Monday, January 31, 2011

Moon Flower and a little Tess Gallagher

Here is another art quilt - I have two yoga quilts and hope to do one more for a nice three in a row for the show. This one is the Moon Flower pose - it goes with Sunflower pose and both are supposed to be very good for banishing depression as well as good for warming up. The background is a rambling, funky Spokane out the 4th floor huge windows. It's not exact but more what I think I'm seeing upside down... twisted and in another 'zone'. Think I might like it better than the 'real' view. :) I'm about to write all over this one...

I thought I'd do something different and share some of my favorite things with you this year. One of my favorite things I always come back to is poetry. I used to write tons of it and at one time was going to major in creative writing with poetry emphasis... but other things went on and I went down many paths before choosing again. Anyway, enjoy!
Oh, this book of poems is one of my all time favorites. She came to my college in her hometown of Port Angeles, WA right before this one was being published. She read a few poems and I was gone. Absolutely besotted with her reading and style of writing. Her husband had recently passed away - Raymond Carver - and there are a lot of grief-riddled pieces in this one but still, the beauty of her work sometimes overwhelms me. Here are a few samples:
I Stop Writing The Poem
to fold the clothes. No matter who lives or who dies, I'm still a woman.
I'll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt
together. Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I'll get back
to the poem. I'll get back to being
a woman. But for now
there's a shirt, a giant shirt
in my hands, and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it's done.
Trace, In Unison
Terrible, the rain. All night, rain
that I love. So the weight of his leg
falls again like a huge tender wing
across my hipbone. Its continuing - the rain,
as he does not. Except as that caress
most inhabited. Ellipsis of
eucalyptus. His arms, his beautiful
careless breathing. Inscription
contralto where his lips graze
the bow of my neck. Muslin half-light.
Musk of kerosene in the hall, fixative
to ceaselessly this rain, in which
there is nothing to do but be happy, be
free, as if someone sadly accused
came in with their coat soaked through
and said, "But I only wanted
to weep and love," and we rolled toward
the voice like one body and said
with our eyes closed, "Then weep, then
love." Buds of jasmine threaded through
her hair so they opened after dark,
brightening the room. that morning
rain as it would fall, still
falling, and where we had lain,
an arctic light steady
in the mind's releasing.
~Tess Gallagher, 1992

2 comments:

tangled sky studio said...

just lovely brenda...thanks for sharing this today.

artslice said...

Hi Beth,
You're welcome... glad you liked it.