Featured Artwork: The Love Leaf

This homemade "booklet" Woodward made for friend Helen Ives was part of a collection of papers, photographs and other items given to the Smithsonian Museum, and is found in their collection. It is dated June 13, 1907, just 9 months after his tragic accident that left him paralysed from the chest down and just 7 months after leaving the hospital. In it, he included a sketch he had drawn dated 1903, and self-styled calligraphy in his own hand and select verses from Robert Browning's poem Pauline. To the staff of the website, it appears unfinished given not all the work is colored in, unless that was a stylistic choice made by Woodward.

Full image of front cover ink sketch

Full image of inside jacket with
self-styled calligraphy

Full image of stetch drawing and poem

Also, since it was found still in his personal papers suggest it was never sent to Helen. We do not know who Helen was to Woodward. At the very least she was a friend, it could be she was more to him than that. However, this booklet, bound by a leather strap (seen in these images) is a significant insight to Woodward's life just after it changed so dramatically. He did what he could through his creative nature as a means of coping emotionally with his new circumstances. He would spend another 3 years recovering and finding his strength before he would head east to attend the Boston School of Fine Arts for a short time and then land in Shelburne Falls at the home of his Uncle Burt and Aunt Tella.

The poem itself draws a vivid image of Woodward's love of nature - its woods... mountains...ponds. He writes of "new retreat" and describes what sounds like a santuary of safety and comfort. His description of the woods and still waters is reminiscent of his earliest oil paintings of his professional career. The following is a full transcription of the poem:

pent-up energy... The narrator's poetic is in an unstable relationship with the poem that contains him: it tries intermittently to suggest the kind of poem he cannot manage, maybe (secretly) to even be it.That opens up an experimental space that later triumphs would exclude."

5 Triangle Trapeziod Symbol from back cover
of The Love Leaf

The analysis Michael Peverett makes leads us to consider the similar emotional state of Woodward at this time. We are not qualified to make such inferences, however, Woodward DID choose the verses from Pauline that were relevant to him. We find it quite auspicious that the verses he chose figuratively describe what would become a prominent theme in his earliest professional work. Peverett's remark, "there is no concreteness of situation, hardly any human association, and a turmoil of inner development that looks like it could cycle round and round for ever," could be said of Woodward as well.

This symbol of five triangles, 2 pointing down
and 3 up, was also found in a small book of poetry
RSW wrote 9 months after his tragic accident.

Another interesting item from this booklet is a symbol of 5 triangles in the shape of a trapezoid found on the back cover. We do not know the significance of the symbol used by Woodward but it was also used in To Tell Mother I love Her, another item found in the Smithsonian Museum, collection. Triangles often represent a "profusion" of thoughts and emotions because depending on the frame of reference, they could be pointing in any of three directions. However, in the context to which Woodward arranged the triangles suggest an exchange of conscious energy with a subconscious energy rising from his depths.