Alas, the great cornucopia of sports! We have arrived upon the Valhalla of our yearnings.
Paris, France....the city of love.... the city of light.... the fashion capital. Now the sight of the historic 2024 Olympics.
I wandered, body and mind, through a journey of shifting perspective. This special concluding edition carries four entries that describe the distortion of reality into a daydream of wonders.
Accompany me once more my auspicious and endeared audience as we recount my final days of the project.
Poem Explanation:
Paris affectionately known as “the city of love//the city of light” was a town beyond belief. The sights, the culture, and the beauty were all stunning.
I felt a weight lift from my shoulders as I ascended the stairs from the metro. Hence the line “Where even rocks grow wings//For burdens take flight.”
I noticed locks latched to a gate on a bridge near the Eiffel tower as we walked. I assumed them to be an extension of the practice of couples taking a lock and throwing the key into the river as a sign of their everlasting love.
The different countries flooded the scene on televisions during the opening ceremonies. I found it quaint to utilize a variation of this phrase as the name of the river, the Seine, they sailed upon was a near homophone of the final word.
The succeeding line again hearkened to the Greek god Nike whose likeness adorned many oof the previous gold medals.
The Eiffel tower was the location for the beach volleyball stadium. Our group arrived early in the morning on our first day to watch the games. I relate the tower to LSU’s staple Memorial Tower as a tribute to our group’s convergence upon Paris.
The next line continues on to relate the Eiffel tower to Thanos. I utilized this symbolism due to a fact learned about the colors while at the Olympics Museum. Each of the colors for the five rings were chosen so that each country around the world could recognize one of their flag’s colors in the official logo. This relates to the power stones in marvel as each of the stones are taken from the far reaches of the universe and combined together into Thanos’s infinity gauntlet.
I personified the tower with the idea of hands as the entire world converged to Paris for the games. This line melded this fact with the adage from a Christian song “he has the whole world in his hands.”
This personification goes further with the attribution of feet. This was done due to the tower seeming to stand tall above us.
Finally, “Tip to toe Shines bright//the moon on earth in the night” refers to the glowing light show of the Eiffel tower that occurred for two minutes every hour during the nights of the Olympics.
Poem Explanation:
I’ve come to a great admiration for Louis XIV. His combination of fashion, legacy, aesthetic taste and attention to detail have drawn me deep.
Our group visited Versailles and I often found myself wondering: “what if I had the chance to model a place this gallant?” What would I change.
The first two lines speak to my excessive nature. My mind ran rampant. The second two are an acknowledgement of Louis XIV’s similar taste. The views of the garden were simply spectacular.
“They resonate with me to degrees unseen’t//New IV fashion steppin' like Louis XIV” is a testament to my thoughts as for a time I felt myself becoming the King of France.
I marveled at the solid gold gates to the palace. Dean Bissell noted the sheer extravagance to acquire so much pure gold to adorn the outskirts of the construction.
It was quite easy to envision myself hosting beautiful balls as our tour guide discussed Louis XIV doing. In part due to my affinity for joyous gatherings, however, I had also ran into a brother of my fraternity, Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc., while within the garden.
It was a chance encounter with Jabari Butler, recent graduate student at LSU. We posed in front of the fountain and spent time walking and talking with his girlfriend who was a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. Only Versailles could make Coleman Love any more beautiful and elegant.
Poem Explanation:
The Musee d’Orsay was host to various exhibitions of artistic mastery. However, it was a particular conversation with Collin, a fellow student of the project, that truly resonated with me.
I discovered Collin gazing in an artistic stupor at a wall of paintings. He was looking at the work of Odilon Redon, his favorite artist. I wrote this poem as a reflection upon our conversation.
Collin explained to me that he loved Redon’s work over everything. He cited the fact that he could almost feel the picture rather than simply seeing it.
Redon’s paintings to Collin were seen as paintings of how it felt to look at a certain scene rather than simply the scene itself. This was a unique form of abstract realism that was highly enticing.
The first four lines reflect these sentiments.
“A kaleidoscope//While beautiful and broad //Oversteps expansion//And So too finds it fraud” is a reflection upon Redon’s use of color. Collin explained that Redon sought to utilize the minimal amount of colors necessary. This worked to not overwhelm the viewer. Instead the viewer could look more deeply at the intricate brush strokes.
These slight disparities of paint shadings created beautiful images as you took in the piece. The next four lines, “Dashes of daisy//Rushes of roses//Splotch sputtered mountains//A clumped cloud dosage,” are references to different images created through this tactic in pieces at the Musee d’Orsay.
The idea of “The world redone by Redon” is awe inspiring as his art reshapes the world. It utilizes “Abstract spaces of being” to pull the reader into the world of Redon’s mind through the guise of reality.
Poem Explanation:
As our trip came to a close. A small section of our group discussed the impending weights of expectations as well as our expectations for raising a family.
Ben, a member of the project and designer of the website, alluded to a brilliant point that many parents oft try too hard to live through their children. They get woven too deeply into what “they” would have wanted as a child, that they may miss or overlook what their child actually wants for themselves.
I then remarked the starting lines in response “Be the wind not their wings//Be the accompaniment of music//Not every note one sings.” Cam, Aniya, Te’yannah and Hayli claimed I was in my “elite poetry bag.” They insisted that I should write deeper upon the topic.
Freedom of choice is one of the greatest gifts given by sentience. However, true sentience can be delayed through helicopter parenting. This led me to see freedom as the guide to having “Sovereign of soul and Maintenance of mind.”
I sought to mirror the sentiments of “A Dream Deferred” by notable Omega man, Langston Hughes, in the following two lines “A vision rescripted//Is a dream un-dreamt.”
I compared the situation of adults living through their children to “Pseudo-reincarnation” because genetically children are pieces of both their parents. However, this is “pseudo” as the children are inevitably different carnations of an entity.
This is followed with the acknowledgement that this can breed contempt. When the leash of life is too taunt, sometimes the disdain is transferred to the one who holds the leash rather than the leash itself.
I finish out the poem by reiterating the point that the children are their own separate beings with their own desires.
