Ode to Daughter as Artist, by Marjorie Maddox

Work in progress, Anna Lee Hafer (USA). Contemporary.

  
Ode to Daughter as Artist

Praise for the spontaneous
paint splatter; for the blank,
wide face of canvas; the thin

stroke of clear; the unannounced
swirl and burst of emergence:
oils and newsprint surging

into bright, wild collage,
hue and creativity tottering
on eternity one-day only. Or not,
​
the heft of 3-D spinning now
into something unlike
anything like steady

chalk or premeditated
ink. No. Rather
thought and arm high

on epiphany,
and the brilliant eye
that arrives there

in an ordinary room,
on an ordinary day: art &
its dizzying versions of  birth.

Marjorie Maddox
​
Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published 11 collections of poetry—including True, False, None of the Above (Poiema Poetry Series, Illumination Book Award Medalist); Local News from Someplace Else ; Wives' Tales; Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (2004 Yellowglen Prize; re-release 2018); Perpendicular As I (Sandstone Book Award)—the short story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite Press); 4 children’s books; Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (co-editor); Presence (assistant editor); and over 550 stories, essays, and poems in journals and anthologies. For more information, please see www.marjoriemaddox.com