Songs My Father Sang Me

From "Dear John" series.

Look at All Those Roses

LOU

            Here were jealous of the rose house –

One of those conflicts between two silent mood

Return from a week-end

Lou’s smart little monkey face

                                                                            she was

Just opening her mouth to risk one further remark

“Oh my goodness” she said,

                                    she had a plan read

                                                            Why should a house

wait?

                                                                                                “Leave

your wife here,” she said. “Then she can have tea.”

                                                                   - her idea of love was

adhesiveness . . . . Knowing

                                    aring out with unhappy eyes.

            A girl of about thirteen lay, flat as a board

                        Flat horizons

Lying their

                                                                        She’s lying down because

                                                           Men will suffer a certain

look in animal’s eyes, but not in women’s eyes

                       he will lose his way.

                                                    When she is not working she rides

home.”

                                                                                                           

                                                       

                            

                                “I never eat tea, thank you,”

He put his hand on

                                                      You’re well out of that, my girl,

From "Dear John" series.

No. 16

TO APPROACH Medusa

                                                -even without a touch

                                    he finds himself    a sort of night-

mare of whim.

His letter.

            I must go if I die.

she was,

                        still hurt her

                                                            a mature country girl,

and a touch of old-fashioned style

            “Now you’re here,”

“Still, I’m here,”

                        “You thought I had gone.”

“But some day, I suppose, it will happen?

   “I shan’t be sorry,

                                    One decides quickly enough when

there is any question of desire.”

                        ‘Go in,’ he said to me yesterday.

                                                            No. 15 is empty:

It’s nailed up:

            out of the room.

.           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .

the fish pie lay on her tongue like wadding.

                           poured himself out a glass of water.

                                    “This is the worst time of day.

He held me responsible.

“You’re so beautiful.”

“I was ill yesterday.

                                                -Come.

                                    do you hear?

“A waterfall in my head.”

                        There’ll be no ‘here’ left--how can you

come back?”

“But my poems . .

                        -the piano inside my head, the waterfall

inside yours.

Never never try to betray.

   “I’ve got to live

                                                            “Don’t write.”

                                    but she was a girl who had never

been touched

   He has lost me, too.

“Don’t forget your poems.”

                        see if we are still here.”

                                                            “Should not see anyone.

“Sleep . . . “ Her

                                knockings you bear

From "Dear John" series.

Reduced

This must have been the second chapter I worked on.

Looking on the dates when I made these work, I think I was either suffering from insomnia or just manically working non-stop day and night.

When I was at MacDowell, I typically worked in the printmaking studio during the day, and worked on installation in another large studio in the afternoon and evening. All these book pages were done at night. My cottage where I slept was quite far from my studio. I had to walk through the woods. There was no lights outside except the lights from other fellow residents' studios. I carried a flashlight to walk through the woods. There was a bed in the studio, so sometimes I just slept there.

Sixteen years later, I'm looking back at these words I chose. At the time of making, I really wasn't reading any of these stories. As a matter of fact, I don't know any of these stories to this day. Yet, I feel like I know these stories so intimately, because I made them into my own. I had the most intimate and strangely engaging experience with this book without actually reading the stories. When I opened each page, certain words just jumped at me, and those were the words I "saved."

I didn't have to think. These words simply began to float on the page, and I painted around these words. I almost could't keep up with "their" speed. It sounds bizarre, I know, but I felt a close kinship with the author, Elizabeth Bowen who was an Anglo-Irish novelist.

Maybe I lost words of my own. Maybe I had to borrow someone else's.



"Reduced" from Dear John

no chair invited you.

                 A pretty September day

                                                                                    married at

nineteen.

she was twenty-seven or –eight

         reputation of being the most unpopular man

                                    He was careful, savagely careful, about

money and not careful enough about seeing

            anxious to “settle”

                        bought reduced coats and shoes for the little

girls

        the girls’ education would be a heavy expense.

                             She was a shiftless woman.

                   The house looked dedicated to a perpetual

January

            The nicest woman like having unattached men.

Around, “She must be full of brains.”

                        after one more forbidden

                                    our darling should leave

                        black chill of

                                                The schoolroom had a

faded sea-blue wallpaper

                                                                        “Have you

stopped painting?”

                       

                                                            on such a fine day

there would be shadows.”

    wash that blue off your paint-brush.”

The little girls were alike,

             part of her power

                 they prayed she might die

                 unwound the skipping-ropes

                                    skipped seventy-eight     her toes

bounced

out of her head. At last the rope caught her toe. “That’s

the record.”

            ‘Surely                                                at last.

               know                                         “I’ve

“She was accused of murder.”

                                    So she disappeared, hoping to be

forgotten

            Children,

                        They sat stone-still, clasped hands.

                                                            she will play games

                                                                                    My

own children are strangers;

                                                It’s rude to look at each other

when mother speaks!”

From "Dear John" series.