A Gray Realm the Ocean

The poems in Jennifer Atkinsons A Gray Realm the Ocean were all written under the influence of art-specifically twenty-and twenty-first-century abstract visual art. All the art referenced in the poems was done by women. Although many of these painters, sculptors, performance artists, ceramicists, and fabric artists have earned international reputations, albeit late in their lives or even after their deaths, most have only recently been given the notice and gallery space they deserve. Composed in response to the artists multiplicity of forms, styles, modes, and moods, the poems are variously experimental. Drunk on color and language, line and lines, they dont so much describe the art as revel in it. No patriarchal anxiety herethe poet actively seeks to join in conversation with the artists, listening closely and seeking their influence. She ponders, interrogates, and celebrates the work, taking each artist on her own termrespecting the achieved calm of Agnes Martins Night Sea and the flare and smolder of Ana Mendietas earth-body work, the lyric voluptuousness of Joan Mitchell and the intellectual geometries of Carmen Herrera, the arrested explosions of Cornelia Parker and Ruth Asawas cool embodiments of shadow, the sun-drenched reveries of Emmi Whitehorse and Pat Steirs un-skied star falls. Yet A Gray Realm the Ocean not only seeks to honor these artiststheir work, their courage, and their curiosity. Taken together, the collection is also a meditation on lookingconscious, attentive lookingand the mysterious nature of abstraction.