Digging for Poems

Our intrepid pansies talk  prompts--but first up it's a scandal of grave proportions.

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Read this fascinating consideration of Elizabeth Siddal in Lucinda Hawksley's "The Tragedy of Art's Greatest Supermodel" for the BBC. And you can view some of Lizzie Siddal's paintings/drawings here: https://lizziesiddal.com/portal/lizzies-art/

 A bit more about Sidda: Shel became an artist in her own right and was the only woman to exhibit at an 1857 Pre-Raphaelite exhibition—the first exhibition of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood—which took place in London and was an alternative to the restrictive Royal Academy summer exhibition. A London newspaper review of the exhibition mentioned Siddal by name: “Her drawings display an admiring adoption of all the most startling peculiarities of Mr. Rossetti’s style, but they have nevertheless qualities which entitle them to high praise.” The reviewer also expressed admiration for the “high, pure, and independent feeling” of Siddal’s rendering of human faces in her drawings. Her painting, Clerk Saunders, was purchased by an American collector in attendance. Significant collections of her artworks can be found at Wightwick Manor and the Ashmolean.

Read Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" (the title poem of her first published book) here.  If you're interested in learning a bit more about Christina Rossetti's drawings and verse, watch this short and fabulous video exhibition. 

Here's the article Aaron references which ranks flavored lube. You're welcome.

Learn more about Dante Gabriel Rossetti's paintings here (Tate). Read his poem "Jenny" (one of the poems he buried with Siddal).