Words & Visuals

Words, powerful by themselves, may vie with visuals for emotional impact. Looking at Picasso’s Guernica —his response to the devastation brought on by the bombing of Guernica demands a response. He said of that painting and of all paintings, "... when it is finished, it goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it."

I first viewed Guernica at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. The tormented images, the bellowing of the animals— the indictment of war— screams beyond the canvas.

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Randall Jarrell's "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner", first published in 1945, portrays a visceral visual of war—in six lines.

Powerful verbs take a young man from his childhood to "hunching" in the belly of the plane—in the ball turret. It is there, miles above the earth, that attacking planes alter whatever dreams he had for his life. The last line: "When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose." Jarrell didn't need more lines or more words to create the enormity of loss.

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Volunteers spent seven hours planting 20,000 small American flags on the Boston Common; each one a visual reminder honoring a Massachusetts " native killed in the line of duty from World War I to the present day."

A small clip on the evening news of a man running to the place where the flags fluttered in the breeze— he carried a pair of combat boots and fatigues. The reporter slowed him for a moment and asked where he was going.

Almost without stopping, he replied in a voice that still retained the accent of his birth country,” They are honoring my son and I want to put these on the hill."

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We wait for the time when—

" .... they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."

Micah 4:3