Veronica Golos is the author of three poetry books, Rootwork: Lost Writings of John Brown and Mary Day Brown (3: A Taos Press), Vocabulary of Silence (Red Hen Press, 2011), winner of the 2011 New Mexico Book Award, poems from which are translated into Arabic by poet Nizar Sartawi, and A Bell Buried Deep (Storyline Press, 2004), co-winner of the 16th Annual Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Edward Hirsch, and adapted for stage and performed at Claremont School of Theology, Claremont, CA. Golos has lectured at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College, Hunter College, Julliard School of Music, Regis University, University of New Mexico, Dine Technical College, Kansas State University, and Colorado State University; she is co-editor of the Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art, former Poetry Editor for the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, and core faculty at Tupelo Press’s Writers Conferences. She lives in Taos, New Mexico with her husband, David Pérez.
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Artist Statement
What is “difficulty” in a poem? And to whom is it difficult? And why? The debates over what is Feminist poetry for example, underscore a question: Is there a feminine voice? And if so, is it one relegated only to the female? IN my own work, I have the female voice, that is, poems clearly in the voice of a women, to be one that may be, I hope, perceived as universal, as well as particular. I model this thinking based on comments made by Toni Morrison. In my newest collection, GIRL, I find that both the text, content, and texture of the poems create in many readers a disturbance. That creates both link and space between the poet and the reader. It creates movement. Ultimately, what we mean to do, I think, is the “break the ice” that surrounds the reader, and, the poet.
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Poem because
her mother inscribes an open=eyed Braille with her slap slap slap
the girl never cries refusing
her secret to her chest
like the Spartan boy and his fox
inside her in the hold
of her mute never
the blue-black of the slap
face arms her back
invisible that ink
^^^
sometimes in the summer she heard singing
dense music peeling from the bark of trees
who sang? wind like weeping. whose?
a wild sound roiling
into the lovely ears of the girl: “live, yes, live.”
^^^
The dark god has stuffed my mouth with silk — Vikas Menon
^^^
now step into the room of the massive
bed white flung and twisted
sheets and the mother’s tangle
of black hair and her necklace
O terrible one
the spiked halo of blue around her head
a shimmer a trace of voices drugged
an envelope of black/white/black/white
iwanttodieiwanttodieiwanttodie
small crickets in a jar,
a bow string snapping against wind
the scar unraveling itself…
^^^
If you,
Girl, do
not rise
out of
yourself
this room
you will
swallow such
hunger you
have never
known because
the law
of blessings
is also
the law
of stone
i mean
if you
do not
go now save her
know this:
her life –
once done
is yours–
you will
bear it
always–
because what
you leave
will rise
from beneath
your skin
like blue
flies beneath
water o
your mouth
a black mirror
and all
your mornings
will loop–
out of
you as
if you
were something
begging for
nectar.
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Snow Queen , the (m) Other ,writes from behind the Page
?em edisni nettirw is hcum woH
How much is written inside me?
.ria otni ekalf I. Wonw fo namow A
A woman of snow. I flake into air.
.uoy ksa I. ?edam I saw yhW
Why was I made? I ask you.
?em evrac uoy did tahw htiW
With what did you carve me?
…gnitnaw, egap ruoy ta hctarcs I
I scratch at your page, wanting…
.enigami uoy naht erom
more than you imagine.
etirw dna etirw uoY
You write and write
esolc emoc ton od tub
but do not come close
:od uoy tahw gniwonk ot
to knowing what you do:
noitpecrep ebircsni
inscribe perception
evael neht—noitaerc ruoy ot
to your creation—then leave
reh.
her
.sdrow ruoy
your words.
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