Notes on Picasso

This poem I wrote in responce to Picasso's famous depiction of the bombing of Guernica. Unable to write only of destruction without putting it into a context, I paired the painting with another of Picasso's; the Blue Nude, a painting from his earlier, blue phase. The links made themselves clear to me, the contrast of the beautiful crouching woman of the Bluenude and the grotesque deformed crouchinh woman in Guernica. To my mind they were the same woman and the poem follows her through her relationship with Picasso, who ends up using her.

There are a great many references in the poem to Picasso's process of painting, for example the 'Ruby tear of blood' refers to the fact that originally Picasso painted a red tear on the cheek of the crouching woman in Guernica. But he painted over it, deciding that black and white was more striking.

For me, the message of the poem was the irony that scholars have spent hours trying to find meaning in the painting, while their efforts to save real lives are non-existant.