I paint my house Botticelli, pale Naples,
cinnamon, all the spices of the islands,
the colour of Dutchmen and their sea-
sick faces, the colour of wood
where the salt comes through it.
I paint my house curry, Indonesia.
I paint my house Calvin, which is grey
and righteous. I paint my house Amsterdam.
I paint my house green, Kelly, emerald, the green
they hang men for. I paint my house potato,
bad soil, seaweed. I paint my house stone.
I paint my house starvation, cholera. I paint it
Ellis, paint it Grosse Isle. I paint it alcolol.
I paint my house Iowa, black earth,
green corn. I paint it America,
fireworks and smog, I paint it
industry. I paint it blue and grey.
I paint it slavery. I paint purple
mountains and ideals I can't
live up to. I paint it blood.
I paint my house history. I paint it
Olduvai. I paint it time's slow
engineering. I paint it Rosalind Franklin,
I paint it Anne of Cleves, the one
who lived. I paint it all
who lived, I paint it books, Rosetta.
I paint it Egypt and Sumer, I paint it Inca.
I paint it night sky, which is no colour.
I paint it white, which is every colour,
which is light before the breaking,
which is Newton, which is science, snowfall,
primer, primal, paper -- hope.
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This poem is the result of an exercise I'm trying to get ready for one of the classes I will teach at the Waterloo public library: the one on rhyme, cadence, alliteration, assonance, etc. I'm still getting the kinks out of both the class and the exercise. The idea is to use the freeing, nearly nonsense effect of a list poem to work on pure sound. I think it could be a workable exercise.
Like most exercise poems I suspect this is minor. It may help to know -- or perhaps you can tell -- that I am ethnically Dutch and Irish, by way of Iowa.
I love the names, so rich and evocative -- from Calvin to Newton! Just two quibbles -- typo of "alcolol" for alcohol? And Anne of Cleves survived Henry by divorcing him, true, but Katherine Parr survived him as a widow.
Traditionally the six wives have been remembered as divorced (Katherine of Aragon), beheaded (Anne Boleyn), died (Jane Seymour), divorced (Anne of Cleves), beheaded (Katherine Howard), survived (Katherine Parr). Of course, Katherine didn't long survive Henry -- she died in childbirth complications in 1547 after her marriage to Prince Edward's uncle and Elizabeth's would-be suitor, Thomas Seymour.
So you could cast Anne as the one who survived (dying in 1557), but it is mildly jarring.
To tell the truth she just popped into my head because she has a wonderful name. And Katherine Parr is probably the more interesting of the queens, but in my experience her name won't ring that bell I need to ring in reader's heads.
What I really need is someone who is famous for surviving though she should be famous for something else, the way that Roslind Franklin is famous mostly for dying, and not for being one of the great experimental scientists of the century. It's distressingly hard to come up with that name -- people notably for their death are easier. ("It's Sylvia Plath in the kitchen and St Clement / with an anchor round his neck" writes Billy Collins.)
I'm considering Molly Brown, just for the name.
My favourite woman in history, Agn�s Sorel, also was not a survivor; she died (was poisoned?) at age 28 for her influence over King Charles VII of France. The poisoner: Charles's son, the future King Louis XI.
There's always Daniel who seems to be more famous for surviving the lion's den than for for his visions or interpretations. How about Elie Wiesel (though you might say he's more famed for hunting than for surviving)? One with zero name recognition, but so much pathos is Kim Phuc, the young girl captured in the infamous Viet Nam napalm photo. But Molly Brown is good, too -- she came to mind as you outlined your criteria and suggested her as an alternative.
I do still love this poem. It's so rich with the names and all the images they evoke!