poemeleon

While some people born into a line of bakers may find yeast under their fingernails, I grew up breathing linseed oil in a family of artists. Like all my relatives, I pondered color, scale and line. I painted and drew like my grandmother, whose oil of Mexico inspired the second stanza of "Confessional." Perhaps, owing to this influence, all artists feel like familiars – whether Kahlo, Caillebotte or Cezanne: We have each stood before the canvas, scrunched our brushes furiously against its surface, stepped back, sighed in attempts to balance intention and skill, and signed our names in completion. Today, I pour this compulsion toward image into poetry – as well as my affection and gratitude for artists living and dead. A completed poem today, after many sketches, eventually glistens with a kind of de Medici gold.