Poetry

reds of cochineal and crimson
yellows of bark gold brown yellow green
greens invisible olive pea and myrtle
blues Prussian deep royal slate
drabs red sandy silver sage salmon and dove
purples crimson deep marron logwood lavender
browns fast damson fawn olive and claret
greys bark liver dark smoke batwings and doves

sending new year’s rainbows
joy and radiance for 2025
and thanks for your presence here

[studio doodle | work in progress for 2025 project
dye book from Harvard Shaker community]

gathering gold—

glistening glittering mica chips
dandelion rainbow strands
molten orange M initialed
pleated dress of worship & work
golden orbed dawn
palest lemon goldenrod tuft
waves frozen, seedhead
mighty morning orb

looking for brightneess
in rainbows and revision structures
on hand knit shawls dyed with goldenrod,
gathered at wasteplaces
stitched into circles emanating sunlight

Miriam Cantor-Stone and I are thrilled to have our collaboration, meetinghouse, published in Early American Literature.

Thanks to Moonbow for inviting us to make this collaboration.  
Thanks to Shaker Heritage Society for giving artists support and the space to do so.
Thanks to Early American Literature -- it has been a true pleasure to work with all of you. 

And a podcast to follow -- with interviews and performance excerpts.  

five summers ago
harvested dahlias
stuck between sheets of paper
simmered, steamed
 
stacks of silhouettes, waited
suddenly, this summer,
their sense seeped in
 
was it seeing the blots of
Mary Gartside, seeking
flower essence through color?
 
fifty seven washed with
gouaches and watercolors
Inks of—daffodils, pine cones,
black walnuts, marigolds

Thanks to Alexandra Loske for alerting me to Gartside.

Her book, Mary Gartside:
Abstract Visions of Color at Thomas Heneage Books

Thanks to Naumkeag for the Artist Residency in 2019
where the dahlias were gathered.

text & typeface

words on the side of the road
as in the Shaker “Wayside Pulpit”
words found in advertisements 
as in the work of Corita Kent
words about to be printed
at Melanie Mowinski’s studio
words printed, read, used, perused
aptly, just begin

--Wayside Pulpit included in 'Unexpected Shaker' a pop-up show in Kinderhook, NY until 8/25
--Corita Kent, ‘bell bound’ found in ‘Corita Kent and the Language of Pop’
--Melanie Mowinski, Press:LetterPress

plants as prints as watercolors as thoughts as sky as poetry
.
‘Verbal creation, he [Seamus Heaney] writes,
 is an archaeological dig, 
“a dig for finds that end up being plants.” ‘

From Elaine Scarry’s book, Dreaming by the Book 
and Heaney's  book Feeling Into Words: Selected Prose 1968-78

Caretaker Farm CSA flowers and summer ‘dahlia series’
plant inks and gouache on dahlia mono print

“Painting is a form of poetry
Colors are words
Their reflections rhythms.
The completed painting,
a completed poem.”

Sonia Delaunay
[from Kunst Please podcast
9.20.2021]

Substitute ‘painting’ for?
stitching
natural dyeing
………..

Images from ‘Sonia Delaunay’ catalogue from Tate exhibition 2015
Postcard from ‘Sonia Delaunay: Living Art’ Bard Graduate Center 2024

is just blue, or azure sky blue?
red or scarlet poppy red?
pink or carnation pink?

In her 1898 book,
“The Use of Color in the Verse of
English Romantic Poets,” Alice Edwards Pratt 
delves deep into the poets 
“descriptive, discriminative, dramatic, aesthetic”
words of color
such as—
“pinky-silver’
“autumnal leaf like-red”
“purple-hectic”
“rose-ensanquined ivory”
and charts each poet’s color
by terms for--
“mountains and hills”
“sky, cloud and air”
“deep waters”


Happily I found Pratt whilst reading
Nicholas Gaskill’s essay, ‘Language and Psychology’
in the ‘A Cultural History of Color: 
In the Age of Industry’
edited by Alexandra Loske.

.

in celebration of
dandelions
dickinson
poetry month
pollinators


…………………………….


The Dandelion’s pallid tube
Astonishes the Grass,
And Winter instantly becomes
An infinite Alas—

The tube uplifts a signal Bud
And then a shouting Flower,—
The Proclamation of the Suns
That sepulture is o’er.


………………..

Dickinson wrote this poem as a letter to her friend Mrs. Edward Tuckerman and included an additional line, “Vinne told me.”

Celebrating  Harvard University Press new edition The Letters of Emily Dickinson edited by Cristianne Miller and Domhnall Miller.

Dickinson’s letter to Tuckerman is in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, MA)

seeing writing editing 
typing cutting sewing
prototyping a chapbook

as a maker, it always helps
to bind a book
hold it in one's hand
consider next steps.

Thanks to Holly Wren Spaulding & Poetry Forge
for the recently completed course, 
A Body of Work, where we took snippets
and ponderings and made them into poetry.

studio rainbws
in circles & squares

waxed linen thread spool
'Thought Forms' squared chart
stacks of Shaker boxes
Winsor & Newton 'Revival' dot card
& grids of buildings clad in 'beauteous colors'