Poetry Friday - Pinkish

 

          It's Poetry Friday! Thanks, Molly Hogan HERE at her blog, Nix The Comfort Zone for hosting. She's sharing her favorite images of nature in special haiku. 

           While we all know some of the history of 'pink' in our lives, particularly here in America, the phenomenon has rather amazed me this summer, primarily because of Barbie, the movie, a long history capped this summer with an approach that is a bit different than the pink found only on the "toys for girls" aisles. Here's a NY Times article that I'm gifting. Hope it works for all of you. In part, Vanessa Friedman writes: "“Pink is the most controversial color in fashion history,” said Valerie Steele, the director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology and author of “Pink: the History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Color.” “It has so many contradictory meanings. It has fully entered our bloodstream like a virus, and now different variants keep emerging.”

       “Barbie” seemed to herald the third leg of historical troika."

         I found numerous others when researching "Barbiecore", even one from Popular Science, where Jocelyn Solis-Moreira shares, "We can attribute the popularization of pink to one of King Louis XV’s most famous mistresses. Madame de Pompadour was the closest thing 18th-century French society had to a fashion influencer. Her fondness for pink in the arts shaped the culture and taste of people across Europe. “It became all the rage, and at the time it was gender neutral, so everybody was wearing pink,” says Naomi Greyser, an associate professor of gender, women’s, and sexuality studies at the University of Iowa." this and more!"

       No matter, because I turned to an old favorite book of poems for children, Hailstones and Halibut Bones, poems about colors by Mary O'Neil, illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. I remembered that Mary had included a poem about pink, too. Wonder if today she would mention "Barbiecore"?

What is Pink? By Mary O’Neil

Pink is the color of a rose.
They come in other colors
but everyone knows
pink is the mother-color of a rose.
Pink is a new baby,
the inside of a shell..
Pink is a cooked shrimp
and a Canterbury bell.
Pink is peachbloom,
gauzy… frail
the wind’s exquisite wedding veil.
Pink is a bonbon,
pink is a blush,
some Easter bunnies
are pink plush.
If you stand in an orchard
In the middle of Spring
and you don’t make a sound
you can hear pink sing,
a darling, whispery song of a thing.
Pink is the beautiful little sister
of red my teacher said,
and a ribbon girls tie
round their head.
Pink is the sash
with the lovely fold
you’ll remember
when you’re old.
Pink is the flower on a lady’s hat
that nods and bows this way and that.

         Had enough PINK? Or, do you have a favorite "pink" memory? Happy Poetry Friday!