mankind to any, if there is any, intelligent life in other galaxies. In an apparently simple diagram, the designers sought to show other worlds not only what homo sapiens looks like but also where we live and what date we posted this metal plaque into space. the optimistic thought behind that project was that mathematics is not just inter-galactic but possibly even universal.

Certainly, even an ignoramus like me can see that there is beauty in numbers and, dull though it might sound, the more I play with Fibonacci’s formula, the more I feel its, er, niceness. I am beginning to see the pattern all over the place, not just in the diagrams below, whose beauty I am newly awakened to, but in Nature itself. I find order there for my poetry when I am trying to explain the chaos of thoughts rattling around in my brain.

It would be nice indeed if, one day, in millions of years time, long after the great art galleries of the World have crumbled to dust, if The Fib Review could be found and understood by creatures from unknown galaxies. who knows, somewhere out there, might be planets where poetry is seen as an essential part of civilisation.

If you want to read my new fibonacci poems, Quitting and Snapshots,  click on Musepie Press on SOME LINKS in the right hand column on this page and then click on to the Fib Review icon on Musepie Press’s website.

Of course, aliens from other galaxies are welcome to read them too.

STEPHEN DEARSLEY’S SUMMER OF LOVE BY COLIN BELL

My novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, was published  on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.

It is now available as a paperback or on Kindle (go to your region’s Amazon site for Kindle orders)

You can order the book from the publishers, Ward Wood Publishing:

http://wardwoodpublishing.co.uk/titles-fiction-colin-bell-stephen-dearsleys-summer-of-love.htm 

…or from Book Depository:

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Stephen-Dearsleys-Summer-Love-Colin-Bell/9781908742070

…or from Amazon:

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