I promised a poem about an artist. Here, instead, is a poem of mine about art. I referenced the work and processes of many artists. This is the first poem in my book, This Business of Wisdom.
THE MAGIC OF SEEING
by Lauren Camp
Notice the yellowing tape
and the graphite hatches scattered across the paper:
a dark diagram
of saved details. Notice the pattern
scored into each layer,
then stripped and curved away, the long arc
of sunlit days gilded into squares.
Toss your small goodbyes into the sanded planes
and the grid
slumped into a vague halo of wax. Notice the spaces
for your worries. Notice
the buoyant red and its authority
over the canvas, the way it seems to be igniting.
Notice lines that have collapsed, the ripped
and wrung-out corners
and the ruthless ones,
each a departure from perfect balance. Notice the sweat,
the swagger of trees, the shadow, and the scale.
You stand in a pinhole, surfacing again in a haze
of light – a paradox of vision; this is the view
from the constructed earth, the sea,
the future. You are folded into the shape
and stretch; your sure eye
will see the ghosts, the yeasty texture of deliberation
caked on and scraped off. Concentrate on the bruises:
the pauses –
and the breaks, each quarrel
of pigment, the devotion to luck
and the points of harmony, the drips, the gin,
the risk
and negative space; enjoy the language
of the hand and the small stroke of reason.
A shy ripple haunts the tall gray letters; notice
the horses’ hooves, the fruit bowl, the spattered bloom
of bravery, the virtue of the varnish.
Listen to the slashes, the fire.
Notice the dots. And those
repeating orange cars. And when your hands ask,
love the hands that built this, that tilted back the paint
into blades and eyes.
Notice the white, the thunderous white
brooding with invisible butterflies in the center of the picture.
