The Thorn and the Rose

But he who dares not grasp the thorn

should never crave the rose.

Anne Bronte

Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver, born 1935, is a major American poet who has won both the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize.  She gives us lovely guides to natural things -- hummingbirds, owls, still ponds -- and finds a place for herself and humankind in the midst of the natural world.  Here is a small series of collages I adapted from a recent artist's book to illustrate several lines from the verses of Mary Oliver:

I was the bridegroom taking the world into

my arms...

("When Death Comes" by Mary Oliver)

Let grief be your sister...

("Flare" by Mary Oliver)

When death comes like an iceberg

between the shoulder blades...

("When Death Comes" by Mary Oliver)

Across the Universe

Across the Universe (On foot I had to cross the solar system...)

Across the Universe (...before I found the first thread of my red dress.)

On foot

I had to cross the solar system

before I found the first thread of my red dress.

I sense myself already.

Somewhere in space hangs my heart,

shaking in the void, from it streams sparks

into other intemperate hearts.

Edith Sodergran (Swedish/Finnish poet, 1892-1923)

hourglass museum

Kelli Russell Agodon is a prize-winning poet, writer and editor from the Northwest.  She chose one of my collages ("One Woman Frightened by Max Ernst's Nightingale") as the cover of her newest volume of poems entitled HOURGLASS MUSEUM.

And here's one of her beautiful haunting poems to convince you to buy yourself a new book of poetry:

Sketchbook With an Undercurrent of Grief

     I escape disaster by writing a poem with a joke in it:
     The past, present, and future walk into a bar--it was tense.
     There's everything to kill with laughter. I browsed
     the magazine in his hospital room. At my father's
     last breath, I saw an ad for sky.

     My father always said he was part Irish, part Scotch.
     I used to jog, but the ice kept falling out of my glass.
     I think of Warhol's Dom Perignon ad--dead artists
     returning to sell champagne.

     My father's body was moved from the room,
     they put ice on his eyes--the only organ healthy
     enough to donate. Did I start out by saying:
     I escape disaster by writing a poem with a joke in it?
     Those last five words weren't necessary.

     A girl walks into a bard.

(Kelli Russell Agodon, "HOURGLASS MUSEUM," 2014)