In Praise of the Unsung Artists

by'

Sheila Curran

       Two weeks ago I was looking at Istanbul from our rooftop terrace, celebrating my husband's birthday, my daughter's graduation from high school, my son's finishing his master's and moving on to a real job in the real world.  And me, of course, in the unreal world, as always, startled by the beauty of a city I'd not really wanted to visit.  Twenty million people live there now and I didn't really know it existed.  Not like Rome, or Paris.  Not even like Paris, Texas, which was the name of a boutique around the corner from our rental flat.  Twenty million now, but it was also the birthplace of so many things, so many centuries ago, built by the anonymous artisans of days gone by.  

        Somehow, the glorious view of the tip of Asia brought me to think of all those artists who labor, not for fame or money, but simply because it's what they do.  It's not easy, but it's something they give to the world.   One of the things I treasure, every day, when I start my work, is a painting my sister, Teresa Maria, sent me several years back.  She doesn't call herself an artist, she wouldn't dare.  Painting is hard work, it's angst-ridden, but it's something she does, and then dismisses as not worthy.

I beg to differ.

And then there is a dear friend, whose name is Jane Ulrich.  She is a poet, but like my sister, wouldn't call herself that unless horsewhipped into it by fans like me.  She is a mom, first and foremost, she is  a wife, a gardener, and a brilliant cook.  But it's her poetry that I treasure, over and over, and present to you, just a small sample.  These two poems wrestle with the difficult business that is this creative life, whether it's art or writing, or making a mosaic ceiling that years later tourists will squint to see.

Writing

The laundry is soaking upstairs, down here the dishes need to be washed 

and the piles on the tables weigh on me like wet snow on the pool cover outside

just like this so-called poem demanding I put all that aside

But on this desk I can’t help but see

papers are heaped high  

a bag next to me half filled with trash 

practically screams to be fattened

Meanwhile my fingers on this keyboard (which also needs to be dusted) 

are quivering with desire

to clean even the toilets, anything but this sitting here

staring at the blank incriminating screen

 

AH! my husband is stirring upstairs, perhaps coming down

to eat lunch, to chat 

despite the fact that I so obviously have nothing to say

warranting the words Poet or Wife

 Failed like the dinner party with too many people

all talking about work, not one of them

unveiling scars covered by party clothes

And just like them I am afraid to remember even the act of remembering

my son’s four inch long feet in sheepskin slippers

or the way his father said 

“I’d have a million if they were all just like him”

--
Jane Ulrich

          Jane and I have been friends since before our first born sons were born, just a month apart, and now these boys are 24 year old men.  Still, our conversations are peppered with worry and the sense we have, as mothers, of constantly failing to do it perfectly, as though such a thing were possible.  Like poetry, motherhood is filled with uncertainty.  Like housework, it's  never finished, or when it is, an impermanent feast. 

Spring vegetables, laid out, still warm.

 

 

 It is these small triumphs that we don't remember, the accomplishments that won't boost anyone's resume, that often are the most satisfying, if only because no one expects them to be more than that.

Perhaps it is the knowledge of so much impermanence that leads us to try for something beyond the moment, that something that if we are lucky, someone else will call 'art.'  Right here, right now, I am calling my dear friend's poetry just that.

Some Housewife

The cavernous hole in the wall  

my son put his foot through 

much to his surprise and mine

yawns blackly

covered by a poster of smiles

taped poorly and falling down

On the counter and table and floor

are worksheets of verb tenses 

in a language I do not know

fourth grade math problems

too difficult to solve at 10 or 50

maps of Turkey and Afghanistan

elaborate explanations 

of earth’s tectonic plates

Upstairs the clothes and linens

are  tossed in corners and in the hallway

leading to the laundry room

needing cleaning

or perhaps not needing cleaning 

and tiles in the bathrooms crack 

and crinkle underfoot

the house itself shifting in ways

 I do not understand

requiring a beam 

or  some other massive support

in the cellar I do not wish to enter

an underworld of mess

I cannot dwell upon

Disorder drips from the very ceiling 

of this house   tiny footsteps

amplified in aluminum air shafts

echo hugely at 4 in the morning, 

reminding me of all the critters in the house 

I have lost control of

all the contractors I have not called

all the towels that have leapt

so unaccountably  out 

 from the closet where I crammed them

 no more than a day ago

Someone must DO something  I think

This can’t go on

So I write it all down

wad the clothes into the closet of this poem

file the pictures of volcanoes between the lines on this page

fill the hole in the wall with the spackle of my mind

create my own universe 

like God 

and only when the paper runs out 

do my hands touch anything real.

--
Jane Ulrich

  What I love about Jane's work is how clearly she roots the words in the experience we all live, in the domestic life that is so often disdained by the literary establishment.  This, I would claim, is the curse and the blessing of being a woman writer.  It might be a ghetto, or is it a gated community? 

Comment in the section below to win a copy of my first book,  Diana Lively is Falling Down.  I will pick two numbers at random,and then post winners names in the comments section tomorrow, with instructions on how to contact me so I can mail you the book.