- AEDM 13. Playing with copper etching.
My Art Every Day contribution for day 13: playing with copper etching. The round copper was retail and clean, the rest was recycled and I didn’t wipe it first with alchohol which may have made it less etchable. The coin words will go on a charm bracelet sometime this week.
Here’s Poetry Saturday:
Vision
by Tammy Vitale
(after a poem by Adirenne Rich)
In my vision there are women weaving
tapestries that intertwine.
In the past I did not know them but now I can say their names.
Mickie sends me buttercups pressed in purple tissue.
She writes words on black paper
cuts angels from discarded sheets.
Lucie sends me a dried acorn
along with a red feather, wishes me dark earth and blue sky.
She tells me she has learned to fly but her life is not easy.
Eva wears a torn dress
has brambles in her hair and runs barefoot through the nettles.
She feels pain she feels pain and fashions something beautiful.
persephone waits
by Lara Payne, read at 4th Annual Women-in Poetry
St Mary’s College, March 22, 1996
he grows darker these days
I am beginning to know a hundred shades
of darkness
this darkening, his face
the lines moving down, the mouth
tightening, and the way his hands touch
the ends of my hair, this means
spring, a word I keep locked in my
innermost darkness,
every year
as soon as the word enters my heart
all of the different darknesses become one
and that is Hades
he knows this, jewel giver.
they are cold in my hands
I hold them before my eyes
the gray becomes red, blue, green
and sadness, my fingers dropping stones
my eyes remembering color unsought
jewels need light to know beauty.
i hold the gems to my eyes, again and again.
Lara was in the same writing group I was in, with Lucille Clifton. That’s how I met her. She had a whole suite of Persephone poems and I thought I still had copies but either I don’t or they have been stored “safely” in one of my decluttering/organizing binges. Someday I will learn that, for me at least, creative clutter is a potent and good thing full of possibilites. It lines my nest and makes me comfortable.
Lara’s poetry always brings me in bodily – it is never intellectual for me. All feeling. I am sad that I cannot find the rest of the suite!
My poem above was one I wrote for the group meeting. Mickie was actually one of the women in the group who indeed sent me yellow buttercups in purple tissue, and the “angels” a reference to her name, Angie. Lucie was Lucille. Eva was for my younger self.
We met once a month and I always made space for that in my life. It was wonderful while it lasted!
If you don’t know the story of Persephone, you can read it here.
11 Comments
Thank you ladies!
I really loved the poem. I could picture the ladies so clearly!
Truly lovely poetry. I was moved by them.
The poem made me want to actually meet those women and have tea with them. 😀
i love seeing all the different ways you play
Thanks for sharing your beautiful poems.
Charotte: She had an amazing ear. Listening to her suggestions about how to tweek (tweak?) a poem
taught me a lot. She and Grace (one of my other Saturday poets) taught me so much about
how to hear words – the breath….they used to say ….. it’s in the breath. Poems are made
to read out loud. Tho I think mine have too many pictures in them for oral. I think they need
to be read (Grace always said you could tell I was an artist before I was a poet). (Grace wasn’t in the group, but she introduced me to the group)
Your poem is so lyrical and evocative – I just love it!
It must have been so special to participate in a group with Lucille. *sigh*
The coins look awesome–can’t wait to see the bracelet!
I love you poem, beautiful imagery and emotion.
Kelly: Me either – and I actually have a pretty clear picture in my head already. Unusual for jewelry!
thanks for stopping by!
I can’t wait to see the finished charm bracelet. How fun!