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July 21, 2008

'The perfect circle'

Albright_local_albright_scu

In keeping with our story about convergences among the arts, I just ran across a blog entry in which an Albright-Knox Art Gallery visitor was inspired to write a poem after viewing the beautiful piece "+ and -" by Mona Hatoum.

I'll post it after the jump in its entirety and link to it here.

--Colin Dabkowski

"Redrawn"

-Upon viewing Mona Hatoum’s “+ or –“
Albright Knox Art Gallery
7/18/08

The perfect circle
eternally revolving
evolving
built up to be torn down.

A gray infant
pulled from the rubble
lifted overhead, covered in dust.

Buildings toppled
neighborhoods demolished
a mother found wrapped around
her baby.

47 wedding guests and the bride–
39 were women and children–
all killed while walking to the reception.

Walls and borders and checkpoints.
Machine guns and bulldozers and cluster bombs.

Land rolled over
again and again
maps redrawn
rolled up
carted away.

Sand silently revolves
evolves into one place
devolves into another
each grain
malleable
moveable.

Transience of place
ephemeral lives
covered in,
then relegated,
to the dust.

The circle continues
silent movement
never reaching
what one might
call home.

Posted at 06:10 AM |

Comments

A cheerful bit of poetry.

Posted by: Don H | July 22, 2008 at 10:54 AM

Got it -- thanks for writing!

Posted by: Colin | July 21, 2008 at 01:32 PM

Also, I just noticed that you did not title the poem correctly. The correct title is "Redrawn." Thanks.

Posted by: Brenda J. Cowe | July 21, 2008 at 01:02 PM

I wrote the poem last Thursday while on a tour as one of the fellows for the Western New York Writing Project. We had a "writing" tour given by a former fellow on Thursday afternoon. Thanks for sharing my poem here.

Posted by: Brenda J. Cowe | July 21, 2008 at 01:00 PM

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Buffalo is known for its thriving arts community and the writers who keep close tabs on the fine arts - Colin Dabkowski, Mary Kunz Goldman, Jeff Simon and R.D. Pohl - will share their insight of what's happening on local stages, in the art galleries, at the concert halls and in the publishing houses.

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Reader comments are posted immediately and are not edited. Please use good taste, be respectful of other writers, keep comments relevant to the post and do not impersonate someone else. We are not responsible for the comments on this blog, but we reserve the right to remove any that are libelous, obscene, threatening, abusive, or otherwise offensive, and to block any user who does not follow these guidelines. Comments containing objectionable words are automatically blocked. Some comments may be re-published in The Buffalo News print edition.