Last Poet in the Woods
Artists’ Statement
Through artwork and poetry, Last Poet in the Woods is a plea to preserve the natural beauty left in our world. These paintings and poems are informed by the concept of Biophilia as defined by Pulitzer Prize winning author Edward O. Wilson: “the urge to affiliate with other forms of life.” During this Anthropocene epoch, we have witnessed the rapid extinction of species, the melting of glaciers, the proliferation of forest fires, rising sea levels, climate change, and more frequent and intense tornadoes and hurricanes. Last Poet in the Woods is a bold aesthetic statement to create an enduring testimony to the wonders of the natural world.
Our ekphrastic exhibit is inspired by the contemporary classic Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv. Louv argues convincingly that children, as well as parents, educators, and communities suffer from Nature-deficit disorder. He writes: “Nature-deficit disorder describes the human costs of alienation from nature, among them: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses.”
In an era in which both children and adults spend the major part of their waking lives tethered to their digital devices, our exhibit beckons one to experience something deeper and more expansive: to discover the natural world outside ourselves. As the vision of our world has increasingly shrunk to the size of a small screen on a smart phone, we have lost the inclination to look up and out at the beauty of our world. Louv notes that the concept of “Biophilia is supported by research that reveals how strongly and positively people respond to open, grassy landscapes, scattered stands of trees, meadows, water, winding trails, and elevated views.” It is this positive encounter with nature we hope to inspire through the vibrant colors, expansive landscapes, and wooded trails in these watercolor paintings and in the poems written in response to them.
Preview of Last Poet in the Woods
As You Like It
What calls her to the trail each morning,
the one that winds through the canyon
beside the fast-running stream,
cold with snow melt,
adjacent to Pueblo lands?
She is out the door before my second cup of coffee,
in floral blouse, blue jeans, low cut hiking shoes,
her fanny pack filled with brushes and palette,
spray bottles, watercolor paper, a thin knife,
poised to discover the lines and textures of her walk.
First, there is the line, either straight or curved,
like the life we live, both straight and curved.
A line has direction, but which way to turn,
left or right, up or down.
What lines will define her shapes and patterns?
And there is texture, rough or smooth,
much like her living in these mountains,
far from the sea level of her former self —
banished, like the Duke from his court,
only to discover “tongues in trees.”
She hangs the green guitar on the branch of an Aspen
as only a painter could, no mere mortal
but a goddess who will create a thousand works,
flowers that sing beside the creek in summer,
snow-covered, obeisant pines in winter.
Deer Winter Moon
All day I skied
down and up the slopes
leaning into each turn
as if grappling with the truth.
I listened to Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things”
driving down the winding mountain road before evening,
past the crows and magpies in the cottonwood branches.
At dusk,
the mule deer ambled
to the side of the road
from out behind sage and chamiso . . .
Cautious, as I drove by them,
Coltrane’s drummer beating a rhythm into the night.
When I arrived home
my wife called out to me –
there — in our backyard
beneath the full moon
rising above the saddle of Wolf mountain —
there — in the silvery, moonlit snowscape
beside the frozen bird bath —
a doe,
looking in at us
as if she would like to enter and stay warm
as if she would like to come in and lie down with us.
Flute Music
I saw him in his orange cap knee-deep in the Rio Grande, the fresh snow-melt, cold waters of spring running fast downstream, past ponderosa pines along the riparian banks.
He looked so calm there, poised to catch a trout, the mid-afternoon sun glinting off the shoreline’s boulders and rocks.
I was looking at him, waiting for something grand to take his line, and then turned my head down to read the lines on the page, one poem and then another in the third section of The Kabir Book – “The Only Woman Awake is the Woman Who Has Heard the Flute” – and when I looked up from the music on the page, there was no one standing there by the bank in the fresh water, but I could hear more intently the melodious notes of the river, like a flute.
I looked up at the rim of the gorge with its insistent junipers, over the trees to the Northern New Mexico blue sky. I was awake now to the flute music. But the fisherman was gone!
