A. Anupama
Tissue and construction paper collaboration with my four-year-old daughter reveals that I sometimes need to do unrevisable artwork. Poetry involves a lot of revision and even rewriting, and that's been most of it for the past few weeks. But I also began teaching my first poetry workshop this week, revealing what I already knew about inspiration…
From the eyelashes of the village streets, blue flowers, whose name I don't know. I might make one up. A starling is building her nest on the dormer window above my desk---above my left shoulder when I'm sitting here. I just started reading The Last Usable Hour by Deborah Landau. Her untitled poems are wonderful---no…
Typesetting my poem taught me all about steadiness of hand and attention to alignments. What a lot of trouble I went to for the sake of words lined up just right! I attended the recent five-dayseminar for emerging writers at the Center for Book Arts in NYC. Such a pleasure to learn, but even more…
I'm listening to people talk in the library, and even though their voices are too low to make out the words, it's a little gravel in the background. Overcast today, just perfect for photographing the spring bouquets that no one gathers because we are so startled again to see flowers outside. Overcast is pretty good…
Sunrise, as reflected in the mansard roof's windows, is the most glorious part of these winter days. I don't want to finish reading the Divine Comedy--enjoying paradise! So I've set it aside and picked up Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, another journey that will take me a while.
A bridge as a frame, as a mirror, as a filter. Flowers often hijack my poems, which is why I loved this photo so much when I took it---a way to express more than I do in my poetic form of words organized in lines. This photo was taken from about one-third of the way…
Dreaming about summer. Every day is like this---a crossing made of stones, a river bounded by stones, and a couple of caves hewn in stones. Dante Alighieri was inspired in this gorge, and I've been reading the Divine Comedy, slowly and aloud, since visiting it last summer. Poetry offers this bridge every time.
Of course, light always follows that darkness, of frightening storms and power outages, of the end-of-daylight-savings-time, of the anxious elections. Sometimes we can make some right in the middle of it, of course. Tissue paper and wallpaper paste, molded on balloons, of course.
As though an echo of an echo of James Fenton's ear. Even when I'm not reading, I'm carrying around with me -- something to collect beauty in, so it can echo later.
I live here now, the place Edward Hopper grew up and painted in his realism. On the Friends of the Nyacks walking tour yesterday, we caught sight of it, the slight shift between the real thing and the painting---inspiration's mark. It's not in the photo, you'll have to imagine in the white sails...
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