Poet Lyn Lifshin on Georgia O'keeffe, Ansel Adams, Romare Beardan

Lyn Lifshin has written many books, including most recently For the Roses: Poems Inspired by Joni Mitchell (2012, March Street Press), and edited four anthologies of women writers. Her poems have appeared in most US poetry and literary magazines and in major anthologies of recent women's writing. She has read at Dartmouth and Skidmore colleges, Cornell University, the Shakespeare Library, Whitney Museum, and Huntington Library, among others. Lifshin has been Poet in Residence at the University of Rochester, Antioch, and Colorado Mountain College. Winner of numerous awards including the Jack Kerouac Award for her book Kiss The Skin Off, Lifshin is the subject of the documentary film Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass. See her website at lynlifshin.com.

GEORGIA O’KEEFFE’S BLACK HILLS WITH CEDAR

 

Black Hills with Cedar, 1941

rose lichen

   gamble oak

       globe mallow

  bent in rain

    blue lupine

         juniper mistletoe

  onyx hills rose shadows

   these rocks

             pulled from each other

     two million years ago

       

wrenched like a woman

   whose child is grabbed

         on a cattle car

               smashed into stone

   her eyes, streaked

        like sky over the black hills

              a Monday, all sipapu,

                   a spirit entrance

                       into the underworld

Aspens, Northern New Mexico, 1955

ASPENS, NORTHERN NEW MEXICO, 1955

               Ansel Adams

looking for water and trees

        they left the pueblo

               moved past  the canyon

                   found a creek that

          flowed all year   they

            honey combed the cliffs

                Earth soft enough

                         so a child cold

                             dig with his fingers

                                   Aspen petals like snow

                    they wove cotton   the

                sun on their faces

                         glazed this clay

   until something with a

               huge mouth

                       moved into their houses   

MOONRISE, HERNADEZ, NEW MEXICO, 1944

Ansel Adams

waiting for rain, for

Moonrise, Hernanadez
New Mexico, 1944

wind to blow the leaves

white, the dust from

adobe, from graves

men wait in front

of their houses

twist leather and

sage brush

chili peppers dry

even at night,

crosses gleam

the men dream of cool

moist places

women soothe babies

in a wind of pinyon

and Joshua Tree

remember stories of

a great grandmother

who walked naked thru

the corn to make it

grow, the moon’s

lips on her belly,

hair

The Card Players, 1982

CARD PLAYERS

Romare Beardan

striped awnings

you crank back

to let in the stars

in pitch black,

frogs and cicadas

crickets, the low

whine of bats. Roses

drip. Floorboards

the paint peels

on creak as uncles

slap down cards.

Citronella. Ice

tea clinks in

tall glasses.

Calico dog

sniffing under the

table cloth. A

train in darkness.

Straw unravels so

slowly you

can’t hear

In a Green Shade, 1984

IN A GREEN SHADE

Romare Beardan

this morning the pond

looks like green marble.

Rose and charcoal dissolving

to dove, to guava, rouge.

Only dream fish pushing

holes in the glass, so

unlike the pond, deep in

trees, almost camouflaged.

In the shade of dragon

flies, startling as coming

upon your reflection in a

mirror, just there under

trees and the wooden bar and

driftwood benches blackly

jade with pines dripping

into it, shadows close to

my hair, What I didn’t have

blinded me so I hardly saw

the small birds, blue,

pulling out of moss and

leaves as if reaching into

the dark for their color 

SUNSET LIMITED

Romare Beardan

“The artist has to be something like a whale, swimming with his mouth open to everything until he has what he needs”

Sunset Limited, 1975

Hot and musky, the sun,

a bowl of red, blazes on

mahogany skin. 

A woman opens her body

to the child who swims in

her arms, and smells petals

in the field opening.

The day is that whale, full

of chicken and flowers.

Black pearls in the woman’s eyes,

a jelly belly woman

under her cotton, a

conjure woman

who smells the trains,

hears the trains’ music,

a July jazz birds fly

in the riff of

even the dark horse might

shake its booty.

Sunset Limited, an angel on

the skyline thru the

reddest red flowers

eating the blue up like a whale

from Carolina to Baltimore,

a whale of a train

singing like whales

under the waves

like a pipe organ under

the water

shake your lips and rock the baby

dream the Sunset Limited

will get you out

and away and

then bring you home

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