I belong to an organization that recognizes how much hard-working
professional writers and artists have in common. At a recent meeting of the Cape
Cod branch of the National League of American Pen Women, I struck up a
conversation with Andrea Ker Hutter, a painter who wore the most compelling purple print
scarf. It wasn’t just a large purple
print scarf. It was an all-encompassing
purple print scarf, the kind that made its own introduction: this wearer is An
Artist.
Having written many freelance articles on artists, I know
they see things – no, really, they SEE things - differently than the rest of
us. I was intrigued to learn Andrea had trained as a sculptor and is now an
interior design/faux art specialist. My friend Lorie Strait is a sculptor in Paris;
I’ve seen her atelier and have a small idea of what it takes to call forth form
from a piece of stone or metal. Why would an artist change mediums? What did Andrea
need to learn to make the transition? Clearly, this was going to be a lengthy
conversation.
Her decision fascinated me in part, I explained, because as
a writer, I feel absolutely no temptation, nor do I suspect the necessary
talent, to move over into another literary form such as screen writing, poetry,
short stories, novels, or memoir. I am a non-fiction prose writer. I savor the process
of gathering up information like a harvest, inevitably much more than necessary,
then giving it a shape, a purpose, a name. Occasionally, obviously in moments of romantic
indulgence, I see myself as the single point of connection between a subject
and an audience that will most likely never meet. I’m not caterpillar or butterfly,
I’m the cocoon.
Although I tell Andrea only one literary form has ever called
me to embrace it, in fact, I recall an exception. There was one time when non-fiction prose
was inadequate, unappealing. It was somehow incapable of conveying what needed
to be said. A death had occurred in my
life, a unique and important loss, staggering in its own way. Suddenly I wanted poetry, I needed poetry. I found
peace only in poetry.
It was so surprising, I told the artist. Writing non-fiction
prose felt like being in a cramped, dry, airless, colorless place, a small box,
a paper bag. So, hesitantly I began to shape my ideas and thoughts and feelings
as poems. One ten-part piece titled “Till Life Do Us Part” was six pages long.
No, that is not so
surprising, Andrea remarked. She told me of a cousin who began to write poetry
when her 37-year-old daughter died. It was a heart attack, a fluke. Friends
stopping by had found the young woman dead where she was house-sitting. The
cousin was a story teller, an alcohol and drug counselor. But why had she turned to writing poetry in
grieving a catastrophic and overwhelming loss? Together we two non-poets
pondered the role of this literary form as a salve, a balm, a saving grace.
“I think of poetry as concise, direct, raw,” reflected
Andrea, “like Chinese brush painting with simple, elegant, intentional strokes,
just enough, no more. Our emotions and interpretations fill the spaces in
between. It’s synthesis, stark word pictures. Maybe it’s the exactness in
poetry that balances the cataclysmic tides of grief. ”
Perhaps poetry somehow suits extreme circumstances because of
lack of structure? No, I don’t think that’s it, I responded. I have a friend, Jacqueline Loring, a superb poet (and Pen Woman) who has won an international poetry contest. When she talks
about her process, she applies rules to her work, no matter how unstructured it
seems. But writing poetry does feel like dreaming, I said. Yes, agreed Andrea. Her
cousin said that too.
Here are two of my poems:
Death
moves
like a
mighty arm
sweeping
wordlessly
across the
flat surface
of a
cluttered breakfast table,
clearing
it of every plate, bowl, and spoon,
juice
glass, cereal box, and coffee cup,
jam jar,
salt shaker, half-finished piece of toast,
pencil, pen,
crayon, unfinished grocery list,
smudged
napkin,
utility bill,
aspirin coupon
all gone,
in one single
soundless
instant,
gone.
***
In the
presence of a dying person
you recognize
the oppression
of your own
vitality,
the
force of your whispers
the
power of your breath
the
exhaustive thrashing
of your
thoughts and feelings.
If you
try to moderate your being
to
reduce this violation,
you
will, you must, fail,
and so the
chasm
widens
and deepens
between
your separate souls
as moment
by moment
breath
by breath,
beat by
beat
you part.
