Poetry
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About
My work has been published in Calyx, Salamander, the Denver Quarterly, The Worchester Review, The Louisville Review, Karamu, and The Comstock Review, among other journals and in an anthology, Unbearable Uncertainty. Turnings, a poetry chapbook, was published by Pudding House Publications in December 2007. In 2014, a poem was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Still Life, Requiem and an Egg
A Poetry Chapbook - $10. Available at Bear Pond Books in Montpelier, VT Phoenix Books in Burlington and Essex, VT Prolific Press or contact me |
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About the book:
Still Life, Requiem and an Egg is a collection of poems reflecting on a life in its final decades and the cyclical nature of the universe underlying the aging process. Loss, hunger and the metaphysical are interwoven with the natural world; rivers branch like the veins of the body, a scar glints like fish bones. The forests and rivers of Vermont or the ocean off Cape Cod, are tinged with elements of science, the political and the sensual; the geometry of a snowflake, a bandolier of bullets, ocean’s salty tongue. These are poems of contemplation. Marian Willmott writes in the poem River 1, “I write to listen, to feel its power in my bones, to feel what I cannot know.” Praise for Still Life, Requiem and an Egg: "The poems in this collection are as honest and personal as they are contemplative and profound. How might a man begin to understand what it is to be a woman. How might anyone experience what it is to be this human, to endure her challenges and share her joys. In the opening “River” series, the poet invites readers to abide with her, beside and within the river that is at once her history, her own body, and a body of water in revealing intimacy. And in Part 2 poems of love and compassion for the woes of others. These are the keen observations of an accomplished painter, drawn with elegant imagery, restraint, and deft turns of phrase. Grief is a part, and also patience with the life and the writing. I look forward to more poems by Marian Willmott." ~Daniel Lusk, author of The Shower Scene from Hamlet, The Vermeer Suite, and other books "In this lovely chapbook, Marian Wilmott weaves a place in her world with stories of family, tending, and reclamation. Like the movement in the rivers that make up the first section, the poems here have an undercurrent of clarity and elements of surprise. Connections to earth layer through the later poems. Here the natural world anchors extraordinary images as the poet lives the ordinary, intermingling the erotic with the everyday. These are certainly poems to be savored slowly." ~Patricia Fontaine, author of Lifting My Shirt and editor of Healing Art & Writing: Using Creativity to Meet Illness |
Poems
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The River
The river rushes by with a force, a persistence, undulating patterns of earth brown and sky silver. A teenager balances on the bridge railing, white water and rock twenty feet below. From the air the river branches out like veins in earth, like veins of trees, of bodies. My grandmother left her house for groceries but drove to the river instead, waded into frigid water until it flowed over her, unwavering. The river rushes by with a force, a persistence. I write to listen, to feel its power in my bones, to feel what I cannot know.
Counter Top I arrive just after a thunder storm, my sister’s down 30 pounds to under 98. She’s faced with the insurmountable task of carrying a tea bag from cup to garbage, the counter piled high with week old dishes, plastic containers, jars, bottles, waiting to be washed. I brought a painting to hang over the table - an orange circle glowing through transparent blue, a metaphor, say… the light within. But here in her dark falling I put on rubber gloves and begin to scrub: sponge, dish soap, scouring pad, and now the counter top - yellow and shining. High Tide Last night we sat on the ocean beach until dark, lulled by the hugeness of it all, our bodies still vital enough to seek one another, lives entwined, almost inseparable, our time waning. Tomorrow we will return to the home that holds our past like a skin – a clay horse our daughter made, a spot on the ceiling where our kids threw spaghetti, a wooden spoon with a carved handle I’ve held for over half a century. I’ve been excising - scalpel and forceps, drawings the mice got into, years of old Christmas cards, a palomino pony bleeding its stuffing, love of my childhood. Morning sun ignites the dunes as we return to the beach. High tide has erased our footprints, the place we sat last night holding hands. We walk in silence letting icy waves break over our bare feet and sand warm them again. |
Still Life, Requiem and an Egg
I’ve heard it said, a day is like an egg, full of possibility - but cracked, scrambled or hard boiled, it makes a difference. At a local church this afternoon a choir sang Mozart’s Requiem, chords, heavy and full reverberated in the vaulted ceiling, the soprano’s high notes, unearthly. A large crucifix hung on the wall, sculpted in detail with drips of red paint. I tried to imagine a nail hammered through my hand, or harder yet, the ice grip of the one wielding the hammer. Tonight the wind howls and pelts the glass with sleet. I’m curled under a quilt sewn by my daughter from my dead mother’s clothing. In the morning I’ll cook a blue egg slid from a warm, feathered belly, boil it and scoop it -- smooth and slippery - into a porcelain cup. I’ve started a still life painting - two bowls and an urn. I’ll spend the day as though all that matters is how light creates form, how shadows deepen interiors and how color can sing -- prayerful chords in a minor key. In Velvet Thick with red eyes glowing, night descends into the house, 100,000 billion galaxies expanding and spiraling above. Alone, does fear always seep into the thick soles of our feet? Sometimes an unfinished crossword left in a chair, a sweater draped over the arm reminds me of your absence. I’ve been taking walks, hunting for small treasures, surrendering to mystery’s seduction – water carves into stone, roots branch out like veins, unearthed bones piece together histories. How many have a tooth saved, wrapped in velvet, buried in the back of a drawer? I keep the hand-like bones of a flipper found in the sand. The bones of our hands are particularly complicated, especially the fingers – what we cannot hold and what we can. 
Oil on board 12" x 12"
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Marian Willmott ~ marianw@gmavt.net ~ 802-482-3131 ~ www.willmottstudios.com
