Challenging the Medium by Marguerite Ogden
Self-Portrait If I Were Stumbling
& if I climb behind you—way back, behind
the chair, between
the sky & the bluegreen fabric
me back there, where I am apple
where I keep eye
today, I summon light, I mire on a highway
in Virginia, the night
dividing this poem
from the passenger seat
the road interrupts
my face, shifted
a short story instead, then. this from my blade, first—
(too much sun)—
this entire city of which I am
speaking, photographed:
still water joys through
through—& if I see a pinecone painted
& and sealed where the wall
says I am not a fiction
how can I tell you, I am Sappho
& she is Julian—
have I marked for you the shore, the door
Octavia drew—
(it was a map)—?
I will tell you instead how I slept once
by a dying deer
dreaming of pennies on my face—
She Said Eight Things About Love
to be a box of watercolors, the disorder of amethyst
& I did for so many years, painting over all the others
*
you are the twoness. the web behind my daughter,
the mother who gave me a cask of unspillable sinew
*
get yourself to a nightfox. graceful & holy sleep, a guided observatory
*
broken magic like time travel & back to a roman candle,
a wish, like sunshine on the street
*
we will cut my shoulder from time to time; I am ekphrasis
*
it is the river asking the only thing, what
we use to turn stone from clean blue sheets
*
we carry our childselves, wade the waters of our lives, lay
us on the banks of sticks, dousing
*
like dirt grapes, pears in the morning: it makes me wildlfowers
About the author:
Sherre Vernon (she/her/hers) is the award-winning author of Green Ink Wings (Elixir Press) and The Name is Perilous (Power of Poetry). Her debut full-length poetry collection, Flame Nebula, Bright Nova was released in 2022 by Main Street Rag. Sherre has been published in journals such as TAB and The Chestnut Review, nominated for Best of the Net, and anthologized in several collections including Fat & Queer and Best Small Fictions.
Read more of her work at http://www.sherrevernon.com
In the artist’s words:
Marguerite Ogden: As a painter, focusing on monotypes, I am constantly looking for new ways to modify and apply the ink to my plexiglass plate. No matter what is on the plate the image changes with the pressure of press. One adapts and actually finds the process magical. My manta is “What happens if I do this ?”
Ogden was raised in the Boston area, and earned a BFA in painting from Boston University. She moved to Maine in the early ‘70s, eventually becoming a founding member of the craft cooperative Praxis in Freeport Maine. Formally trained as a painter but using the press as tool of choice, she has produced monotypes—also known as the painterly print—for the past 25 years. As a printmaker her work explores the myriad possibilities of expression and interpretation informed by her lived experience. During her time as a full-time arts educator for 26 years Ogden continued to draw, paint and print, exploring the boundaries of her creative expression.
In 1993 she enrolled in New York University’s Venice Masters program. This fruitful period over two summers in Italy was the turning point that influenced her color palette and distinctive aesthetic to this day. Encompassing her time in Europe, two stints at the Haystack Mountain Craft School also contributed to her development through further study of painting, bookmaking, and monotype printing. Ogden continues to be informed, challenged and rewarded by the evocative work she has been refining for the past two decades. Now a resident of Brooklyn, New York, with her own print studio, she has taken on a new challenge to create monotypes surrounded by the city and all it has to offer.