Self Portrait with Clouds

I’d heard the voice but never seen its owner,
loved the songs but never seen her face,
but then I found her self-portrait on a cover
with the words; inside the music and her voice.

It was the first time I’d ever seen a portrait
or even a painting on a record sleeve;
now there was a blonde woman’s blue-eyed gaze –
I stared at Joni staring back at me.

Behind her a bank of yellow and orange clouds,
a river flowing to a castle on a hill,
a prairie lily in her fingers, bright red and proud,
and closed lips full of harmonic overspill.

Kim M. Russell, 8th October 2024

Image found on Wikipedia

This Tuesday Mish is our Poetics host at the dVerse Poets Pub, with some slightly unusual ekphrastic inspiration from album cover art.

Mish tells us that she was recently reminiscing about the first LPs she purchased. She says that “the music was always the main event, but often the album covers themselves left permanent imprints… the covers were an extension of the artist’s offering, a visual bonus, so to speak… Sometimes the artwork felt like a secret code for me to crack, to gain a deeper understanding of the music.”

She reminds us of some of the more iconic covers such as Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, 1973 (design by Storm Thorgerson), the Beatles, ‘Abbey Road’, 1969 (design by John Kosh) and Elton John’s ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’, 1973 (design by Ian Beck).

The challenge is to choose an album cover from one of the sources she has given, or from our own record collection, and let it inspire a poem with no specific form.

38 thoughts on “Self Portrait with Clouds”

  2. ..and closed lips full of harmonic overspill …. perfect words here. The self-portrait of the artist brimming with her creativity…the castle in the background….the words, melodies, lyrics behind those closed lips.

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  3. Wonderful, Kim. I think choosing an album featuring the actual artist is challenging, and I love how you blended the passion for her music with the image, bringing it all together before we viewed the cover. Love the title as well.

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    1. Ok, again..sorry about the previous moaning!

      I stared at Joni staring back at me. That is exactly it—–the essence…such a soothing verse Kim, in classical style, rolling so nicely when one reads. I was so impressed with the detail, the type of flower she holds in her hand. That kind of research is so impressive, though knowing of your connection to nature I would not be surprised if you were able to recognise theflower by sight. I loved this verse, and really think this is one of the very best Dverse nights, yours the 3rd I read in 3 superb poems, really quite stunning by any measure..thank you

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      1. Thank you so much, Ain. I imagine the WIFi is stop and go where you are, and I am so grateful that you find the time to not only write a poem to link up, but also read and comment on mine and other poet’s work.

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  6. There’s something precious about album covers, the whole creative process we could hold in our hands and explore and find our own meanings. I love how you have given those feelings life in this poem, it is just lovely to read. A self portrait with clouds seems so apt for Joni. I do love her songs.

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    1. Thank you, Dianne. All our vinyl is packed away in boxes – there’s so much of it – but we do have hundreds of CDs, mostly David’s metal collection. We rarely play them now as everything is online I still love looking at album covers,

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  10. Seeing that cover I knew immediately it was Joni, faithful to the magic of her voice, open chords and lyrics: What stared back there with “closed lips full of harmonic overspill.” An immensity. So well rendered here Kim. And the way she evolved from album to album, how it still gives me hope for poetry.

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  13. An album cover had so much more space to be a piece of art than a puny CD and I doubt the art of the cover would have developed in the same way if size had been the other way around first – great choice and great poem, Kim…

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