"The poems in this new collection from Brenda Nicholas are all inspired in one way or another by the works of Navajo artist R. C. Gorman, and it's a bonus if the reader is led to investigate Gorman's art through this connection. But these are ekphrastic poems of the highest order, in that it isn't really necessary to see the art that inspires the poem, nor do the poems often describe the works themselves. Instead, the art serve as impetus for Nicholas to consider her true subject matter here, which is womanhood and motherhood. Thus a Gorman depiction of a Navajo woman surrounded by turquoise beads prompts the poem 'Devotional' in which the beads re-emerge in the interplay between a daughter and her exhausted mother - 'Let's play dress-up!' - an occasion recalled years later after the daughter is long grown and gone, the mother left touching a 'cold empty space in front of her' that once was 'their little church on the floor, full of songs.' These are achingly lovely, essential poems, full of hard-won wisdom: 'When I was young, I thought I could own love,' she confesses, 'I thought love meant taming / a wandering neighborhood beast / with a regular schedule of food / from my body's cupboard' - only to realize with time that 'you are but a butterfly on my shoulder, / and I cannot hold you / longer than you plan to stay.' Nicholas acknowledges her muse and their shared vocation in 'Ars Poetica II' (after a self-portrait of the artist): 'I see your colors connect to my poems / how both are consumed by eyes / how underneath are hidden bones.'" -- provided by distributor
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