New Poetry

Type of Work: Figure Drawing, Calligraphy
Fall 2014

Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Anne Sexton. On first glance, they don’t have much in common. They lived in different countries, at different points in history. They wrote different types of poetry and faced different struggles in their careers as female poets. I wanted to create a body of work that unites these women in some way. I searched their poems for some small commonality; the selected poems all contain the words flowers and heart. This small detail served as the basis for my work.

The centerpiece of this triptych, done in ink, is Anne Sexton’s “For My Lover Upon Returning to His Wife” in which a man’s mistress ends their affair. The two end pieces feature inked calligraphy overlaid with graphite sketches on parchment. The left piece features Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 44, which could be read as one of the women’s diary. The right piece features Emily Dickinson’s “I hide myself within my flower,” which could be read as the other woman’s point of view. For both women, thoughts (the poems) are obscured behind visages and only a few words surface for others to see. In this juxtaposition, three disparate poems create a new story, a new piece of poetry that bridges decades and oceans.

Photos:
1.  Triptych
2. Leftmost piece, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 44
3. Centerpiece, Anne Sexton’s “For My Lover Upon Returning to His Wife”
4. Rightmost piece, Emily Dickinson’s “I hide myself within my flower”