Amazingly, the person who ended up writing poems about the students' artwork was the original poet himself: Martin Willitts, Jr! We have been having an email correspondence. He was very impressed with the students' artwork. And more than that, the students were blown away that a poet took the time to write an original piece about each of their works of art.
Above each artwork you will find the initial snippet of poetry that the student was assigned to visually interpret (from Willitts' Improvisations in Darkness). This text will be italicized. Below each artwork, you will find the original poem Mr. Willitts wrote in response to each work of art. This text will not be italicized.
Memory comes,
and unfortunately,
goes
when needed most,
when age removes it,
replacing with forgetfulness,
shadows of memory,
lights going on
one by one,
hallways emptying.
Where are the stars tonight?
I cannot find myself in such darkness.
I have never felt more alone and abandoned.
It is soundless here. I cannot find anything
in this nothingness, removed from every
thing. I have forgotten all I knew.
is a mouth swallowing the stars. Such loss!
If I move I might disappear in intense
darkness.
Going into the unknown,
expect surprises.
A diamond border white wallpaper
with blueberry prints surround a window
where the outside is telescoped
through a deep rectangle box frame,
like distance needs to be further
than it is to make a statement of art
and philosophy of life — how not
one thing is connected as it should be.
When you are young with this distance,
parents feel over-controlling
fearing the lack of control
because their child is changing
before them, and perhaps, their child
is a changeling left behind
by the wee folk, taking their real child.
This is what happens when children
are no longer children, but finding
their own way through the loss.
But I tell you, things just become muddled
when you get older, less clear
when you have your own child
rebelling because they need to.
In Total Darkness
there is no such thing
as darkness.
The lack of light,
is the lack of imagination.
An angel is shamed.
Stars like red crosses plummet
and pummel on its trashed wings.
A person says, This must be
the end of times.
It is not.
five times before it is fallen.
The stars become red fireflies
and the angel cannot watch
the world crashes around.
An angel cannot stare into the redness.
They are comets, they are accusations,
they are crimes against nature,
they are eyes closed against war.
The sky is punctured.
All the angel can do is express, sorry.
When we forget our purpose in life,
if we feel overwhelmed and pressured
trying against all odds
to do the right thing, it gets cumbersome.
We can only stand up so many times,
be pushed back or bullied so much,
then all retreat becomes inward.
I am sure you have felt this way.
What are you going to do about it?
Angels can rise with one battered wing;
can you? Can you?
In Total Darkness,
you develop a sense
of where things are.
There is movement and stillness,
crushed together, like a call for help
in a damaged windpipe.
Two unrelated pressures,
like late homework or what to do
on a first date. Nothing seems right.
Everything feels against something
or for something,
or feels numb,
or feels jumpy-jerky and wavy.
It’s the feeling of uncertainty, or
too confident for anyone’s good,
or both at the same time.
We cannot control the uncontrollable
but we can try to get out of its way
if it snowballs, enlarging, as it reaches.
I would like to say it gets easier.
It doesn’t. You can realize it’s normal.
It does not have to be this way or that.
When it gets too much, take it apart.
Usually there are smaller answers
and build on those small successes.
Until then,
I grab onto fistfuls of light,
keep them in a drawer,
write flames of memory,
turn darkness into origami,
my chin yellow
from holding a Buttercup.
Three yellow paper flowers
on the foreground
of memory
this is what we remember
in diminished background
the illusion of distance
is when everything is up front
there is no sense of balance
or perspective
the world becomes flat
as a flat map unfolded
on the blanket in a field
picnic near three daffodils
like a staged play
where we are all pretending,
and the actors are yellow flowers
representing surrender
against a blue curtain of absence
at any moment, the stage hands
might pull the ropes and
the curtains will close,
sirens will wail like trombones.
like ransom notes
threatening us to remember
something
we either cannot remember
or want desperately to forget.
I might be coming your way.
The alley is nowhere to be
when you are lost
and alone, and strangeness
comes out of brick walls
like an astronaut cut loose
or a woman wearing a mask
to avoid the nauseating air.
A working streetlight
only reassures so much
until we see the locked
receiving door not receiving us
at this unforgiving hour
of amplified sounds
and wet brick walls with voices.
We are only as secure
as safety and insecurity allows.
We are coming, warn the voices.
The darkness gangs up on us.
If you blow a whistle,
will rescue come in time?
How safe are you really,
when you think about it?
If you and I met somewhere
this dark, what would you think?
Would you wonder
what we are both doing out this late
this far-off our normal path?
More likely, one of us would feel fear
and release that tension
when the other, unknown, passes
and nothing happened
except in our own imagination.
True blindness
continues
when we continue
even after
knowing the facts.
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My son went away, following a path
to the horizon. I knew, soon,
he would be out of my sight.
I would have to let go
like a thick tree throws its leaves
in despair.
I knew where he was going
I could not go.
All I could do is watch
until I could not see anymore.
Unlike the leaves
returning as promised,
where he was going
was where I cannot go.
I clean his room of his childhood
like emptying branches.
That road, it leads somewhere,
and where it goes
I cannot know yet.
Going from dark
into darker,
there is always
ambient light –
like rain
against windows,
soft, then hard,
then noticing
it's gone.
Words travel pass
like a subway
passes a poster
the words register
they are long gone
life is like this —
by the time we think
we understand it, it’s gone
by the time you read this
I would be somewhere
in the past
Why can't memory be
a Buttercup
we held to our chins
when we were children
to see who liked butter,
but instead,
this Buttercup Memory
would show
who remembers
what is necessary
and forgets
what needs forgiving
There are days that wait
for someone to watch
while the nothing happens—
all that small, unnoticed,
need attention to detail,
in brushy undergrowth.
There are edges of coniferous
expectations, habitats
for dark-eyed Northern Junco,
their musical chipping trills,
sometimes ending with a smack,
saying, notice
me, notice me.
We all need to remember
what is necessary. These songs
of love is the same in heart,
memory and forgiveness
where all love rests like musical notes.
Forgiveness depends on the flight
to forgetting the past, the damage
to tree and people and air and love
to get past loss, to get to where you need
to get to in order to repair your heart,
then let go of that damaging past.
You might not receive any response.
That is unimportant. If they want to carry
anger like pines carry green,
that’s their loss, their song held wrongly.
Do not be them. Be the trill
heard from Canada to Mexico:
I am healed; I am healing. Let
them
be thistle. Remember: the Junco
feeds on thistle and spits it out.
The opposite of loss
is finding
Five women enter suffering
so others do not have to.
Their pain is shared pain.
All actions speak loudly.
All speak for the unspeakable.
They come to warn us
where we have gone wrong.
They carry messages of war
like it will break them
into twigs, into nothing,
not even memory.
No one listens to earth.
They come to warn us
the tribulations of childbirth
proclaiming babies are dying
soon as they are born.
No one listens to wind.
They warn, like a Greek Chorus.
No one listens to the ocean waves.
The third woman collapses
as if the news was heavier
than loss, like she was carrying
a mountain or a dove killed in flight.
No one listens to the dying.
like furies, like women scorned,
like dancing knives, like beached whales.
The forth woman knows her turn
like the prophet led to a burning.
No one listens to the young.
between have and have-not
and the gulf in between is moaning.
Under many stars, the fifth woman frowns.
There is too much of problems
and too little of solutions.
No one listens with their ears closed.
Joan of Arc spoke like this.
All vision. All passion and place,
and warning. And look at what it got her.
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