Feb 71 min read

Artist Bill Yarrow

I am professor emeritus of English at Joliet Junior College and author of six full-length volumes of poetry. I have recently been working with public-domain paintings, photographs, and designs to construct original collages, which attempt to assemble discrete pieces of other artworks into new artistic wholes.

AXES

You think about the first time you saw an axe

You were in your father's workshop

You think about the first time you held an axe

An older man warned you not to cut off your own leg

You think about the first time you sharpened an axe

You held the sharpening stone in your fist

Then you read Aristotle

Poetry is an axe

Poetry is an axe?

Then you remembered

The first time you saw a poem

The first time you held a poem

The first time you sharpened a poem

The first time a poem sharpened you

I approach making collages as I approach writing poems working with juxtaposition, pattern, rhythm, novelty, balance, texture, collision, elegance and surprise. I take the same creative delight out of making collages as I do from writing poems. For me, the process of creation is uniform across all the arts. For me, the most lasting pleasure is the contemplation of art in all of its many costumes and disguises.

ARTEFACT

The only thing I have left

of my maternal grandfather

is a small hand-held mirror

made of ivory.

It sits in the upstairs

bedroom dresser drawer

like an only child.

I have yet to see myself in it.