ABOUT Linda Kittell
Linda Kittell was born in Troy, New York in 1952. She graduated from the University of Vermont in 1974. In 1976, she completed an M.F.A. in creative writing at the University of Montana.
“There are at least sixteen different ways to treasure this book. Though we wouldn’t think it possible, Linda Kittell’s poetry actually enhances Wyeth’s work. It moves us deeper into the compositions, into the artist’s consciousness-in-the-act-of-making, and most astonishingly, into the mind of the model as she thinks about her collaboration with the great painter. When reading biography or art criticism, we never quite reach the deeply pleasurable understanding we desire, but Kittell’s The Helga Pictures takes us exactly there.”
—David Huddle, author of La TourDreams of the
Wolf Girl, Grayscale, and Glory River
Overflow
I had tried to forget
that first thaw when ice
gives way without
the clear crack of winter. I had tried
to forget how the seasons come to us like people,
like Helga comes to me
over the lawn, her feet remembering
where hyacinth bulbs grow mysteriously
toward us. I had tried to forget
how light reflects off her
from a source all
its own, how in sleep her arm
curves like a moon
around her face.
Out the window
the brook, its parchment white ice
almost gone, remembers its bed, flows with water
too clear for our lips
to remember. I had forgotten the gray
of willow buds touched
with umber, and how the hills
reflect the clouds in Hooker’s
green hue, how sap green electrifies
the air and what little I know
of love, of the heart doing
its work, showing us too clearly
those things
we must trust.
Copyright © Pecan
Grove Press,
1997-2003
For further information contact
H. Palmer
Hall.
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Internet Navigating
Most recent revision
November 11, 2003
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