spotlight: Wheatfield with Reaper

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Re: Wheatfield with Reaper

Wheatfield with Reaper is a poignant reflection on will, work, mortality and the divine. Drawing from Van Gogh’s letters, poet David Capps lets Van Gogh’s own language reverberate through expertly crafted centos, revealing the emotional complexity and spiritual turmoil that frame the Post-Impressionist’s works.

Excerpt from Wheatfield with Reaper

Wheatfield with Reaper

There is nothing sad in this death,
it is all yellow,
except a violet line of hills,
pale fair yellow. 

It goes its way in broad daylight with a sun flooding everything 
with a light of pure gold. What I have sought 

is the almost smiling, plowing on
my canvases as they do 
on their fields, 

country faces browned by fresh air, burned by the sun. I saw it 
like this

from between the iron bars of a cell. 
Humanity 
might be the wheat 
he is reaping.