Abiquiu
Barbara Mor
Working notes
In late 70s in Taos, I met a woman who'd recently
visited Abiquiu. Roaming around O'Keeffe's Ghost
Ranch, she'd looked up close into a window & saw
this scene: an austere adobe room, a woman dressed
in black, stretched out on a bed with oxygen tanks
nearby. Resting or sleeping, she could have been
ceremonially dead, but was not. Who she was, the
visitor didn't know. Based on this image, I assumed
it was Georgia, & wrote a poem trying to express
her body/genius breathing proprioceptically from &
back into the atmosphere of the high desert she had
inhabited so intensely, her skin the air her organs the
sage & rock tissue could never be separated, not with
a knife, death or Time. Well, turned out it was not
the painter O'Keeffe but her sister, the poem was
not good, so I tossed it into a material cauldron of
ingredients for future use. And of course Georgia
lived almost a decade more, died in 1986 (almost
100 years old, the desert preserves).
Last year going thru this stuff I found 'abiquiu' &
rewrote it. This version can certainly be dedicated to
Jane Caputi, the brilliant feminist scholar &mythically
hip cultural critic & author of Gossips, Gorgons and
Crones. I’d met & conversed with Jane when she
was at UNM in Albuquerque, & later read this book
which allegorically aligns the high desert region’s
mythos of Yellow Woman with its modern nuclear
manifestation as source of Yellowcake uranium. The
book disturbed some feminist readers who thought
(mistakenly) this mythic linkage was a form of
rational assent to the manufacture of atrocity out of
elemental earth & indigenous wisdom. But I found
the book awesome & true: the Earth as poet predicts
its possible futures, people who are surprised by
current horrors have not been listening to the ancient
wisdoms. Circa 1995-6, in a laundromat in Arcata,
CA, I found a very favorable review of Gossips,
Gorgons and Crones (in Forbes magazine, go figure).
Jane’s mythic depth is one that feminism should
reach down into politically, culturally & spiritually,
in my opinion, so we can begin to speak with the
female gravitas (in all senses) our time & ancient
responsibility requires. Georgia O’Keeffe saw, felt
& envisioned this in her work, & her residence in
that New Mexico earth still vibrates there in the air.
(If you can escape the tour groups & experience
being there in solitude, out of busy time, it helps.)
Thus the poem.
visited Abiquiu. Roaming around O'Keeffe's Ghost
Ranch, she'd looked up close into a window & saw
this scene: an austere adobe room, a woman dressed
in black, stretched out on a bed with oxygen tanks
nearby. Resting or sleeping, she could have been
ceremonially dead, but was not. Who she was, the
visitor didn't know. Based on this image, I assumed
it was Georgia, & wrote a poem trying to express
her body/genius breathing proprioceptically from &
back into the atmosphere of the high desert she had
inhabited so intensely, her skin the air her organs the
sage & rock tissue could never be separated, not with
a knife, death or Time. Well, turned out it was not
the painter O'Keeffe but her sister, the poem was
not good, so I tossed it into a material cauldron of
ingredients for future use. And of course Georgia
lived almost a decade more, died in 1986 (almost
100 years old, the desert preserves).
Last year going thru this stuff I found 'abiquiu' &
rewrote it. This version can certainly be dedicated to
Jane Caputi, the brilliant feminist scholar &mythically
hip cultural critic & author of Gossips, Gorgons and
Crones. I’d met & conversed with Jane when she
was at UNM in Albuquerque, & later read this book
which allegorically aligns the high desert region’s
mythos of Yellow Woman with its modern nuclear
manifestation as source of Yellowcake uranium. The
book disturbed some feminist readers who thought
(mistakenly) this mythic linkage was a form of
rational assent to the manufacture of atrocity out of
elemental earth & indigenous wisdom. But I found
the book awesome & true: the Earth as poet predicts
its possible futures, people who are surprised by
current horrors have not been listening to the ancient
wisdoms. Circa 1995-6, in a laundromat in Arcata,
CA, I found a very favorable review of Gossips,
Gorgons and Crones (in Forbes magazine, go figure).
Jane’s mythic depth is one that feminism should
reach down into politically, culturally & spiritually,
in my opinion, so we can begin to speak with the
female gravitas (in all senses) our time & ancient
responsibility requires. Georgia O’Keeffe saw, felt
& envisioned this in her work, & her residence in
that New Mexico earth still vibrates there in the air.
(If you can escape the tour groups & experience
being there in solitude, out of busy time, it helps.)
Thus the poem.
About the author
Barbara Mor’s collection of experimental texts, The Blue Rental (Oliver Open Press, April 19, 2011), derives from a lifelong residency in the Southwest (CAL, NM, AZ). Edgar Garcia’s review of this book appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, April 19, 2014, as part of their National Poetry Month series. Since 1991, Mor’s work has appeared in Trivia (print), Trivia: Voices of Feminism (online), Ms., Sulfur, BullHead, Orpheus Grid (US), and Spectacular Diseases, Ecorche, Intimacy, and Oracular (UK). Mor’s manuscript The First God was published by HarperCollins in 1987/1991 as The Great Cosmic Mother. A new long poem/book, the Victory of sex & Metal, will be published by Oliver Arts & Open Press circa October 2014. A blog containing links to Mor’s work on Trivia, CTheory, and Dissident Voice and some work not obtainable online is Dark Matter/WALLS at http://www.barbaramor.blogspot.com