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Overview
Still later, when I was more in touch with
the world, they told me, "You have a future."
I thought that over. Even if I believed them,
what did my little future, whatever that was,
have to do with the real thing, whatever that is?
—from "Waiting"
the world, they told me, "You have a future."
I thought that over. Even if I believed them,
what did my little future, whatever that was,
have to do with the real thing, whatever that is?
—from "Waiting"
In this second daring collection, Coming to That, the centenarian painter and poet Dorothea Tanning illuminates our understanding of creativity, the impulse to make, and the longevity of art. Her unique wit and candor radiate through every poem, every line, and her inquisitive mind is everywhere alive and restless. As she writes in one poem, "If Art would only talk it would, at last, reveal / itself for what it is, what we all burn to know."
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781555976019 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Graywolf Press |
| Publication date: | 09/13/2011 |
| Pages: | 72 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.10(d) |
About the Author
Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012) lived an extraordinary life as an artist and writer. She published two books of poetry, A Table of Content and Coming to That; two memoirs, Birthday and Between Lives: An Artist and Her World; and a novel, Chasm. In 2012, she died at the age of 101 at her home in New York City.
Read an Excerpt
Coming to That
PoemsBy DOROTHEA TANNING
Graywolf Press
Copyright © 2011 Dorothea TanningAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-55597-601-9
Chapter One
FREE RIDEDid you see the satellite,
our planetary spy,
cast its vibes around the sphere?
And, crazed as a lost idea
wild to find its mind,
in no time flat it had me out there
reeling in a surreal sky.
My hat turned up in China.
CULTIVATION
Cultivating people can be arduous,
With results as uncertain as weather.
Try oysters, meerkats, turnips, mice.
My mouse field was a triumph of
Cultivation—pink noses poking
Through quilts of loam, scampering
In the furrows—until the falling
Dwarves (it was that time of year)
Began landing on my field. Fear for
Its harvest saw me down on hands
And knees muttering, "Not here,"
My nails clawed at tangles of fat
Dwarves crushing mouse families.
Then, unbelievably, it was over.
By morning every dwarf, maddened
By nibbling mice, had fled the field.
Now, as before, each day dozens
Of perfect mice leave for the city.
There, they have made many friends
Among computers, and with them
Are developing skills inconceivable
To their forebears. Already these
Cultivated mice and their computers
Penetrate guilty secrets. Soon they will
Prevail over the turmoil that defines
This darkest of ages. And they will
Find me, asleep in my cave.
TRAPEZE
It leans on me, this changing season,
breathless as these old photographs
under the lamp. White smiles will
smile forever; the tossed ball is fixed in
space and will not move, nor will
divers diving ever touch water.
Even the leaves outside my window
do not move. Gilded now, they pose:
picture perfect leaves posing for me—
or for whoever, looking up, tomorrow,
might happen to see their trapeze act:
the wave to the crowd, a flutter and
spins in rising air for the letting go;
then the vertiginous game with sudden
wind, yellow skirts lifted in spiraling
exuberance before the plummet.
THE ONLY THING
She went her way in shade, pared
her nails, wore a hat. Once in a blue
moon she would close her eyes and see
again what a million years ago
had been, for her, the right
and wild thing, the only thing.
Her opaque meanwhiles, ticking
and tapping unreal hours at the
little screen, for what other
people wanted, were easy to
forget while her doorkey, as
accomplice let her into where,
redolent of nothing special,
perseverance spread its mossy carpet
and street noise poked the window.
Then one evening, when it came,
filtering through the spin and jar of one
evening out of thousands, scraping closer,
swarming in the stairs: a voice,
careless of pitch and pace but sweet
to the ear as if it weren't a mighty
spill of lusty sound he made but a
threading of song into the world,
she caught at it from her room on third,
the very air a brimming chalice drunk
on his words—if words they were
—as she listened, standing between
bed and chair—then, eyes closed and
arms lifted, she swayed to the beat
of that feverish noise outside her
door and clearly saw, yet again, what
once had been for her the bright and
wild thing, the only thing.
PERUVIAN
It might be time to research the thing
instead of always saying "Peruvian,"
while it may not be Peruvian at all—
I, as no authority, depending on
having been told its origin—and that
so long ago when they took over
the place: this motley family of tribal
lives, their fetishes, totems, weapons—
oh, they had nothing to do with us.
Yet, at times, a chunky shaman eyed
me, shook his red-tipped
wand at me, his mask for out of body
states defying me or anyone to
probe his tribal truths disguised
in black and terra cotta paint, the
penis a badge, perhaps of courage—
sorely needed in their grudging
fastnesses. Ever at risk, soliciting
heaven in howling drum-beat;
not unlike our own hot screams,
sounding the same sky, with the same
wind tearing at our flimsy masks.
WOMAN WAVING TO TREES
Not that anyone would
notice it at first.
I have taken to marveling
at the trees in our park.
One thing I can tell you:
they are beautiful
and they know it.
They are also tired,
hundreds of years
stuck in one spot—
beautiful paralytics.
When I am under them,
they feel my gaze,
watch me wave my foolish
hand, and envy the joy
of being a moving target.
Loungers on the benches
begin to notice.
One to another,
"Well, you see all kinds ..."
Most of them sit looking
down at nothing as if there
was truly nothing else to
look at, until there is
that woman waving up
to the branching boughs
of these old trees. Raise your
heads, pals, look high,
you may see more than
you ever thought possible,
up where something might
be waving back, to tell her
she has seen the marvelous.
THE WRITER
She was standing alone near the
cocktail table when someone
came up. "Hi," he smiled.
"Hello." A brief exchange ... then,
"What do you do?" he asked.
"I write," she answered.
Writing legs, knees,
arms, fingers, writing eyes.
She had said it with
such vehemence he decided not
to ask more as she went on.
"I catch at images: toast crumbs, say,
caught in mid-fall, explode on
contact or ride missed trains.
Nobody knows where the trains
were going but everyone
was missing them.
Somewhere tomorrow is etching
a crumb tattoo on midnight's
naked back, while caterpillars spin
gracefully around the ice cap ..."
He listened for a minute,
looked at the ceiling,
and soon drifted away.
Then, "O missed train,
take me with you wherever
you're going," she murmured
in the crowd, and nobody
heard it but me.
NO SNOW
1
Nothing like a real snowfall
can make you believe
in winter.
Some of us wait for it
like children. And now
April is here.
"Not too late," insist the
dreamers at the weather bureau.
They told us yesterday
snow would begin
tomorrow morning.
Could today be tomorrow?
Could this April morning,
turn inside out
to prove they know their job?
2
A push at the
supermarket door
delivers its well-known
burst of frigid air,
and lo!, a perfect snowflake
on my sleeve.
Inside, wavering down
from nowhere,
a light snow covers all.
A hot coffee at
the café.
Try thinking of
something else,
like, "Stop shaking ..."
3
Of course:
my x-ray checkup
at the hospital ...
Buttoning up,
I cross the lobby.
Snowflakes
play
with the air
as if they
had no intention of landing.
In this temple of care
and cure
snow whirls everywhere
corridors, elevators,
even a ward
where patients lie
motionless
under blankets
of cotton and snow.
And I, am I standing?
Am I lying down?
Am I breathing?
From somewhere
a voice,
"Your x-ray was fine."
Snow falls so thickly
I can't
see the speaker.
Maybe time passes,
maybe
not.
A lurch through blowing
flakes to an
elevator.
It drops me
like an ice cube near
the entrance.
There, doors are clogged
by snowdrifts and
I am a crowd ...
Guards help us clear a way
out to this
mild late afternoon.
4
Another coffee,
—and an idea:
That's it, a good movie.
At the multiplex, ten films ...
I choose—
my favorite actress ...
Sad little
room
Viewers hunkering
under down coats,
wool caps.
Soundtrack roaring.
The screen is
wall to wall,
its desolate waste just
visible behind
our snow-spangled room.
And here, in this
whitest
of landscapes,
my favorite actress
is rescued by
sled-dogs.
"The End"
of my
day.
I drag my bones
and eyes
to the exit.
As evening walks me home,
it's still April ...
and today is still tomorrow.
ROOM, POOL, PIANO
Cruelly he said, "Go ahead and cry."
The room began to swim when
it fell into her pool of sorrow,
filled from her brimming eyes.
Contrite, he pled, "Let my lips dry them."
At that, her sobs were only sighs.
The room was in focus. Her pool drained.
She sang. He played the grand piano.
TALK
The speaker was an actor, not hired to act
but to enliven topics.
With his velvet smile and shock of pale hair
made him easy to watch
as we waited to hear what he would tell us
about ecstasy (physical),
our favorite subject, one that needed light
from a reliable source.
So we waited while he thanked his sponsors
who were also waiting,
though not for the same enlightenment,
their being sponsors
and so detached they even laughed at the
long, tangential story
he opened with while we waited some more.
The talk lasted an hour.
Outside, cold air dispersed actor, sponsors,
us; all but curiosity, hot, intact.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Coming to That by DOROTHEA TANNING Copyright © 2011 by Dorothea Tanning. Excerpted by permission of Graywolf Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Free Ride....................5Cultivation....................6
Trapeze....................7
The Only Thing....................8
Peruvian....................10
Woman Waving to Trees....................11
The Writer....................12
No Snow....................14
Room, Pool, Piano....................19
Talk....................20
Sand / Dollars....................23
Looking Up Monster and Getting Confused....................24
Interval with Kook....................25
Debonair....................28
Forecast....................29
Coming to That....................30
A Note from the Rock....................31
All Hallows' Eve....................32
My Friend....................33
At the Seaside....................34
Cedar Fork....................36
Tresses....................39
To the Rescue....................41
For Instance....................42
Artspeak....................44
Never Mind....................45
Lucky....................46
Wisdom Tinged with Joy....................47
Visit....................48
Waiting....................49
Out of the Wind....................50
Zero....................51
Artist, Once....................52
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