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These poems are from The Artist as Alice: From aPhotographer’s Life forthcoming from Bright HillPress
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On Writing The Artist as Alice: From aPhotographer’s Life
By Darcy Cummings
Yearsago, in a writing class, we were given an assignment: write about afictional character twenty years or so after the events in the novel,play, or poem. I immediately thought of Alice, the heroine of myfavorite childhood book. Yes, that practical and rather prim littlegirl whose adventures were so weird and deeply satisfying to the eightyear old girl I was. That night, I thought of a title and the firstlines: “Years Later, Alice Dreams Of Rabbits/ and offloating—or of falling toward/ bright planets. Or in the dazed Julyheat,/ that the infant at her breast/ is whiskered and furred.” Interesting, I thought, but when I finished the poem the next day Irealized that Alice, restless, tending an infant, and pregnant for thethird time, was in the early years of an unhappy marriage.
How could this havehappened, I wondered. She seemed so promising, talented andindependent. (Even then I didn’t think of this Alice as a product of myown imagination, but as if she were in a sequel I was tracing, graduallylearning about her later life.) The next poems I wrote were an attemptto explain what had happened after the surreal events of Wonderland andthe Looking Glass, and what had led to the tense marriage I’d stumbledupon. After finishing the sequence, I thought I was done with Alice.I’d answered my questions, the how and the why. Behind those questionswas another: what might have happened to an imaginative little girl inVictorian England who had dreamed/ hallucinated/ invented theadventures. When she spoke of that world to her family how would theyand others around her react?
Although that first seriesof poems seemed complete, over the years I returned again and again toAlice. What was she like at 35, 50? As an old lady? Confused aboutchronology and facts, I finally wrote a prose outline of her life,giving her five children, one who died at birth, and one who died atten. She was widowed at fifty, and due to necessity, became aprofessional photographer (photography was once her hobby, her soleartistic outlet.) It was then I realized that my real topic was thelife of an artist, a woman whose desire to create was always subject tothe demands of raising children, running a household, pleasing adifficult husband. She was, in some way, I realized, not just the primyet violently imaginative woman who had as a child found a Wonderland,but also my mother, a frustrated artist. And, she was in part me.
One of the most enjoyableparts of writing the poems was reading about 19th-century photography,and spiritualism and psychic science in the early 20th century. I foundmyself reading about photographing the dead, and other things thattouched Alice’s life. And I also resolved a problem that had botheredme for years—my frustrated attempts to synthesize the disparatestrands of my poetry: the narrative, surreal, imagistic and formal. But in the Alice book, I found I could use all of those approaches, asthe poems are told in a number of voices and through variousdocuments—her cousin’s journal entries, instructions forphotographers, and finally in Alice’s own many voices. And the poemsthemselves are monologues, surreal meditations, narrative sonnets. Nowthat the poems are going to be published as a book, I’m having a hardtime letting go of her world. How would Alice have reacted to seeing herfirst movie, I wonder. What about the grandson who was killed in thefirst world war? Shouldn’t we know more about her husband? Her lover? I’m trying very hard to find another topic that will inhabit me socompletely.
Alice At Thirteen
1865
Since that bright afternoon, she seldom dreams,
even when, safelycurled in her father’s chair,
she dozes before the fire. Butsometimes,
during lessons, or when the teapot steams
and thechime of a clock focuses light
and the avenue of trees outside thewindow,
mice and labeled jars leap from her books.
She tries tokeep them at bay, but a screaming
infant wriggles in her grasp, itslawn sleeves
split as chubby arms grow taut and hooved.
Sometimes she’s falling, and the infant
has slipped into the risingwater,
its button eyes and grin wavering beneath
the surface. The strained seams of her bodice
begin to gap: again and again shepushes
the plate of biscuits from her desk.
Shells clatter onan empty beach,
persistent soft mounds and fur cling
to herbody. They whimper: milk and cake,
but she will not feed them. Atnight she falls
into sleep as smooth and dark as the velvet
forher new dress, or like her mirror
at twilight: glossy, cool, andfilled with shadows.
On Her Wedding Day
June, 1870
Soon, the photographer will arrive, trailing
assistants andclattering equipment.
He’ll find me posed near the mirror:
perfect, still as the bisque dolls
on the marble mantle. Motherchose everything
I wear: the veil, the ecru bombazine
that’slatched from throat to hem
with sixty five pearl buttons, theborrowed
locket tied with ribbons to my corselet.
But I agreed,I longed to tiptoe
over the hushed threshold of
his rooms. Isewed twelve buttons
on each glove; his have none. . .on the halltable
his gloves and scarf are like grey doves
pinnedprecisely to his hat. And what if
he seems silent and unyielding? Soon
his stiff ways will soften. He says
that I am young, thatshyness will learn
its domestic tongue. Yesterday I gathered
mint and Lemon Balm, rum and the soft
kernel of peach pits to make asmall potion.
I ground them in a white bowl, chanting:
Taste me and you’ll know longing,
drink me and you’ll growsmaller.”
The sweet mess melts beneath my tongue.
My handis pressed to the cool hand
in the mirror. It will not yield.
On The Porch
1882
In mid-afternoon hush and heat
she hears the murmur of children
building empires in the sand.
The babies doze on the porch
lulled by the swing’s motion
and its creaking chains. Upcrossed
cords the young vines clutch:
pale moon flowers justbeginning
to open dizzying sweetness,
blue and rose morningglories
and the maroon-podded Mexican vines.
Soon the entireporch will be hemmed
by knotted shade, by this ceaselesstwining.
Vines and the soft hiss of sleeping children
anchor herto this place, idly swinging back,
forth. She is happy thisafternoon,
radiant in this furious growth and motion.
On Appledore Island
August 1886
Within weeks, she’s discarded her petticoats
and that worried look,climbing from fields
of bayberry and musty grapes to the crags
possessed by raucous gulls. On days when fog
transforms boats andlobster pots
to the pure white of one bell
clanging over thewater,
she rocks on the porch, watching for hours.
On clearafternoons, she rehearses
the wild flowers’ names: the youngNaturalist
tells her that Figwort is also Golden Hedge;
it canbe any name that she invents—
Rabbit Ear, Root Hutch. Down thecliffs
beetles and Monarch Butterflies burst
from theircelluloid shells.
They whir and bell: autumn. In the dustyshed,
the Naturalist leads her to narrow shelves
where pinnedbutterflies perch in dim light,
in rows and rows of labeled glassboxes.
He lets her touch the lids.
In His Absence, Alice Finds
A Metaphor: TheLithopedion
Your name is numb like a syllable thrown ten thousand times against thesun.
Your face is worn like a salt statue left in the rain orthumbed by a penitent.
My song is a stone baby pain never expressed.
This song must end.
The sun always deflects words.
A factory in Milan producestwenty five statues of Santa Lucia per week.
They are for sale onthe streets of Boston.
(The stone baby was free
Only after the flesh rotted.
Then
mute, calcine testimony,
it nestled equal against themother’s bones.
Stone child:
those flutterings were notimagination.)
The Artist as Alice: From a Photographer’s Life is forthcomingfrom BrightHill Press
The Artist as Alice: From a Photographer’s Life
by Darcy Cummings,
2004 Bright Hills Press Poetry Book Award, June 2006,
72 pp.$14 + NYS Sales Tax & shipping $3.00
The Artist as Alice: From a Photographer’s Life
Darcy’s work online
