Some nice comments about one of my recent poems by my friends Barbara and Peace Sanchez prompted me to glance through my file of my own poetry yesterday. (Before I go on, a thanks to Sky, Peace's sister and the mom of two of the world's most adorable little girls, for her great email as well.)
Here's a piece from February 2009, written during a period when I was intensely decluttering my arts and crafts supplies. It was really fun to write a big miscellaneous overabundant poem about overabundance and a visually shaped poem about visual art supplies, as well as to work the line lengths as they sprawl out and then constrict again. The turn toward ruefulness of the final line happpened unexpectedly, yet felt right. There's something so cathartic about making art from experiences fraught with frustration, and also about making a little fun of oneself. Might just be coincidence, but shortly after the poem was finished the studio decluttering process seemed magically to take hold. I've had absolutely no time to bead or collage of late, but all the little bits and pieces for those activities sleep peacefully awaiting their wake-up call, and fit perfectly into the limited space I was willing to devote to them. Ah, the power of the written word!
STUFF
Stuff everywhere:
no longer stuffed
anywhere, burst of bright sweets from a reft pinanta,
sparks from a Roman candle, bugs scurrying
wild in a sudden glare: paper and cord,
beads and brushes, sketchbooks
and inks,
evicted
from albums, armoires,
bags, baskets, bins, closets,
cupboards, drawers, folders, tubs, totes
(all, mind you, gorgeously labeled, color-coded, styled)
onto counters, floors, tables, sofa, bed; no surface, no plane,
no mesa for that matter, would seem wide
enough to hold this vivid
clutter; this is a
diaspora
of sorts,
minor and mostly
benign but an uprooting
nonetheless, a material nation expelled
from its longtime homelands by a (minor and mostly)
benign) despot queen beset by mental coup, creative
apoplexy, itchy feet, bottle neck, hot flash, hot
need: as antic as her own court jester,
as possessed as Ahab by
his dream;
her dream,
just as madly pure
and maybe as elusive, glimpsed on far
over the flotsam, jetsam, chop: space to make
art, not just own art supplies; time to play; room to move
and remove; the clear decks, fresh start, clean slate
that she has rarely seen.
"Stuff" poem © Suzanne Fox 2009. Please do not reproduce without permission.
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