{"id":4993,"date":"2020-05-21T09:45:44","date_gmt":"2020-05-21T14:45:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=4993"},"modified":"2020-05-21T09:47:11","modified_gmt":"2020-05-21T14:47:11","slug":"blogger-shares-abigail-george-artists-on-artists-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2020\/05\/21\/blogger-shares-abigail-george-artists-on-artists-poems\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogger shares Abigail George artists-on-artists poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Blogger Mia Savant posted a Ponder Savant<\/em> entry on “Jackson Pollock and Other Poems by Abigail George”<\/a> that includes the Pollock poem and also poems dedicated to John Updike and Georgia O’Keeffe.\u00a0 Here’s the Updike poem:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

John Updike<\/strong><\/p>\n

He writes. He writes. He writes. He writes. And it feels
\nas if he is writing to me. There\u2019s the letting go of sadness,
\nthe letting go of emptiness, of the swamp ape in the land.
\nLines written after communion, and as I write this, I am
\naware of growing older, men growing colder. And this
\nafternoon, the dust of it, the milky warmth of it loose like
\nflowers upon me fastening their hold on me, removes the
\noppression that I know from all of life. Youth is no longer
\non my side. The bloom of youth. Wasteland has become a
\npart of my identity. I am a bird. A rejected starling. To age
\nsometimes feels as if you are moving epic mountains. Valleys
\nthat sing with the force of winds, human beings, the sun.
\nAnd he is beautiful. And he is kind. And he is the man facing
\nloneliness, and the emptiness of the day. And I am the woman
\nfacing loneliness, and the emptiness of the day. But how
\ncan you be lonely if you are surrounded by so many people.
\nI want to be those people, if only to be in your presence a
\nlittle while longer. Death is gorgeous, but life is even more so.
\nI have become weary of fighting wars. Of the threshold of
\nwaiting. And so, I let go of solitude at the beach. I see my mother\u2019s
\nface in every horizon. She is my sun. And the man makes
\na path where there is no path before. The minority of the day
\nlongs for power. The light reckons it has more sway over
\nthe clouds. And there\u2019s ecstasy in the shark, in his heart with
\na head full of winter. Freedom is his mother tongue lost in
\ntranslation of the being of the trinity. Tender is the night.
\nThe clock strains itself. Its forward motion. Its song. Its lull
\nduring the figuring of the daylight. He\u2019s my knight but he
\ndoesn\u2019t know it. He makes me forget about my grief, loss, my loss,
\nthe measure of my grief. Driftwood comes to the beach and
\nlays there like a beached whale. Not stirring, but like some
\nautumn life, something about life is resurrected again, and the
\npowerful hands of the sea become my own. Between the grass
\nand the men, there is an innocent logic. I don\u2019t talk to anyone,
\nand no one talks to me. It is Tuesday. Late. I think you can
\nsee the despair in my eyes. The kiss of hardship in my hands.
\nIt always comes back to that, doesn\u2019t it somehow. The hands
\nThe hands. The hands. Symbolic of something, or other it seems.
\nWednesday morning. It is early. After twelve in the morning,
\nand I can\u2019t sleep. For the life of me I can\u2019t sleep. Between the
\ntwo of us, he\u2019s the teacher. There is a singing sound in his voice.
\nI don\u2019t know why I can\u2019t read his mind anymore. There\u2019s
\nconfusion in forgetting that becomes a secret. Almost a contract
\nbetween two people. And when I think of him, I think of love
\nand Brazil, love and couples. And there\u2019s a silent call from a
\nremote kind of land, and ignorance is a cold shroud. Some
\nthings are born helpless in a world of assembled images, and
\nhow quickly some people go mad with grief (like me), dream
\nof grief (like me), sleep with grief on their heart (like me). Speak
\nto me before all speech is gone. This image, or perhaps another.
\nHis face is made up of invisible threads. Each more handsome
\nthan the last. And my face becomes, turns into the face of love.<\/p>\n

Abigail George<\/strong> is a Pushcart Prize-winning poet, essayist, writer, and novelist . She received four grants from the National Arts Council in Johannesburg, the Centre for the Book in Cape Town and ECPACC in East London. She is the author of 15 books, including two poetry chapbooks forthcoming in 2020: Of Bloom and Smoke<\/em> (Mwanaka Media and Publishing) and The Anatomy of Melancholy<\/em> (Praxis Magazine).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blogger Mia Savant posted a Ponder Savant entry on “Jackson Pollock and Other Poems by Abigail George” that includes the Pollock poem and also poems dedicated to John Updike and Georgia O’Keeffe.\u00a0 Here’s the Updike poem:   John Updike He … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-4993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person-singular","category-publications","tag-abigail-george"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4993"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4996,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4993\/revisions\/4996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}