Susan Gardner

Susan Gardner Poems

Susan Gardner Biography

Susan Gardner is a Santa Fe poet, painter and photographer and the founding editor of Red Mountain Press. She has authored six books including Lifted to the Wind, To Inhabit the Felt World, the bi-lingual Box of Light~Caja de Luz, Stone Music, Intimate Landscapes and a memoir, Drawing the Line. She has lived and worked in Asia, Mexico and Europe as well as the United States and Canada, with numerous exhibitions in museums and galleries and extensive lectures and readings. She gave the Cam Memorial Lecture at the New York Public Library, where she was also honored to be granted a year in the Allen Room. She has presented programs at the Freer Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, and the Folger Library, among many others. She has been a house builder, scholarly researcher, teacher, and landscape designer. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.www.susangardner.org)

The Best Poem Of Susan Gardner

Cézanne's Apples

CÉZANNE'S APPLES

Eye-shape bowl
ringed dark around the iris
periphery between color and air

Suspended within the apparent ivory black
flat black bands concentrate roundness
border between light and no light

viridian, carmine, cochineal
cinnabar, miraculous red becomes green
citrine, golden light of powdered gems
cobalt, cerulean, indigo

Paris green, Paris blue
Prussian blue, wanting red, Diesbach made sky
Hooker's green, for his perfect green leaves
Payne's gray, less black than black,
precise tints seep through leaking light
Vermeer blue, precious pure ultramarine,
lapis lazuli from Badakshan, blooming with lead

umber, the smell of Italy's hillsides
sienna, Tuscany's earth, moved to galleries

lead, life to colors, death to artists

paint linen geometry

eyes open to the shape of the world as it may be

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