Artists Space Reading 5/7/08

Thanks for coming. I’m Catherine Woodard. A past president of Artists Space and much to my family’s chagrin, a poet. They can blame Artists Space for my swerve from journalism to poetry. Artists are reporters, important ones, who like Emily Dickinson tell it slant. For 35 years Artists Space has encouraged experimentation and dialog in contemporary culture. So think of us as a linguistic exhibition in 3-minute segments. (not more we promise) A special thanks to our poetry mentor Lucie Brock-Broido. We will read in reverse alphabetical order. In the interest of your time, please hold applause or catcalls to the end. Afterward Denise Banker will talk a bit about Copper Canyon Press, arguably the best poetry publisher in the nation.

Visual art, it seems, was secretly pushing me to poetry. My mother’s wedding present was a Jasper Johns etching I’d wanted, that just happened to be in a poetry book. Only later in life would I be smitten by Wallace Stevens, the poet, and Helen Vendler, who wrote the introduction. As long as we’ve owned it, I’ve always hung this Johns close to my desk. When I started writing a novel, a terrible one I might add, each morning I would put my hand in his to draw from his creative powers- a ritual both comforting and terrifying.

My Skin Print

Hand pressed.
Ear pressed.
Face pressed.
Shadow pressed.

TOLERENCES (EXCEPT AS NOTED) BY JASPER JOHNS
APPROVED BY FRANK O’HARA MADE IN USA
ENGINEER “SKIN WITH O’HARA POEM”

Hand push
Back.
Ink push back. Fingers push back. Push back from paper. Push
Into glass. My hand touch
His hand. Push. My side of paper, my side of glass, my side of
Skin.

Two readers tonight are transgenre friends: Helen also writes novels. Desiree is stunning as visual artist and poet. Plus she edits poems with hilarious sketches. The book I’m working on is at least a cross dresser, a novelistic story told by poems. It’s about a family in a small town in the South, with odd associations with the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Just recently I rolled out of bed to a piece of art I’ve been sleeping beside for at least a decade and suddenly saw it as a visual mirror of my story. My narrator and the children in this work by Annette Lemieux are both struggling to make sense of what they cannot understand. Which is not all that different than why first the pharaohs and then all Egyptians who could afford it commissioned a manual to navigate the afterlife. Many of my titles do evoke spells.


Spell For Not Playing Dead

I start first grade
With a blue book bag
Two fat pencils and a rule

Not to leave school
With my father in a car.
Mother says we can die

If he’s drinking.
Mother says to scream
Kick if we must

Or play dead
Like the soldier on TV
Who fooled well.



The Unanswered Letter

The suicide note, like my father sober, says little
will stay folded I presume
in the dresser Mother keeps bank papers and report cards. But the other note sent my freshman year hasn’t found its place, pauses between sweaters, parachutes from overdue books. His words flicker: So proud… So sorry I’ve not… So bright your…
If I could look words in the eye smell their breath... Must a word slurred be tainted? Or is my doubt the shame? A letter never answered but still read. The capital B’s sturdy, mark of his name. I crawl into the bottom loop,
And think of the word bridge.


I’ll end with another spell.

For Being Any Shape One May Wish
My brother collects the dead sparrows that crash into the roof.
He thinks the birds kill our shot at Yard of the Month. Ladies of the Garden Club inspect, drive slowly round town
with a white proclamation in the trunk.
Only the front yard matters.