The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Book Shelf
    • Ekphrastic Book Shelf
    • Contributors' Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • Workshops
  • Give
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead

At the Guggenheim, or Working-Class Girl Meets Rothko, by Nancy Hewitt

2/19/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
At the Guggenheim, or Working-Class Girl Meets Rothko
​
My first time walking up the Guggenheim ramp, colour took me over:  two stacked rectangles, orange and yellow-green, that shimmer in my mind decades later.  I stopped knowing where I was – fell into some sort of zone, the Saturday museum crowd vanished.  I'd never been alone with orange before.  Mine had been a sepia childhood with regular bursts of fireworks.  Sunset was dangerous, a time to look toward ground, fathers due home and mothers flashing red, when a flaming 3-D orange ball would be tossed back and forth, no attention left to pay to the incidental sky.  While my lover had tutored me in sunsets – the fine art of looking out and up, the peaceful co-existence of reds, purples, greens and blues – he hadn't prepared me for Rothko, how a shape of colour lifted off the canvas.  Orange had always meant marigolds, green-yellow the lawn during a dry spell.  And how those beckoning rectangles could hang there so stridently, for no practical reason, two wide swaths radiating waves.  Two separate colours bleeding into each other – but neither capitulating – to become something larger.  Orange and Yellow, 1956, cloaking me, staking its claim.

Nancy Hewitt

This poem was first published in Connecticut River Review, 2017.

Nancy Hewitt received her MFA in poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2002.  Her chapbook HEARD was published in 2013 by Finishing Line Press.  Her poetry has appeared in Mid-American Review, Spoon River Poetry Review (Editor’s Prize), Phoebe, Connecticut River Review, Ellipsis, Off the Coast, and other journals.  Her awards include nominations for a Pushcart Prize and for Best of the Net.  She recently retired from her private practice in psychotherapy in Salem, MA, in order to focus more fully on writing.  She divides her time between Swampscott, MA, and East Randolph, VT.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    The Ekphrastic Review
    Picture
    Current Prompt
    COOKIES/PRIVACY
    This site uses cookies to deliver your best navigation experience this time and next. Continuing here means you consent to cookies. Thank you.
    Join us on Facebook:
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture



    ​
    ​Archives
    ​

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015

    Lorette C. Luzajic theekphrasticreview@gmail.com 

  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Book Shelf
    • Ekphrastic Book Shelf
    • Contributors' Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • Workshops
  • Give
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead