When even a minimalist work seems to be alive, full of motion…well, that’s how Reclining Woman and Guitarist, 1959, Pablo Picasso, linocut on paper, strikes me. You can see it in Ohio’s Akron Museum, if it is on display while you are there. Here’s a link if you’re not planning to stop by there any time soon.
A linocut is when a design is cut into a sheet of linoleum, then inked and printed. We did it when I was a Girl Scout, and let me tell you, nothing I made was even recognizable, let alone worthy of hanging in a museum. Nor was it interesting enough to claim it was abstract art.
I actually don’t have much drawing ability. I blame that on the fact I was super-nearsighted but managed to get through life without glasses until I was 10 years old. Let’s just say that the way I saw the world before glasses didn’t have as much relationship to reality as I had believed. I was lucky not to have been hit by a car, walking to school in Rochester, NY, since I couldn’t really judge where were the corners of things, let alone how far away a car was or how fast it was moving. Of course, there was safety in numbers, which is why the kids on my street were required to walk to school together as a group. But I digress…
I learned to play guitar in high school but stopped…
when my teacher informed me “all guitarists sing along.” I not only can’t draw, I can’t sing, either. So I don’t sing along. At least not in public, or not too loudly. I have one of those ‘can’t carry a tune in a bucket’ voices.
It used to bother me. I grew up going to a tiny church, the kind where, if thirty people were present, it must be Easter. Now, there’s no hiding a voice in a church that size, which used to bother me. But I’ve gotten used to it. I’ve adjusted. I limit my singing to church, where people are required to be polite (at least to my face) about the ‘joyful noise’ I am making (emphasis on noise) as I use my four decently executed notes from the scale of B flat, over and over, and in whatever order seems comfortable to me. Or I sing alone in the car, loudly.
Anyway, I never became a guitarist, let alone serenaded anyone. Still, this linocut by Picasso makes me wonder what the guitarist is singing, because the woman seems pretty happy with it. Or maybe she’s happy about something else. Perhaps she’s done something spectacular, something to be proud of, and is basking in the glow of success while the guitarist immortalizes her in song.
After Picasso’s Reclining Woman and Guitarist
I want a book cover that looks like
this print, all strong strokes,
dark outline. I want the woman
to be basking in her Detective success,
having put away a murderer for life,
and righted other evils, too. I want
the guitarist to be the hired hand
contracted to serenade her then ensure,
with his lovely long and agile fingers,
that celebration of her is sounded upon
all the nerves of her body:
vagas, intercostal, pudendal.
Even the nerve she had
to do some man’s job, even
the lumbar plexus and sciatic,
even the tiny unnamed nerves
shingled and bundled
in not-so-secret places,
even the vast nerve of the sky
that spreads across and through
her skin, celebrating with the universe.
I want to ink and print this book
again and again and again.
If you enjoyed this poem
Some of my other poems that address art: Echo; Out of Time; and More Parts: Add Up
You’ll find more of my poems on this blog or in the collection Stars Crawl Out From Their Caves, which is available in both ebook and print.
(See how that pictures only partly in focus…reminds me of my youth….)
Missed a poem of the week? Links to prior weeks are on this page.