Weston Morrow
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Weston Morrow
@wmorrow.bsky.social
150 followers 22 following 17 posts
Author of Cloud Builder, winner of the National Poetry Series.
I teach writing at Ohio State. Westonmorrow.com
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wmorrow.bsky.social
Check out these incredible poems by Liz Harms (@lizharms.bsky.social) at MQR
sites.lsa.umich.edu/mqr/2023/10/...
September 10, 2025 at 11:09 PM
wmorrow.bsky.social
No one wanted to buy his paintings, and he was struggling to cover the family’s expenses. Perhaps in a kind of desperate response, he added elements to this painting that he thought might entice buyers.
quoted text, "Constable remarked to his friend Fisher: "I do hope to sell this present picture--as it has certainly got a little more eye-salve than I usually give them." By "eye-salve" he probably meant picturesque details such as the drinking boy, the donkey's grazing the bank dotted with poppies and cow parsley, the flock of sheep, distant village and meandering river."
September 10, 2025 at 10:47 PM
wmorrow.bsky.social
As the National Gallery notes, this “wooded lane leading to a more sunlit landscape” was a common theme in Constable’s work. And, though the path depicted in “The Cornfield” is a real one, the village to which it leads was invented by Constable.
quoted text from the National Gallery, "The lane still exists but the countryside shown beyond it was largely conjured up in Constable's studio. The church tower and cluster of red-roofed houses 'never existed,' as the artist's son Charles Constable was later to point out--Constable invented the village."
September 10, 2025 at 10:47 PM
wmorrow.bsky.social
I’m thrilled to have a poem in Lake Effect about John Constable’s 1826 painting “The Cornfield,” a painting that’s dear to me, with its own fascinating and tragic story that I’d like to tell here.
"The Cornfield," by John Constable, 1826 The Cornfield, John Constable, 1826 It opens on the countryside, a boy who from a distance seems dead, head tipped forward in the stream as if drowned. Or is he looking down, through the silt, for something beneath the surface? Surely, there is nothing there to see. No, drawing closer it seems he's only drinking the dark water, slaking his thirst before crossing Dedham Vale. You think this child might bring the scene to life; meanwhile, in a bed, tucked between Brighton and Hove, your wife is dying. No one will buy this painting. To them it is lifeless, even with the addition of the boy and his dog, the little poppies blooming on the hillside undisturbed by loss. The sheep march onward to be shorn. The farmer hangs, in his corn, a warning to the sparrows, a corpse of cloth and stuffed straw. But the birds know what the man won't admit— the body is a frail imitation of its god, betrayed by every cough of wind. Its small truths riddled with fraud. What now remains? The road persists, but the village you claimed you saw, beyond the lane, never existed.
September 10, 2025 at 10:47 PM