I'm going to start with two poems
about looking at paintings.
This one is from a book called A Door in the Hive,
and it's called "The Life of Art."
"The borderland, that's where, if one knew how,
one would establish residence--
that watershed, that spine, that looking glass.
I mean, the edge between impasto surface, burnt sienna's
fixed, striate, gleaming swathes,
and windrows of carnal paint or canvas barely stained,
where warp and weft peer through.
And fictive truth-- a room, a vase, an open door--
giving upon the cloud.
A step back and you have the likeness, its own world.
Step to the wall again, and you are so near
the paint you could lick it.
You breathe its ghostly turpentine.
But there's an interface--
immeasurable, elusive.
An equilibrium just attainable sometimes
when the attention is rightly poised, where you are opulently
received by the bravura gestures, hand and brush
proffer, as if a courtier twirled a feathered velvet
hat to bow you in.
And yet, without losing sight of one stroke, one scrape
of the knife, you are drawn through into that room,
into its air and temperature.
Couldn't one learn to maintain that exquisite balance
more than a second?
One sees even the penciled understrokes and shivers
in pleasure.
And one's fingertips touch the carpet's nubs of wool,
the cold fruit in a bowl.
One almost sees what lies beyond the window,
past the frame beyond."