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, creator of the world’s most popular mobile photography and art website— TheAppWhisperer.com— TheAppWhisperer platform has been a pivotal cyberspace for mobile artists of all abilities to learn about, to explore, to celebrate and to share mobile artworks. Joanne’s compassion, inclusivity, and humility are hallmarks in all that she does, and is particularly evident in the platform she has built. In her words, “We all have the potential to remove ourselves from the centre of any circle and to expand a sphere of compassion outward; to include everyone interested in mobile art, ensuring every artist is within reach”, she has said. Promotion of mobile artists and the art form as a primary medium in today’s art world, has become her life’s focus. She has presented lectures bolstering mobile artists and their art from as far away as the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea to closer to her home in the UK at Focus on Imaging. Her experience as a jurist for mobile art competitions includes: Portugal, Canada, US, S Korea, UK and Italy. And her travels pioneering the breadth of mobile art includes key events in: Frankfurt, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Paris, Brazil, London. Pioneering the world’s first mobile art online gallery - TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com has extended her reach even further, shipping from London, UK to clients in the US, Europe and The Far East to a global group of collectors looking for exclusive art to hang in their homes and offices. The online gallery specialises in prints for discerning collectors of unique, previously unseen signed limited edition art. Her journey towards becoming The App Whisperer, includes (but is not limited to) working for a paparazzi photo agency for several years and as a deputy editor for a photo print magazine. Her own freelance photographic journalistic work is also widely acclaimed. She has been published extensively both within the UK and the US in national and international titles. These include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Popular Photography & Imaging, dpreview, NikonPro, Which? and more recently with the BBC as a Contributor, Columnist at Vogue Italia and Contributing Editor at LensCulture. Her professional photography has also been widely exhibited throughout Europe, including Italy, Portugal and the UK. She is currently writing several books, all related to mobile art and is always open to requests for new commissions for either writing or photography projects or a combination of both. Please contact her at: [email protected]
