What Leans Close
The world births itself in increments; violence and grace hover above our cribs like mobiles.
We watch the glow of animals and stars jostle and sway — each dangling wire a shiny tentacle of flame.
We reach for what leans close.
The power to choose leaves as what we grasp seizes us, becomes permanent in our new clay.
Still wet, we rise on wobbly legs into the future that holds the sculpted imprint of the tools that make us fit the mold of what we have been told.
Glint (top left) acrylic on canvas, 14" x 20", $850 The Constancy of Yearning (below the Artist's portrait) 12"x 12", Sold A Morphing Feast of Possibilities (2nd down on right) mixed media, 32" x 31", $3700 Possibilities (middle left) acrylic on canvas, 20" x 24" , $2500 Seascape, (bottom image) watercolor, 8" x 22", $650 What Leans Close, A Poem by Rosalind Brenner
"Feeling a call to create from a place that is deep inside my psyche or perhaps from a place called soul, I climb the stairs to my studio and try to leave thought and worry behind. The blank page challenges me to dive into writing. My poetry takes on color, story, sound, shape and texture. It is narrative lyric, capturing a moment, a mood landscape, or relationship. I believe in exploration. I plunge in to retrieve a memory of place, or to conjure the images and thoughts that live in me that are somehow eager to be expressed. Then I play. What results, I believe, is a sense of wonder, a kind of depiction of joy, mystery, wisdom, or sometimes just plain fun. I edit many times once the initial burst is down on paper and work to achieve the most concise language that expresses the idea.
Although I am a visual artist professionally, with an active painting and stained glass studio in East Hampton, I have always been a writer, keep journals, write poetry, short stories and essays. I love the study of language, dive into the dictionary for pleasure. Of late, I have been digressing a bit from memory poems, composing what one of my teachers calls “mash” poems: new rhythms and forms, quirky juxtapositions of language, experimental flavors. This has broadened my range and been a very exciting journey.
I hold an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. The poems have been published in The Cortland Review, Poetry Bay, The Southampton Review, Long Island Sounds, Walt’s Corner in The Long Islander, Taproot Journal, Performance Poets Association Literary Review, Ontologica, among others. Other poems are included in Cave Moon Press’ Broken Circles for their hunger project. I have three poems in Spring, 2011, The Arroyo Literary Review. I have read and performed my work for audiences at a variety of readings, including as a poet/actor in Poetry Repertory Theater, Long Island, NY. I won Honorable Mention in Long Island Quarterly’s Gertrude Stein “look-alike” contest, second prize in The North Sea Poetry Scene poetry contest and two Honorable Mentions in The New Millennium national contest, one for essay, one for poetry. My published chapbooks are All That’s Left, which combines my art and poems and Omega’s Garden, published by Finishing Line Press, 2012." —Rosalind Brenner, Artist & Poet
East Hampton, New York
rosalindbrenner.com
