 | |  | |  | |  | |  |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
O'Keefe's Last Painting*
October Writer's Group at the Library
was a bit surprised to find Death,
a frequent auditor
who usually lingered under the clock,
this month managing to fill all the empty
chairs with various incarnations.
Though the Poets varied in specifics
of individual apprehension, all poems carried
carpe diems, dissolutions, and dry bones--
linguistic bell jars
through which intimations of mortality
could be semi-safely observed,
temporary containment of the inevitable--
poetry's papier-mâché life.
Beside me
Death sat with her knitting,
smiling gently, her bifocals reflecting the light,
needles softly clicking as lines came together,
a pattern of darkness
purled in soft white wool,
a total eclipse of the moon
reminiscent
of Georgia O'Keefe's last
painting "Black Rock with Blue III."
purple/black womb of stone
filling the center of the canvas.
Warm rather than cool, it invites fingers
to caress, explore its smooth expanse.
O' Keefe was old, her eyesight failing.
All those years of painting vaginal flowers,
and empty pelvic bones impregnated
with reflections of the sky had not
brought her any closer to understanding
than this enormous, impenetrable secret,
this heavy, implacable silence
against a robin's egg sky.
*Black Rock with Blue III, early 1970's
Thirteen Ways of Thinking About
a Georgia O'Keefe Painting*
On Wallace Stevens's Birthday**
Tuesday morning Tai Chi class,
I am Stone Woman,
body heavy as terrazzo floor.
Smudgy gray windows
high on the wall:
Evening all morning. October rain falls.
"Breathe from your pelvis,"
the instructor says.
Inner sight recalls O'Keefe's Pelvis IV,
misty moon mirrored in water,
encircled by creamy old pelvic bone.
A bone and the sea
are one.
A bone and the sea and the moon
are one.
Painted 1944, O'Keefe at 57,
was about my age,
juxtaposition, wet and dry, low and high.
No surprise. Menopausal Moon woman.
The moon and the sea
are one.
Two women, the moon and the sea
are one.
O'Keefe's changing perspective:
The center also recalls
a smooth, blue stone nested in bone,
worry stone to hold in the hand.
"Be water."
Stone begins to melt away,
Stone water woman.
The dry bone contains.
The cool, wet center remains.
O'Keefe's awareness transcends her death.
It is raining and it is going to rain.
"Reach to the heavens.
Embrace the earth."
Stone Water Moon Woman
My bare arms rise smoothly,
midsummer's suntan remaining,
moonlight luminescent on water,
a polishing of bone.
*Pelvis IV, 1944
**Oct. 2
Wabi-Sabi Woman
Wabi Sabi: Deep awareness of life experienced through
beautiful imperfection.
"There is a comic verse which tells of one ... who is so cold on a
winter night that she eats two bowls of noodles at 16 mon each,
thus prodigally spending the 24 mon, her standard price which
she got from her last client." Cecilia Whitford, Japanese Prints
Out of a perpetual twilight
economy Utamaro's* lovely Tsujigimi,
could be Lilith, Eve, or Pandora
but her name means "street corner whore,"
the lowest kind of illegal prostitute
who carries a straw mat over her arm
for entertaining clients al fresco
wherever she can find a nook,
a quilt of shadow, to wrap
its flimsy anonymity around her.
No hint of certain real world desperation;
she is pillowbook playmate—sensual,
slightly disheveled, headscarf edge
held between perfect pink lips
as she reaches in her belt for her purse.
An also ran in the holy trinity
of virgin, mother and crone, she is
the stuff of demeaning jokes and wet dreams:
Annie Fannie, Mattress-back, Backseat Bimbo,
the imperfect wabi-sabi woman, making
the best of the floating world's smallest,
most broken boat, hoping for a little ease
while tossed on poverty's hopeless sea;
but doing so she transcends, becoming
the every woman all women carry inside.
* Utamaro Kitagawa 1750-1806
October Writer's Group at the Library
was a bit surprised to find Death,
a frequent auditor
who usually lingered under the clock,
this month managing to fill all the empty
chairs with various incarnations.
Though the Poets varied in specifics
of individual apprehension, all poems carried
carpe diems, dissolutions, and dry bones--
linguistic bell jars
through which intimations of mortality
could be semi-safely observed,
temporary containment of the inevitable--
poetry's papier-mâché life.
Beside me
Death sat with her knitting,
smiling gently, her bifocals reflecting the light,
needles softly clicking as lines came together,
a pattern of darkness
purled in soft white wool,
a total eclipse of the moon
reminiscent
of Georgia O'Keefe's last
painting "Black Rock with Blue III."
purple/black womb of stone
filling the center of the canvas.
Warm rather than cool, it invites fingers
to caress, explore its smooth expanse.
O' Keefe was old, her eyesight failing.
All those years of painting vaginal flowers,
and empty pelvic bones impregnated
with reflections of the sky had not
brought her any closer to understanding
than this enormous, impenetrable secret,
this heavy, implacable silence
against a robin's egg sky.
*Black Rock with Blue III, early 1970's
Thirteen Ways of Thinking About
a Georgia O'Keefe Painting*
On Wallace Stevens's Birthday**
Tuesday morning Tai Chi class,
I am Stone Woman,
body heavy as terrazzo floor.
Smudgy gray windows
high on the wall:
Evening all morning. October rain falls.
"Breathe from your pelvis,"
the instructor says.
Inner sight recalls O'Keefe's Pelvis IV,
misty moon mirrored in water,
encircled by creamy old pelvic bone.
A bone and the sea
are one.
A bone and the sea and the moon
are one.
Painted 1944, O'Keefe at 57,
was about my age,
juxtaposition, wet and dry, low and high.
No surprise. Menopausal Moon woman.
The moon and the sea
are one.
Two women, the moon and the sea
are one.
O'Keefe's changing perspective:
The center also recalls
a smooth, blue stone nested in bone,
worry stone to hold in the hand.
"Be water."
Stone begins to melt away,
Stone water woman.
The dry bone contains.
The cool, wet center remains.
O'Keefe's awareness transcends her death.
It is raining and it is going to rain.
"Reach to the heavens.
Embrace the earth."
Stone Water Moon Woman
My bare arms rise smoothly,
midsummer's suntan remaining,
moonlight luminescent on water,
a polishing of bone.
*Pelvis IV, 1944
**Oct. 2
Wabi-Sabi Woman
Wabi Sabi: Deep awareness of life experienced through
beautiful imperfection.
"There is a comic verse which tells of one ... who is so cold on a
winter night that she eats two bowls of noodles at 16 mon each,
thus prodigally spending the 24 mon, her standard price which
she got from her last client." Cecilia Whitford, Japanese Prints
Out of a perpetual twilight
economy Utamaro's* lovely Tsujigimi,
could be Lilith, Eve, or Pandora
but her name means "street corner whore,"
the lowest kind of illegal prostitute
who carries a straw mat over her arm
for entertaining clients al fresco
wherever she can find a nook,
a quilt of shadow, to wrap
its flimsy anonymity around her.
No hint of certain real world desperation;
she is pillowbook playmate—sensual,
slightly disheveled, headscarf edge
held between perfect pink lips
as she reaches in her belt for her purse.
An also ran in the holy trinity
of virgin, mother and crone, she is
the stuff of demeaning jokes and wet dreams:
Annie Fannie, Mattress-back, Backseat Bimbo,
the imperfect wabi-sabi woman, making
the best of the floating world's smallest,
most broken boat, hoping for a little ease
while tossed on poverty's hopeless sea;
but doing so she transcends, becoming
the every woman all women carry inside.
* Utamaro Kitagawa 1750-1806
Sandra J. Lindow lives on a hilltop in
Menomonie, Wisconsin, where she
plants perennials and runs outside
barefoot in 18 degree weather to
keep a lawn service from blowing
away her leaf mulch. She has five
published chapbooks of poetry.
Presently she is teaching part-time at
the University of Wisconsin-Stout
and working as a free lance editor.
Her webpage is
www.wfop.org/poets/lindowsa.html.
Menomonie, Wisconsin, where she
plants perennials and runs outside
barefoot in 18 degree weather to
keep a lawn service from blowing
away her leaf mulch. She has five
published chapbooks of poetry.
Presently she is teaching part-time at
the University of Wisconsin-Stout
and working as a free lance editor.
Her webpage is
www.wfop.org/poets/lindowsa.html.
Sandra J. Lindow