“Evening Storm" by Sharon Dolin

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend May 17, 2017   Evening Storm   Sharon Dolin

I want to paint the livingness of appearances.             —Marsden Hartley   What of these evening storms where foam becomes rock—wave becomes cove. Inside the billow as you always dreamed it would be two men collapse into being. Like so, the rocks give up their solid stance. If Hart threw himself from ship to sea, how can you, Hartley, hardly alive in this solitude, not find his eye inside of you. There is a crest a recurring tall wave that comes for you. So little light gets through other than in sea foam your desire knit to storm—here is your Maine mountain where the upsurge the passional thrust gets through.            Copyright © 2017 Sharon Dolin. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "I wrote 'Evening Storm' when The Met Breuer, in partnership with Poets House, invited me to read my poetry during Met-Fridays in response to a painting in the exhibition Marsden Hartley's Maine. The themes of homoerotic desire and death are the through lines I found in Hartley's paintings, which seem to culminate in his late seascapes. The Hart mentioned was his friend Hart Crane, whose name, I only realized in writing this poem, nests orthographically inside Hartley's own name." —Sharon Dolin   Sharon Dolin is the author of Manual for Living (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016). She directs and teaches in the Writing About Art in Barcelona workshop and lives in New York City.   Photo credit: T. S. Ellis    Poetry by Dolin   Manual for Living (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016) "The Sea Is History" by Derek Walcott "Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea [excerpt]" by Dunya Mikhail "Painting by Moonlight" by Medbh McGuckian Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. If you enjoy Poem-a-Day, please consider making a donation to help make it possible. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038

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