Inspired by Camille Claudel’s sculpture “The Wave”
Almost like a fist
the great wave of war
rises now, arching,
all froth and force,
and in the single instant
before the crash,
before our demise is cast
in onyx or bronze,
before everything
we’ve made is smashed
like plaster on the floor,
this chance to conceive
the world as it could be,
the chance to take
each other’s hands
and hold them fast
so the terrible wave
can’t separate us.
The wave will break.
We will be towed and tossed.
My friends, it matters
that we stay together.
to see this sculpture, visit here
Posts Tagged ‘ekphrasis’
The Single Instant
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged camille claudel, connection, ekphrasis, moment, war, water, wave on March 5, 2026| 6 Comments »
The Art of Tragedy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged camille claudel, ekphrasis, history, tragedy, women on February 17, 2026| 4 Comments »
When was the first time you knew
you would never be loved for who you are?
The first time you knew you would disappoint
everyone when you dared to show up
as yourself? I think of Camille Claudel
in her white frock, the lacy one she was forced
to wear. Her mother’s anger when
young Camille would return from the woods,
mud-joyously smudged, after a day
spent forming skeletons in clay.
A decade later Camille would be the one
Rodin depended on to sculpt the hands
and feet of his masterpieces. He would put
his own name on her work. Decry her talent.
Disparage her truth. Have you, too,
had your gifts turned to weapons used against you?
Have you, too, had someone else’s hands
re-mold the clay of your life into a story
you cannot bear? Could you, too, like Camille,
carve your most painful moment into hard marble
and offer it to the world to see, a moment so raw
people would gasp when they saw it,
even a hundred years later, and filled with ache
they would say, oh, my god, it is so beautiful.
**
Oh friends. There are so many unsung heroes in the world. And I am so glad that during Women’s History Month (yes, it still exists and is still relevant), my dear friend Kayleen Asbo and I are hosting a two-week series on relatively unknown, remarkably talented women artists with incredible stories. The first week we learn about Camille Claudel, the subject of my poem above, who was first worshipped by and then vilified by Auguste Rodin. The second week we learn of the wacky, resilient Suzanne Valadon who was muse to Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Erik Satie, and more, who forged her own artistic path, recreating the feminine from object to subject. It is STILL a radical act to celebrate the lives and contributions of women artists. Join us, please. Both weeks we’ll have six writing opportunities inspired by these women’s lives and their art.
From Tragedy to Triumph: Writing with Great Women Artists
March 4 & 11, 11-1 mountain time
Zoom
$50/$80/$100
Join me and the incomparable cultural historian Kayleen Asbo for a two-week class in which we explore the lives of sculptress Camille Claudel (whom we briefly met in connection with Rodin) and the wildly unconventional and irrepressible Suzanne Valadon, who began her career as the favorite model of Renoir and Toulouse Lautrec and though self-taught, achieved remarkable success and renown in her own right as a painter. We will marry inspiring art with poetry and our shared creative writing practice. Join us!
Since You’re Gone
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged couch, ekphrasis, heart, love, missing on January 26, 2025| 6 Comments »
My heart is like a well-used couch,
the kind with a dent where your body
once curled in, the cushions threadbare
from years of use; the kind of couch
that remembers every time you gave
it your weight, that recalls every story
that spilled from your mouth,
your words now woven into its upholstery.
Since you’re gone, the picture of me looks
like less like a picture of me and more
like a picture of where you used to be.
Learning from the Painting on My Kitchen Wall
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, ekphrasis, painting, rob schultheis on June 2, 2024| 2 Comments »
with thanks to Rob Schultheis
She is beautiful, the woman
on the wall with one long braid
and an owlet perched on her hand.
Not beautiful the way young girls dream,
but beautiful in the way old women dream.
which is to say she is deeply seen.
Sometimes I swear she watches me
as I slice the shiitake, as I chop the kale.
Her eyes are serious and always keen.
Her gaze makes me beautiful, too,
beautiful the way a morning is beautiful—
because it arrives every day as if
night cannot contain it; beautiful
the way the sun is beautiful, because
it needs no praise to share all its light.
Dear Gustav Klimt,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ekphrasis, klimt, painting, portrait, sense of self on November 18, 2023| 12 Comments »
Please, don’t paint me today.
Maybe sketch me in pencil,
arms dangling soft by my sides.
Perhaps another day
I will gaze at the world
straight on, chin up,
eyes full of challenge
lips curled in risk.
Perhaps another day
I’ll stand with defiance,
long hair tossed back,
hands on my hips.
But today, dear man,
keep the eraser close.
I’m more paper than gesture.
more blank than bold stroke.
Today I have no mask,
no message, no need
to be seen. In fact,
Gustav, close your eyes.
Let me ask you about
when you met Typhon
and the Gorgons
and how things changed
from snakes to angel choirs
from skulls to golden kisses.
Here, good man.
Show me your face.
Please, hand me the pencil.
Learning to Love Life
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, ekphrasis, falling in love with the world, klimt, love, paradox, trust on November 11, 2023| 14 Comments »
We learn to love by being loved.
—Rafael J. Gonzalez, personal correspondence
There are days now when I feel so embraced by life
it’s as if life itself is pulling me into its great, strong arms,
surrounding me with warmth, tenderness, radiance,
as if life is whispering into my ear, loving and low,
I’ve got you, sweetheart, I’ve got you.
Not that I’ve forgotten how fear enters in
with its wide-eyed hunger, how grief gnaws at raw flesh,
how the heart’s walls fall down in cacophonous descent,
but there are, I must tell you, golden hours sparked with joy,
love-dappled days steeped in flowers and song
and I can’t pretend it’s not beautiful,
can’t not share how the same life that ravages us
also gathers us in so gently, so surely
that we, too, become golden, become sun and moon,
become rapturous bloom, become kiss.
inspired by The Beethoven Frieze (1901), Gustav Klimt
What the Mermaids Sang
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged depths, ekphrasis, klimt, ocean, truth on November 11, 2023| 9 Comments »
after Mermaids (1898) by Gustav Klimt
Truths are hidden from the surface.
—motto of Carl von Rokitansky, head of the Vienna School of Medicine, who influenced Klimt
We’ve traveled to the waters dark and cold
where the only light to be found
is the light you learn to make with your own body.
We have traveled to the depths
where we were crushed by pressure,
where the only way to move is slow,
where the only nourishment is what is dead,
and now we arrive on shores of gold.
There are seas in you, deep trenches
you’d rather perhaps not explore.
But you must meet the mystery—
must be changed by all you cannot know.
It will widen your eyes forever.
Dear swimmer, this change is the treasure.
Perhaps Inevitable
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ekphrasis, hiding, klimt, mask, revelation, vulnerability on November 5, 2023| 4 Comments »
after Gustav Klimt’s “Tragedie”
even now beneath
the stony gray mask of control
I feel it growing
a shimmering flower of purest gold
the naked truth
*
To sign up for the class that inspired this poem (and yesterday’s, too)–it’s not too late!–see below. Though the three-week class began last Friday, you could watch the recording of the first class and join us for the next two sessions.
Love, Sex, Death and Everything: A Creativity Playshop with Gustav Klimt
Nov. 3, 10, 17, 11a.m. -1 p.m. MST
Three weeks of exploring what lurks in the depths of humanity. Each class consists of a deep Jungian-oriented dive into music and myths behind Klimt’s images led by Kayleen Asbo, interwoven with Rosemerry leading an exploration of mortality, passion, terror and beauty in your own creative writing practice. For more information and to register, visit here.
In a Downpour
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged color, ekphrasis, encouragement, rain, smile on October 28, 2023| 6 Comments »
On an uphill slog
of a day,
your real smile
is like a single
red umbrella
in a long pageant
of black umbrellas.
Suddenly,
it’s all I can see.
This Land
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clothes, ekphrasis, grief, wilderness on August 23, 2023| 8 Comments »
Grieving is a wilderness.
—Tara Brach, “Being with Love, Death and Grief,” July 13, 2023
Grieving is a wilderness I wear,
a long flaring coat
with cuffs of deep water
and hems lined with deserts
and birds that migrate
across my chest.
As soon as I think grief is one thing,
it’s another, vast expanses
with no known paths—
cracks to fall through,
cliffs to climb.
Sometimes, I slip from grief’s heavy silks,
and gaze at it as if it’s art.
There is terror in its folds.
But with buttes of gold
and storm-blue skies,
grief is also, my god,
so beautiful.