She led a paper doll life.
Strived to meet expectations from so many.
Put yourself together this way.
Tabs turned down. Pieces in place.
But those over there said, It’s better this way.
Snip snip. Glue applied till she was rearranged.
Someone else said, Add this to your face.
Minimize that part, emphasize this.
And all the hims over the years.
He said, Do this. So she did.
The last him said, Do what I say.
Wear this, not that. Never that.
She cut herself up so many times.
Attributes shed, shards left behind.
Fragments added,
ill fit though they were.
Until one day,
someone gifted her a bouquet.
A mixed bouquet
with twelve different blooms.
Holding them close, she eyed them carefully.
Curled up edges on the violet one.
Red rose, sagged and drooped a bit,
stem too thin for its weight.
Each flower beautiful in its own way,
nestled together in soft silk ribbons.
And at that moment, she decided.
I will be me.
Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe where today, I’m hosting Tuesday Poetics.
Today’s prompt introduces writers and readers to Thorvald Hellesen (1888 – 1937). I was introduced to this artist at our recent visit to the National Museum of Norway in Oslo. Hellesen grew up and studied art in Kristiania (Oslo). His debut exhibit in 1919, in Kristiania, was met with much derision and he never showed his art in Norway again. He moved to Paris at age twenty-three where he joined the circles of Picasso and Fernand Leger, Cubists who turned the norm of what art should be upside down. He had successful exhibitions in Paris and in addition to his painting, went on to design posters, textile patterns and worked with interior design. 104 years after his fatal debut in Kristiania (Oslo), this is the first museum exhibition devoted to Norway’s first consistent Cubist.
Within the prompt, I provide five different portraits painted by Hellesen, three of which are in the Cubist tradition, including the one I’ve used and posted above, “Suitor. Figure with Bouquet” painted in 1917-1918. Writers must choose one of the five portraits as inspiration for a poem and, of course, give credit to Hellesen.
lillian the home poet 
I love the way you describe how she found herself in all those pieces… to often people try to mold another person into what they are not… and maybe in the end we are assembled from pieces.
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Glad you enjoyed, Bjorn. Yes….when I looked at this cubist portraits I immediately thought about all the pieces that each of us are….and then I thought about societal pressures to look this way…defining beauty in a certain way….all the photoshopping of models in posters and magazines that say this is how we shold be. I’m fascinated by this cubist look at people…
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I love your ending and final line. But before that, love the change process from a paper doll life to the changing to be the authentic person. That gift of a bouquet, I like to think, is love.
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What a great way to think of the gift of the bouquet! 🙂 I like that. Glad you enoyed the poem. I am fascinated by this idea of a pieced together person in the cubist tradition.
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PS: so fun to see the surprised look on your face as we all sang happy birthday to you at OLN LIVE! 🙂
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A fantastic ekphrastic poem in which you explored the subject’s character with empathy and understanding, Lill. I feel so sorry for her with her ‘paper doll life’, being glued and rearranged being added to, minimised and emphasised. The ‘snip, snip’ made me shiver. I’m glad you gave her strength at the end.
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oooh….I’ve never made someone shiver before! 🙂 Glad you enjoyed the poem, shivers and all. I was fascinated by his cubist paintings…most especially the portraits. At first I was thinking about the person who is diagnosed with early onset dementia…and how they must feel like pieces are being taken away…and their mind adds other images. But then I thought about a paperdoll for some reason….and this resulted. And oh yes….I couldn’t leave her just following everyone else’s ideas of what she should be or look like. Strength in the end – yes! Self actualization.
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This is absolutely STUNNING work done, Lillian! I can see her so clearly, eyeing the bouquet and coming to conclusion. Love this! ❤️❤️❤️
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Thank you, Sanaa. Glad you enjoyed! It’s fun to not that everyone so far, has chosen from among the cubist portraits and not the two painted from realism.
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Wow! Nice one. Thats who she should be.
Much💖love
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Glad you liked it! Yes….in the end, she decides to just be herself! 🙂
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I’m glad you got her fixed up, making her clever enough to normal. I’m not a fan of cubism. Now Heaven knows what all AI will bring .
BTW, Mr. Linky made a mess of the link showing for me.
The first is fine.
But the second is all wrong, it goes to an older Poem for April. Mr. Linky’s removal tool wouldn’t take the second one off for me.
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Can definitely see how you interpreted the figure the way you did, Lillian. It’s a beautiful painting but the humanity of the figure doesn’t seem very well put together. I’m glad she’s calling a no scissors zone around herself.
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I like your statement that the humanity of the figure doesn’t seem very well put together. I wonder what the response of a Cubist would be to that? 🙂
I’m glad she found herself in the end as well. May we all listen to our inner voice and be true to ourselves! 🙂
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❤
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Portrait of a Paper Doll
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It’s been so interesting to see all the different responses to this prompt.
Yes, when you think about paperdolls, they have all the different clothes and accessories, all cut out with tabs on them. You place them on the doll and put the tabs down to keep them on. You change them at your whim….and the doll can do nothing but acquiesce to what you put on her/him. I guess all the angles in the cubist method of doing portraits reminded me of that. But in the case of my poem, I let her come to decide who she actually wanted to be. 🙂
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I love this metaphor for life. This happens in reality so often as parents and other try to live vicariously through their children. Very well written. Love the paper dolls… and this set of lines:
She cut herself up so many times.
Attributes shed, shards left behind.
Fragments added,
ill fit though they were.
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Thank you, Dwight. You got exactly what I was saying in the poem! 🙂
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You are welcome!
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I absolutely loved this: the opening made me a paper doll who would then lose her physical self to plastic surgery and then lose her own will. Sadly, this happens to people, but somehow you made this poem pleasant while including the horror of the reality. Such a great interpretation of that image.
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Well, I am a Pollyanna at heart so had to end on a positive note. After all the succombing to others designs on her (parents? lovers? friends? magazine images? social media?) she finally looks in the mirror and says enough. And she becomes what she wants to be…her true self. Self-actualization.
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After I left my comment, I scrolled up and looked at the picture. Am I the only one that missed it, or is there a big fist with a lifted middle finger in the middle of that painting? I’ll always see it now, even if it wasn’t meant to be there.
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Hah! NOW I see it! Great eyes! And actually, that would go with my poem here….at the end she holds up her middle finger and says **** to everyone, I will be me! 🙂 Self-actualization to the nth degree 🙂
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This is a fine extraction of meaning from s chaotic work. I enjoyed the story.
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Glad you enjoyed!
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You had me at the first line! Love the comparison made to paper dolls and the hard truth of how we rearrange ourselves to suit others until we lose who we really are. Great message and a comforting ending to the story.
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You understood it totally, Mish. Thank you! 🙂
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Mere words cannot express how much I enjoyed this incredibly deep, introspective, reaffirming poem! Cheers and Brava, Lillian.
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I can’t decide about the intentions of the ‘suitor’, all in black with a non-existent face. The most real thing in the painting is the bouquet, and a bouquet is a pastiche of real flowers. I think she’s better off being herself 🙂
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I like the inspiration you drew here Lil — an effective and well written piece my friend. I like cubism, but when it comes to 2D ART, it doesn’t excite me the way surrealism does. I think it is the essence of the hyper realism found in much of surrealistic work that draws me. Surrealism just unleashes my imagination a bit more? 🙂👍🏼✌🏼
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You have captured the cubist spirit in your words beautifully Lilian 🙌
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Nice job! The other day David and I were reading one of those “what would you write to your former self” types of things and the one piece that stood out was – You worry all your young life what people are thinking about you and it isn’t until you are older that you realize they were never thinking about you at all! (That’s me paraphrasing) But this seems like she was always trying to please everyone but herself.
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The whole nightmare of losing a sense of oneself in the face of peers, dating, marriage, life, the loss of self, wonderful lines that pack a punch.
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Great
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