Perhaps it was to see poetry through another perspective, the reason why I enrolled in my first poetry class; taught by one of the best Professors I have ever had, Grace Schulman. She changed my life. It being March and Women’s History month, I thought the first poem I share should be from a female poet who has inspired me. And Schulman is someone I will never forget. She believed in me, in my writing, and that has made a lot of difference in my life. Below is a poem from her recent book of beautiful poems, The Broken String. (I’ve a signed copy!)
Blue in Green
by Grace Schulman
Blue in green: baywater seen through grasses
that quiver over it, stirring the air,
slanted against the water’s one-em dashes.
Each blade is a brushstroke on thin rice paper,
unrehearsed, undrafted, no revision,
right on the first take. In “Blue in Green,”
on tenor sax, John Coltrane fills the blues
with mournful chords on scales older than Jubal’s,
ending in air. He’d not played it before
that recording, with that piano and bass
rising alone and, birds in flight, together.
Right on the first take. Improvisation,
he called it, but it must have been foreseen,
like the painter’s brushstroke. A wrong line
could blot the composition, snag the paper.
It had to be unstudied, like tern’s cry,
and natural, like a rope’s clink on a mast
with winds as bass player, huge and invisible.
If only I could remember the past
without regret for the windrose petal’s fall,
for words unspoken, and without remorse
for loves withheld. Rough-draft mistakes.
If only my heart could teach my hands
to play, and get it right on the first take.
—
