Greatest Hits Gallery--Charis T.

How could I not enjoy poems about an American painter of place? Albert Bierstadt and his landscapes, especially several paintings of the Rocky Mountains, formed the heart of Charis T.'s series of poems in her portfolio. After our group critique session, Charis' bringing together of the idealized place as represented in paintings with its ineveitable change, her language play on terms like "plain" and "lines" and the wistful sense of loss from these landscape poems stuck with me the rest of the day and on my drive home. Here's her meditation on one of Bierstadt's Rocky Mountain paintings, Lander's Peak.



Grassy Graves

Grand lines empower plains,
Swinging across the landscape.
And the only plain thing
That Bierstadt painted
Was the two-hued sky.
But even that is pierced with gold.
Gold pierces the waterfall too.
And the rocks.
Even the horses
Get a glimmer, a ray.

There’s talk of industry
And how every tree
May no longer stand watch
Over the rocky mountains.
Bierstadt will save them—
At least he’ll try
With each of his seamless strokes
Of bright, precise color
Contained on a canvas.
Conserving via paint.

Let’s reminisce and romance
The idea of plains under
A two-hued sky
And sun-absorbing water
And guardian trees
In bright shining armor
Watching over yellow rocks,

While the trees die
And steel survives,
As railroad tracks
Run over and
Cover grassy graves.

And the last few of these DJPH poems for now

Poem for David Hooker—Rachel A.

You have to make your inspiration up;
my art's a job, like any other craft.
Collage-like sculpture, simple lovely cup,
I shape them both, draft after thumb-worn draft,
from clay bricks, in the place of pen and book.
Back in my undergrad days I'd have laughed
to see the way my work would one day look:
wake early, feed the children, sit and stare
at things for half an hour. I'd have took
offense if you'd described my present hair,
my quiet clothes. smudged now with dust, not ink.
Today I'll shave a centimeter there,
here dab a touch of blue. Might do, I think.
Poetry stands just on pottery's brink—
one claw held back, one cross taken back up.


In His Studio--Laura M.

He has a smallish set of wings—
envisioned in a plaster mold—
which don’t belong to anything.
No sinew’d shoulders, nothing—
an absence
of wings.

Is there in mold-land, hid somewhere,
a waiting plaster angel? Will
he find it, claying spare to spare—
a space of wings—raw, cased-in air—
the absence—
of angel?


One Thousand Pounds of Clay—Charis T.

A line is drawn,
Collage created, paint painted
Before the one-thousand pounds
Of clay hits
The concrete floor
Or table.

Carton blue,
And red hues
Eyes of a dog,
A preying mantis
Mantled on the table.

The gray clay
Now portrays
A sarcastic smile
A solemn cry
And the KKK’s
Pinkish eyes

Chaos weaved
In and out
The leg’s about
A foot long
And bends on an arm,
A hand holding a gun.




On Visiting David Hooker’s Studio--Marjorie H.

forget the wheel throwing
– not the pot but –
itself out the window.
process is slow and nothing
like Mr. Rogers concept
– of the art of creating art –
we learned. Instead it is full
of sitting and staring at
– but not sleeping on –
a Britney Spears pillow
and Jesus the son of the Virgin
combine into Britney
– not Madonna –
like a virgin and Jesus her son.