Poetry in the library, part II

Here is the draft of my poem. The Alexander Pope poem used for inspiration provided the structure of a ten syllable line and the four-part epistle (There are more parts in his, but our anthology contains only four.) O'Keeffe, for the first part of her artistic life, was controlled by her husband's lens. Alfred Stieglitz was a photographer who showed an exhibit of her which portrayed her as a sexual object. After that, her work was always seen though the freudian lens of her sexuality. Her shapes were not articulations of her thought and her experience, but of her sexual desires and nature. She deliberately chose to make her style more concrete and recognizable in the wake of early criticism, hence the flowers she has remained known for (though I don't know why, they seem the least interesting of her work by far).

The last two parts of the poem take inspiration from less formal (unrhymed) poets. The first (part 3) is Jose Antonio Rodriguez, who wrote a poem called "La Migra" in a recent issue of the New Yorker, which also featured a ten-syllable, unrhymed line.

The fourth part takes as inspiration a poem, also published in the New Yorker, by Ilyse Kusnetz, who went to school in New Mexico, as it turns out, and died in 2016. Her poem featured two line stanzas and liberal use of enjambment, when a phrase continues from one line into the next.

The epigraph is from a book of Georgia O'Keeffe work that I pulled off the shelf here in the library. Many pieces are accompanied by her reflections on the piece. I include below the photo that this comment, the epigraph, accompanies. Much of the last section of the poem is made up of fragments from these comments she made on her work.

Black and White, 1930

Poem title: "Paper Airplane"

This was a message to a friend - if he saw it he didn’t know it was to him and wouldn’t have known what it said. And neither did I. - Georgia O’Keeffe

Awake, my Alfred, and yawn, breath deep,

For now, several minutes, you shall not speak.

Let us (since there is more, we’ll see,

Than our lone love, and knowledge tree)

Consider now how we, like stars,

Are ‘ranged in certain, starry scars,

That tell of pain, but throb no more,

Though sometimes redden, and grow sore.

Let’s turn the scope t’ward heaven cast,

Perceive the relation in which we’re cast,

For like a man, knowing not the sky,

Who knows only his lids, firm round his eye,

And the wonders of night he does deny,

Never having dwelt in the world of lights,

Where branches grow stark, and soil delights

In the absence of sun, which yes has its place,

But for its brightness is blinded to the wonders of space;

You are this man, this sun, this sleeper,

But you are also, allelujah, alas, my keeper.

Therefore awake, yawn now, then prepare,

And the nature of our constellation I’ll share.

1. Say first, of women’s nature, what know you?

Save what you feel yourself, which may be true,

Of curves, and scoops, of perk, of swerves and droops,

Coiling piles, mounting hues, strange, toxic loops.

You know of warmth, and give, defeated breath,

Wings collapse in upon self, as in death;

But of this frame, its nice dependencies,

Its tilt, which compels as do chain and key,

Have your two men’s eyes, through your framing lens,

Looked past? considered other means, and ends?

2. Presumptuous man! whom fame has framed and lamed,

Who learned all life would be named, framed and tamed.

Your photos were gifts, wrapped and giv’n with care

But not every present was made to share.

Once given, unwrapped, the effect unfurls

On minds that rotate and tilt sundry girls;

And I, paper doll, am dressed, folded, curled,

My dimension flat, a glossy half world.

The question you never wrangled, like me,

Is only this, if woman, without man, can be?

3. What is the artist, after all, but a

Person who makes do with limited means,

Who accepts the frame, and the gritty paint

As the gifts of inventors inspired by

Love, like you were, and I am still, sweetheart.

Here, sky knows no frame, and houses blend in.

Rocks dare my small brush, and I suit up quick,

As the Eternal Cause, inverts your laws.

4.

The masters say -- to yield best results,

paint portraits, and I suppose

they meant of people, but I tried the alfalfa field,

much larger and like a green saucer

which I ran past in a hurry, the path lined

with flowers, from summits of bright dark larkspur.

They immediately went into a painting, and then

another that looked so real to me I remember hesitating

to show them. But they have passed into the world

as abstractions - no one seeing what they are.