Poetry Thursday: Joseph Cornell

Hooray for Poetry Thursday. This week's task was to write a poem in reflection of an artwork. This made me go back through some old pieces, and I was tempted to draw out a poem inspired by Edward Hopper, but then I came across this lyric that played off of Joseph Cornell.

Can't reproduce the Joseph Cornell shadowboxes that my poem touches upon (of the title box, The Pink Palace, but also of other boxes), but if you know his work, it's not difficult to see how his boxes operate as poems: disassociative images caught in an odd little space.


The Pink Palace

Here is an art
good enough to carry:
a Joseph Cornell
box. Take a photostat
of a Newport mansion,
wash it pink, cut
news-clips of a woman's
face, litter her face
as pieces of snow on
the mansion's grounds,
arrange some sticks
for trees, a background
mirror to flush
the depth and to catch
the looker looking.
And forget to name
the artwork, load
the elements in a blue
black box, a container
of surreal, stupid air,
confetti light, hardware,
and a woman's face
forming a drift. I wish
I had that pink
palace, that box
large enough
to house its want.