Mobile Photography & Art – Saturday Poetry – ‘Hum’ by Ann Lauterbach with Photography by Marian Rubin
This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘Hum’ by Ann Lauterbach.
Born in 1942, Ann Lauterbach was raised in New York City. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, she attended Columbia University on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. She moved to London before completing her M.A. in English Literature.
She lived in London for eight years, working variously in publishing and art institutions. On her return to the United States, she worked for a number of years in art galleries in New York before she began teaching.
After the attacks of September 11, there was an outpouring of national grief and an uncharacteristic attention to poetry. Almost overnight, collections of poems were gathered on the various corners of the internet, some famous, some new. There seemed to be pressure on well-known poets to produce a poem, or refuse the opportunity, as the new Poet Laureate Billy Collins did, saying in an interview with NPR that the occasion was “too stupendous” for a single poem to handle. He said that the terrorists had done something “beyond language.”
Yet it is this lack of language that some writers attempt to fill with poetry, and there were certainly enough poets casting about for the right words. Ann Lauterbach, for example, wrote the meditative and mournful poem “Hum” and we have included it here. I hope it helps some of you today.
I have matched artwork by @marian.rubin_photography imagery with this poem. You can view her Instagram feed here.
If you would like to be featured in our Saturday Poetry section, please ensure you include the hashtag #theappwhisperer to any images posted to Instagram. This will mean we will be able to consider it.
To view the others we have published in this section, go here.
Hum ©Ann Lauterbach
The days are beautiful
The days are beautiful.
I know what days are.
The other is weather.
I know what weather is.
The days are beautiful.
Things are incidental.
Someone is weeping.
I weep for the incidental.
The days are beautiful.
Where is tomorrow?
Everyone will weep.
Tomorrow was yesterday.
The days are beautiful.
Tomorrow was yesterday.
Today is weather.
The sound of the weather
Is everyone weeping.
Everyone is incidental.
Everyone weeps.
The tears of today
Will put out tomorrow.
The rain is ashes.
The days are beautiful.
The rain falls down.
The sound is falling.
The sky is a cloud.
The days are beautiful.
The sky is dust.
The weather is yesterday.
The weather is yesterday.
The sound is weeping.
What is this dust?
The weather is nothing.
The days are beautiful.
The towers are yesterday.
The towers are incidental.
What are these ashes?
Here is the hate
That does not travel.
Here is the robe
That smells of the night
Here are the words
Retired to their books
Here are the stones
Loosed from their settings
Here is the bridge
Over the water
Here is the place
Where the sun came up
Here is a season
Dry in the fireplace.
Here are the ashes.
The days are beautiful.
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Joanne Carter
Joanne Carter is a British photographer, photography journalist, editor and curator and the founder and editorial director of TheAppWhisperer.com, an independent international photography publication established in 2009.Her journalism, criticism and commentary have appeared in The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Financial Times, BBC, Vogue Italia, LensCulture, Popular Photography, Android Magazine, NikonPro, DPReview, Which Digital Camera and Which Camera. She has lectured internationally on photography and mobile art, served as a juror for international photography awards, and exhibited her own photographic work across the UK, Europe, South Korea and the United States.Alongside her editorial work, Joanne's photographic and postgraduate research explores death, grief, memory, representation and social inequality through contemporary photography, participatory practice and visual research methods, with the longer-term aim of developing this work through doctoral research.Through TheAppWhisperer, she continues to publish independent photography journalism spanning contemporary photographic practice, mobile imaging, photographic apps, computational photography and emerging imaging technologies.Joanne is available for editorial commissions, photography projects, judging, curatorial work, speaking engagements, consultancy and selected collaborations.
