Lens

By Grace Marie Grafton

Unique and commonplace, wise and funny, wild and cultivated, the poems in LENS, by Grace Marie Grafton, invite readers to explore with her the faces, places, history and mythic imagination of artists of California from 1853-2010.

These quixotic, skillful poems display a sensitive respect for the art that inspired them. The author has selected sixty six pieces of artwork that collectively display the astounding breadth of art that California has evoked and that therefore afford her sufficient content to showcase her mastery of a refreshing variety of writing styles. As her poem, "Muse," from LENS, says, "she could spell the letters in summer shapes/ she could hold you down in a fight/ she unlocks the midnight door for you." Her poems will help you see art, poetry and California through a new lens.

Rather than describe the content of a painting, Grafton uses any given piece of art as a launching pad for imaginative excursions that are creative and frequently surprising. The reader accompanies her into the Sierra Nevada, the redwoods, the beach, coastal hills, valley farms, orchards, Depression-era streets, an internment camp, the weather. In response to figurative art, she writes narratively. With surreal art, a reader's mind is opened. With abstract art, her poem might be associative or break all over the page.

Welcome to the historical, environmental and artistic richness of California and Ms. Grafton's adventuresome poems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Unsolicited Press
• Release date: Mar 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393680253

Book preview

Table of Contents

AWE

High Sierra, 1878

The Beach

The Artist Paints the Light

Burning in San Francisco Bay

Hunter

Rocks

Chef of the Palace Hotel

Easter Harvest

Failed Story

River under Redwoods

LAND'S END

Coming into . . .

Canyon, Santa Barbara

Come True

Houseboats

Land's End

What the Wave Gives

Alone

Homestead

Thirst

Noon or: Southwest

Lone Pine and Mt. Whitney

Bargain

Friends

EARTH BOUND

The Central Valley

Salmon Fishing

Vineyard

Oranges

Chickens

Artichoke Picker

Walnut Grove

During War

Death at an Early Age

Internment

Inhabit

The Camp

The Carousel and the War

Down and Out

RESTLESS

Iris in the Sky

Muse

Cat and a Ball

The 1950s

Afraid of Mice

Slopes

April

Abstract

Calendar

Mandala

Sister Speaks to Brother

Dancer

Heritage

Day of the Dead

Point of View

Party

Wave Sculpture

Brain Map

A Fish in Water

PRESERVE

Succession (1)

Succession (2)

Earthquake Country

Sky

Red

Berry Vine

Autumnal Equinox

Fog

Sequoia

September

Acknowledgments for LENS

About the Author

About the Press

AWE

High Sierra, 1878

Where they got off the horses,

almost rusted to the saddle,

how many more days with

the high peaks, white drama,

still before them? The incredible

light a gewgaw they tossed

between them, altitude skewing

thought, changing their words into

bubbles and baubles. But —

creaky joints set down alongside

creeks so new they dashed and

washed the rocks, wet the air,

swooped — clattered — roared.

No stopping the water, wasn’t

that what they came for? Climbing

on those horses, abandoning

good sense to ride four, five

days into this feral, unleashed

land available only in summer

and here they were, subject to

its unreasonable solutions.

Kings River Canyon

William Keith, 1878

The Beach

These people who gravitate to water,

the beach, the blank sky, clouded sky, storm

speaking the well-known, threatening song.

Picnic baskets wrestled through sand,

young mother under a rigged-up tent.

Nursing her infant, introducing him to

the waves’ beat and shush-shush

on the shore. Father in bare feet —  

the way clear surf curls around skin,

a friendly hand, lyric phrase.

Before the gray rain, before the whale’s

washed-up corpse, before the flies or

sand fleas. Pay the price. Sunburn,

grit under bathing suit’s band.

A sense of escape worth the bother,

the memory of many someones

who launched into this strange,

familiar element, laid out on their backs,

nothing blocking their gaze. Let the swells

lift and lower them while underneath

whisper the bones, the life inside shells,

spikes, scales, fins, hunger, the Other.

Santa Monica

Ernest Narjot, 1889

The Artist Paints the Light

The light in Yosemite Valley lifts his mind

to the height of granite cliffs and

there he is, next to a black oak,

trunk a solid soldier ready to ascend

with him into the impossible ether.

His vision rises to the topmost leaves,

shares the compulsion

to merge with unadulterated light,

how it rushes out of blue