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Cuttings_1 - 4

1991.
Mixed Media

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Theodore Roethke's poem, Cuttings*  inspired this series. I attempted to express the feeling of the words through the visual texture and rhythms of the letters.

*Cuttings
This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks,
Cut stems struggling to put down feet,
What saint strained so much,
Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?
I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing,
In my veins, in my bones I feel it –
The small waters seeping upward,
The tight grains parting at last.
When sprouts break out,
Slippery as fish,
I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.