Poetry Paint Play

Ever heard of Marla Olmstead? The 2007 movie, My Kid Could Paint That, is a documentary about this child prodigy and the adults who go a bit nuts around her and in the art world.

I discovered it just a few minutes ago - when I was looking for images of "playing with paint." I wanted images of playing with paint because I have been thinking about Anon.'s comment about my absurdly difficult time with my Poetry final. (I've been thinking about the comment whilst writing the paper - I'm almost done - a short concluding section, and I'll be ready to let it rise overnight so I can punch it down tomorrow)

See the kid's face on the movie poster? That's how I feel when I'm immersed in this poetry. I'm having a good time. I feel exuberant. I love love love what poetry does. I like to play in it. But ... well ... writing a paper about it means someone else will watch me playing. I'm being caught with a brush in my hand. It just feels ... weird. I'm a little chagrined. (It helps to bleed off some of the energy and nerves here, on my blog. And that's weird too. Because I need words to get onto the paper, I also need to bleed off a whole bunch of extra ones. I get all jammed up.)

But I do love these poems. Rosmarie Waldrop's "Conversation I: On the Horizontal," from her book, Reluctant Gravities, and Anne Sexton's "Her Kind." I don't think my kid could paint like that. I'm pretty sure I can't either. But it sure is fun to play with the paint.

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.