Susurrus

a poem to potentially, but unintentionally, anger a crowd at a museum fundraiser

I once wrote a poem while driving,
notebook in lap, barreling down a 
night-infused highway, scribbling
frantically on what I hoped was
the paper – I couldn’t see
but the flames of inspiration raged
inside me, fueled by what I had just
witnessed on the big screen;

the story of a violin who’s life
was forged in blood.
I wanted to write a manifesto for
capital A Art, how it reaches
long, slender fingers into the 
darkened crevices of our souls
and opens us to a little more light-

I was 19, I called the poem
“If Art Could Speak”.

The poem was a long treatise of overly
flowered descriptions and faux philosophical
renderings on the plight of humanity,
thankfully now long lost to disheveled notebooks
and rundown computers,

It was to capture the essence of 
Art as an archetype—
between the ridiculous metaphors and 
half-cocked judgments of our civilization
I inserted long, meandering lists 
of well-known and obscure artists 
to show my fellow angsty mid-westerners 
that I was actually cultured
that my hours spent on the local,
small town university campus I
had to attend because it was all we
could afford were not in vain.

You probably didn’t want
a poem about me,
you wanted a poem about art-
that universal language, that break-down
barriers and cross borders to bring people
together language-
the language of the people!
Although whose people are we talking about?
I’ve know many salt-of-the-earth people who
would raise arms against someone urinating
on a crucifix in a jar—(“Piss Christ” Andres Serrano, 1987)

I once saw the Mona Lisa.
Stood behind a throng of far too many
people gazing at that one, small
seemingly insignificant face,
I was not moved, or inspired, or 
even curious – I felt like I 
was being had-
see, the walls around us were layered in
canvases the size of worlds, intricate
details of humanity and life
etched onto history with such skilled, 
life-like pizzazz they made the 
Mona Lisa look like a dumpster 
behind The Sistine Chapel!

My 19 year old self would have loved to
have included that in my poem,
the presiding undertone of course being 
that I had been to Paris,
meandered the Louvre in romantic,
poetic leisure when
in reality, I had handed my then 6 year-old
daughter an iPod and headphones 
and told her to keep up!

Later that trip, we drove past 
the road to Stonehenge, 
took a different route to Glastonbury
to avoid the confluence of culturally-prescribed 
expectation with fantastical disappointment-
we had had enough tourist excursions,
enough hordes of half-inspired
strangers there to check a 
box on a bucket list

Farther north, we had walked amongst 
ancient stone circles on beautifully crested 
hillsides far from civilization, 
stood in the rain beside crumbling
rock and felt our roots dig in,
swelling with ancestral familiarity.

This poem wasn’t intended to be about me,  
it was to be about capital A art – but aren’t
they the classical pairing, Humanity and Art?
The original bread and butter, lock and key
Bonnie and Clyde, (J-Lo and Ben),
or is it more like
the chicken and the egg conundrum?

We can argue who came first but the crux 
is that Art is a catalyst, stirring us so deeply-
so intensely-
we have to create more!
causing us to feel in a way that can’t be contained
on any canvas or in any poem but we desperately
try anyway because we have to because
without art there is no life and if you think
that comment sounds trite try witnessing
a rainbow-hued sunset over a gently undulating
ocean and not think about god
(little g god because art with a capital A 
has nothing to prove).

In my 19 year old’s treatise on Art,
I sought to “wow” the audience with 
one final question, “If Art could speak, 
would we even listen?”
Sometimes…

Sometimes art speaks to us from behind 
glass surrounded by one-off paintings of
potentially far grander quality,
Sometimes art speaks to us in the intentional
way a stone is placed upon the earth,
Sometimes art speaks to us through words,
though, those can be the hardest to decipher.

©AnneFricke

This poem was written for and performed at the Raise the Roof fundraiser at the Morris Graves Museum, Eureka, CA, 2023.