All About Mentoring Spring 2011 - SUNY Empire State College

30
like the dynamics in dance
of fall and recovery, tension and release,
suspension, rebound, up and over,
isolating our center from our extremities
so we can whip our head round,
flick arms akimbo,
swing our legs in loosened hip sockets
and preserve our center of gravity
that pulses power into the flightiness
of fingertips, elbows, toes.
The Tilt-A-Whirl remains still at its center,
so that if you stood there,
regarding the hills and dales traversed by the
whirling red chairs,
you’d revolve slowly,
still yet moving,
surveying the fairground.
Still yet moving is how to tilt,
moving the torso without breaking the line
between upper rib cage and hip,
just carving out the underside.
This is how I find myself:
carve out that underside, that ignored
negative space,
breathe into it, energize it,
a bubble of air
to create a vector
in the opposite direction.
I used to break lines of passion
allowing that dead space to intrude,
pull me off balance, crumpling my form.
The key to tilting side is pulling upright
– dance works by forces in opposition –
pulling the left hand away from the right
knee
feeling the line of connection between them,
pushing the floor away with the standing leg
as my center settles.
I emerge from a crumpled world
of desires too close-bound
and vectorless
into a place where opposing pulls
expand me, birdlike,
aligning delicate bones
into a tilted
vertiginous
exhilaratingly lopsided
interstice.
Mindy Kronenberg
Long Island Center
When I was asked by Mara Mills, along
with colleagues from Empire State College,
to be a part of the Upstream Gallery
exhibit, “Collaboration is the Theme,” I
was delighted at the prospect of working
with a visual artist to test my own poetic
perspective and linguistic sensibility. In
the past few years, I had participated
in collaborative exhibits at art galleries
on Long Island, some sponsored by the
Survivors Art Foundation. These had
provocative and poignant themes such as
Breaking the Walls of Bias and The Body
Altered, and I wrote poems in response
to works in various media that expressed
a spectrum of pain and triumph. It was a
challenging exercise in both artistic license
and humility.
Mara asked each of us to connect with an
artist from a list of Upstream community
regulars, view their work online, and make
a connection with someone whose visions
or artistic execution resonated with our
own. She left the nature and process of these
collaborative pairings entirely up to us. I
was drawn to Arline Simon’s collages and
sculptures for their metaphoric possibilities –
they spoke to me in images, abstract and
representational, whimsical and dark –
that sparked my curiosity while inspiring
my own narratives. Arline and I had
conversations by email and on the phone,
sharing images and poetry until pairings
clicked for both of us. I was drawn to three
of her works, using an existing poem for a
mixed-media piece, and writing new poems
for a sculpture and the acrylic collage,
“Minding the Grid,” which struck me as
both a window and warning sign to the
artist and viewer.
Minding the Grid
There is no map
to where the pigments
of her imagination take her,
no kick line of wired poles
crowning miles of fertile ground.
A panicked stranger
rides the brakes
looking for signs,
points to a passenger’s
lap tented and veined
with turnpikes and tolls.
A billboard reads:
The shortest distance
between two lines
is not art.
Mind the grid
and it minds you,
hapless traveler.
These roads might well
point toward the light,
but look around you.
We roll on empty
straight into the dark.
Arline Simon’s “Minding the Grid”
suny empire state college • all about mentoring • issue 39 • spring 2011