Marnie Reed Crowell
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Here is a collection of my poems which you can download as PDFs:
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POEMS FROM A  HALFWAY HERMIT
chapter_1_my_doorstep.pdf
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chapter_2_intertide.pdf
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chapter_3__island__time.pdf
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chapter_4_north_of_now.pdf
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chapter_5__farther_afield.pdf
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chapter_6___far_away.pdf
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chapter_7___no_where_no_when.pdf
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Verbal and Visual Partnerships

Picture
 Long ago, Chinese literati took particular delight in the aesthetic effects of combining painting, poetry and calligraphy. By the eighteenth century, the Japanese had refined this art into surimono, literally "printed things." Commissioned by individual poets or poetry clubs, these single sheets combined poems with the work of the finest artists, calligraphers, and printers. Because surimono were privately printed, economic factors did not limit the aesthetic choices. Such sumptuous printing techniques as embossing and pigmenting with precious metal powders might be used. Many layers of meanings were produced by visual and verbal allusions. These wonderful woodblock printings were given as New Year’s gifts.


Now I am making what I call Fusion Surimono, my poems with my visual images.      These are made of all combinations of pixels and pigments- photos, paintings, photos of paintings etc. They are arranged in order of complexity, challenge. They are proving helpful to people who, like me, have experienced Traumatic Brain Injury. People dealing with stroke, chemo brain fog, Post-Lyme etc and their care-givers also find soothing pleasure in the nature images. Here is the link to the web site for the entire collection:
                                       
                                                     www.songsofseeing.com.
​
Here are few images from the Fusion Surimono Collection:


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Back when my friend Ann Flewelling and I started Threehalf Press, we made what we called Light Pages. We presented on the web my poems juxtaposed with her photographs in a modern exploration of the verbal-visual interface. Thesea are clearly the forerunners of my fusion surimono. After a terrible automobile accident severely injured Ann, we discontinued Threehalf Press. Ann is recovering slowly but surely and you can still enjoy our Light Pages here:  

Picture
     Flowers for the Tea,
      chabana

    Tie my poem to

    the blossom branch
    with deft knots of
    freedom and formality

     silence to sound

     vase to flower
     page to ink

                                                                    I sing the breathing words

                                                                    of heaven, earth, and man
                                                                    in bud and bloom
                                                                    and fallen petal.



Picture
            Dowsing
    These two bare twigs,
    formerly bayberry,
    too scant to be driftwood
    but nicely branched and      
    silvered they fit my hand so well
    I carry them full circuit
    around the island
    with no vain intention
    of taking either home with me–
    but I like the feeling
    of winnowing the sea breeze,
    of holding hands with the sky,
    of sensing how a lobster feels
    waving its claws in communication
    with Poseidon and the sea.


Picture
   Billy Collins on Vacation in Maine

I am standing on the deck overlooking the shore
in bare feet with a cup of steaming tea, opera on the radio,
watching seagulls and a lone man in a plastic kayak
which barely zigzags as he chants to seals while
the first clouds climb the rigging above the bay.
A white lobster boat draws unhurried circles
and the drone is carried by the gulls
to wedge between the bars of Verdi’s quartet.

                                                                                         I study last night’s wine glass on the railing
                                                                                         lit by a ray of sun which goes on to  
                                                                                        gather blueberries and ferns and a small sparrow.
                                                                                        Cats watching through the window wear calico shadows
                                                                                        borrowed from the birches like the green
                                                                                        fleece pulled on over my nightgown,
                                                                                       which I pull closer to my shoulders
                                                                                       feeling what it’s like to be Billy Collins in Maine.


Picture
                Mackerel

          Out of mind’s vast dark deep
          they come
          racing into coves
           in pursuit perhaps of herring

          flashes of silvery blue
          black- barred stanzas
          together writing
                                                                                          ripples of reality

                                                                                          You don’t call mackerel
                                                                                          You know the tide
                                                                                          and go out in your boat
                                                                                          or onto the pier

                                                                                          and you wait
                                                                                          knowing that unless
                                                                                          the line or net is in the water
                                                                                          no one ever catches the
                                                                                          meaning
                                                                                          or the music

Picture
        Fall Tweed

        Ridiculously humble name
        for the gallant
        little spindle
        of a bird, brown creeper

        fluttering down with the
        rain-driven leaves
        to begin again

        its persistent ascent
        of the threadbare birch
        weaving life, the only

                                                                                        anti-entropic force
                                                                                        in the wintry universe.
  

Picture
Spring Geese
Sound of half a hundred geese
winging north across the bay:
you've left some fecund, flowered place,
passed over warm and moistly green full-petaled lands

to etch your fine dark lines across
the lonely loveliness of open water, 
open sky,
                                                                     the brown and grey and tan
                                                                     of our just-melting world

                                                                     to press on to your polar claim,
                                                                     accustomed to life's edges.
                                                                     Thrilled at what you signify my heart cries,
                                                                     Wait, oh wait for me. I'm coming too.

                                                                    Although you leave me spring,
                                                                    you leave me.
                                                                    How I envy
                                                                   that I hear you talking to each other
                                                                   every wing beat of the way.

               


Picture
First Osprey, April 16
Pandion haliaetus carolinensis

Osprey, who dares
plunder the eagle and wins
we pause every time to watch
your casual crook-winged beat up the sky
mackerel gleaming in the talons of
your nonchalance.


                                                                           As my son once explained to me
                                                                           you have to be born to be cool.
                                                                 There was nothing casual about
                                                                 the line gale that yesterday screamed through here
                                                                 shaking our bridge, plucking it like a lyre
                                                                 licking hungry at the causeway

                                                                battering cowering houses with
                                                                waves of such awe that fishing boats

                                                                stayed on their moorings, every one.

                                                                Not just their women, but sea-crusted men
                                                                spent the hours stealing glances over their shoulder.
                                                                We crept to our beds, shut windows to keep the deluge out
                                                                slept fitfully, wholly unable to block the ocean’s roar
                                                                the answering grinding moan of beach rocks in the dark.


                                                                Born cloudy, cool of its own sort
                                                                breezy morning finds us, all over the island
                                                                busying ourselves packing lunches
                                                                doing up breakfast dishes, gossiping over power outages
                                                                pausing to survey the gear going with us.
                                                                I imagine I hear ospreys
                                                                calling to each other
                                                                that unmistakable piercing whistle
                                                                 I want so fiercely that I step outside
                                                                 where they are circling overhead
                                                                 calling, soaring
                                                                 in signature
                                                                 arrival.



Picture
               Wood Lily

         Fine-grained New England granite is obdurate stuff.
          Long after the glacier’s press it stands untouched
          by the hot lick of burning barrens for blueberries
          or the trembling flame of open wood lily at its side.

           That lone splash of red draws the eye
           more strongly than the brief burnt orange zap
           of delta-winged Skippers, or the lazy float of  Monarchs.

                                                                                                                                 Drawn by what invisible force it torques the field,
                                                                                                     the wood lily pulls bright against the rock.


Picture
            Junco Zen

A  hundred tiny birds come
            linking whispered calls
low through the dripping spruce.

           Like smoke they flow
up across the granite boulder face
           pausing only briefly
                                                                                 over the glow of moss
                                                                                               
                                                                                                  Ink-grey Juncos migrating
                                                                                white tail feathers flashing
                                                                                                   brief signals of intent.


Picture
Blackberries, Late Summer

I go to pick blackberries
in the arcing glow of goldenrod.
Taller than I disheveled asters
star pale and wild above,
crickets fiddling away in the
hot sunshine of short grass.


 White Admiral, surprisingly
                                                                                assertive for a butterfly
                                                                                dares me to come closer
                                                                                flaps velvet black wings
                                                                                as if it might alight
                                                                                on my outstretched arms.

                                                                                How rich the wine my tongue                                                                            
                                                                                kisses from the ripe fruit,
                                                                                how fierce dry saber canes
                                                                                snake-strike thorns marking
                                                                                 me again with the sweet pain                   
                                                                                 of every love I’ve ever known.

Picture
                    Attasquash

                    With surprise I recognize
                    that summer squash is in the bag now
                    hitting the table with distinctive sound
                    no more describable than the subtle taste
                    of this elegant vegetable lightly cooked, lightly spiced.

                   Attasquash, crookneck, Cucurbito pepo –
                                                                                     such dismissive and ridiculous names we have attached
                                                                                     to this pretty vegetable, so delicate, ephemeral in its young perfection.
                                                                                     Fresh from the sunny garden singing with hot nasturtium colors,
                                                                                     shimmering with butterflies
                                                                                     I sense still the clear yellow radiance of abundance on my silver fork.
                                                                             
                                                                                     Are we so beguiled by sugar
                                                                                     that we laud the strawberry and peach
                                                                                     all but ignoring this unassertive     
                                                                                     squash?
                                                                                     Ask the overlooked among us.


Picture
    Drab, You Say?

     Gray skies, chill air,
     goldenrods blown
     to tufts of tan,
     over all a lace of sound:
     goldfinches and geese,
   

     chips and clicks and calls.
                                                                          flocks of tiny birds
                                                                          in touch with one another,
                                                                          moving just below
                                                                          the understated aster fizzle

                                                                                    
                                                                                    a force of sparrows,
                                                                         warblers with
                                                                         eye rings, wing bars, and without,
                                                                         the faint suggestion of green flash,
                                                                         tan hinting copper,
                                                                         gold to tarnished silver,
                                                                    

                                                                                           ripe, elegant,
                                                                         here.



Picture
from A Sky of Birds
a  collection of my poems accompanying photographs made by members of Downeast Audubon: 

Spotted Sandpiper

 
Just at the silver seam
between the sea and shore
the spotted sandpiper
teeters, speaks softly to itself
a poem it has by heart. 
​

Picture
from Beads  and String, A Maine Island Pilgrimage
Each month we visit one of Der Isle's preserves and several poems serve as dividers from one chapter to another.
One of the poems from March:

                Elvers


I see him walking on the clam flats
by the great butterfly bat wing nets.
What is it about his jeans, cap, and rubber boots signals islander
just as surely as he reads me woman-from-away
before we even speak?

What are you catching?
Eels,
he calls over his shoulder and keeps on slogging.
It seems inappropriate to continue hollering
on the early morning air
so I stand on a rock
and wait.

He’s not going to hurry his pace.
I’m not going to retreat.
We wait
for each other to finish our business.

I eye the rigging: four huge gray butterflies or bats,
take your choice depending on how macabre your taste, 
or whether you know the symbol for bat wings on Ming pottery.

Dead panels, like a drowned embrace, drape full slack across the mud
to hang when the tide comes back
suspended from plastic pipe strung like soda straws on pot warp lines
bright orange, perhaps from one great spool
strung out across the cove
here to bamboo, there to aluminum tent pole
guyed all in turn by more orange warp and weighted
at the ends by granite.

The mans slogs slowly from rock to rock
adjusting the muddy weights with some private precision
righting and pressing the poles to his own satisfaction.
At the confluence of each wingspread
a wooden box, not all that different from a shoe box
except that at each hinder end he’s hung a bag like pantyhose.

Carefully he does not glance my way, carefully he inspects
this masonite center of mysteries, reties its knots
and makes his way closer to where I stand.
If he’s reluctant he’s damned if he’ll show it and he says to me
Elvers, glass eels you might call ‘em. Send ‘em to the Orient.
I want to tell him of the ancient lucky symbol but I say instead
Do you ever eat them?
Nope.

Do you go smelting too?
Why yes, he says, and quickly calculating what else I need to understand
he manages not to sound condescending as he tells me you can’t go smelting
at the same time you have these traps out. Generously he adds
I go to a nice creek  up the cove for smelts.
I like to go for smelts, myself. Fry up a good munch.
Have ‘em for breakfast, or whatever meal comes next.

I recognize he’s telling me something about the order of his life
so I ask, Do you check these traps every tide?
Yep.
Did you just get some?
No, I’m readjusting them now.
He says without my asking

The elvers only run at night. You ought to come down here then.
It’s a sight to see, all the lights.
I ask what time the tide is high tonight.
Two-thirty he thinks. He’s not lobstering just now. Elvers make a nice way to fill in.
He can make a couple hundred a night.
But don’t quit your day job? I say
surprised when he does not banter

but says instead

I get kind of tired, but it’s nice down here at night. I hope we don’t bother them
up at the house. You from the house?
No, I’m not.
Well, You want to come see.

Just a statement he makes, and I thank him and say
I will come some time,
hating that it sounds so much like empty courtesy.
A pause, sheerer than bat wings hangs in the air
as I calculate back and say,

You saw the comet here, then?
He straightens up, hands dripping from the fresh water sluice
of the little creek pushing back the sea.
Perhaps because he’s been skirting so near the beauty of what keeps him here
unmasked delight ambushes his face.

He throws his arms north to the heavens
in a wide gesture full
of the wildness of it all.
Right up there it was, he says.
He meets my gaze and we grin together, cosmic islanders.

I’ll come some night, I say.
Me and the wife, he mumbles, just to be sure there was no misunderstanding,
We’ll see ya.



Picture
from Moment of Water

Gluskabe’s River
by Marnie Reed Crowell
Commissioned for the opening of Penobscot Narrows Bridge ~ 2007



All the night long
as the storm tracks by,
southerly winds from out at sea
push ocean back into the bay.
Hear Gluskabe
paddling by in his stone canoe,
the shouts and smacks
as he urges the Penobscot back,
back by waves,
past the Eggemoggin Reach,
on beyond the quiet Bagaduce,
under the place where the sinewed seam
stitches bank to bank,
beyond Bangor,
rippling round Indian Island,
on to Orono, to Millinocket,
threading through Maine Woods,
till pure and clear
what’s left of water
—clouds--
reach Wabanaki heart,
Katahdin,
and regroup
for yet another schussing run
downriver through the towns and mills,
out to dawn
and sea.

Two Marnie Reed Crowell poems on exhibit at Maier Museum, Lynchburg, Virginia

August 10, 2010 to inaugurate Ekphrastic Poems exhibit

Wren  accompanying  the museum’s John James Audubon print

Woodcock   accompanying museum's  Churchill Ettinger etching
http://www.maiermuseum.org/2010/08/ekphrastic-poem-mcrowell/

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