Grace Cavalieri is Maryland’s tenth poet laureate. During quarantine, she’s also started painting and has shared with us both a painting and poem. And if you want to read more of Grace’s pandemic poetry: she’s one of the amazing poets featured in 2021 anthology Singing in the Dark: A Global Anthology of Poetry under Lockdown.

Read more about the COVID Poetry & Art Project here!

Chatting with Grace

Can you tell us a little about this poem or piece of art and how you came to create it? How has the current crisis (or crises) influenced your art?

I am sharing a painting, one of the 50 I have produced during this last year of seclusion. It was certainly a time where there was nothing left to lose but loneliness, so I added that relaxing regimen to augment my daily writing practice. And why did I dare? Because the great poet A. R. Ammons once said "If you are nothing, you can say and do anything." So I knew I had the credentials!

Autobiography was accepted by a gallery in Chicago but then a bubble was detected under the paint. I smile because there are many bubbles. I have three failed paintings under this one and finally settled for half collage before discarding it. The paper inclusions all speak to me about my life: books, cats, fun, activism, poetry. It secretly contains tiny slices of favorite poets also.

Poetry comes from a quiet place and I think "View" reflects that. Clearly it starts from a "point of view," with the speaker looking out the window and describing what is seen or intuited. But the voice, which goes out into silence, here comes back into poetry. 

What role do you think the arts play in times of turmoil and uncertainty? 

Turmoil makes art! And when faced with the ultimate wall (living alone for a year), there was nothing for me to do but paint a window on that wall. And then keep going every day as a discipline (discipline in meaning "disciple to").

What are you viewing/reading/watching/listening to these days?

In the meantime, books are our friends and do not have germs. So I'll just name those read during the past few weeks. Plays: The Liar by Pierre Corneille, plus a modern adaptation, The Liar by David Ives. Collections of poems: by Jack Gilbert, Ruben Dario and Su Tung-P'o. Also history: The Grandmother Of Jesus, and the new Washington Writers' Publishing House Anthology, This Is What America Looks Like.

Finally, art is the result of a great mysterious gift from the cosmos raining down light and animating everything. All we have to do is make something to connect to the divine. It's a collaboration and doesn’t depend on winning any prizes to do what we do. Art brings us together. The poetry workshops I have on zoom have brought daily energy into my room and filled me with that light. It makes family, community, tribe--something to share--and, as has been said, ART MAKES US LESS LONELY

Do you have a favorite local writer or artist (DC area)?

I love the poets in the DC/Maryland/Virginia area! It's the poetry capital of the world.

View

My sacred space, a bird flying to the feeder

the shade of a tree, berries in the forest

heat from the sun on the pane

flames of experience

lashing on glass

the clear path of vision

the straight edge of sky

a parting of water

picking us up placing us exactly there

history has been shattered into pieces that will not fit together

how large is loss

how much does it take to fill

how do we gather it in our arms  

when the city was destroyed with illness there was a place I could not reach

right now a small animal is breaking free in the woods

the milk of the moon is shining on these words that come from me

and do not return empty.

[“View” was first published on Mike Maggio’s website. You can find the original COVID Poetry and Art Project posting here.]

About the artist

Grace Cavalieri is Maryland’s tenth Poet Laureate. Grace is the author of 26 books and chapbooks of poetry and 20 short-form and full-length plays. A book of her paintings is forthcoming from Poet's Choice Press. Her latest book of poems is What The Psychic Said, (Goss publications 2019,) previous books are Showboat, about 25 years as a Navy wife (Goss;) and Other Voices, Other Lives (ASP, 2018.). Her latest play “Quilting The Sun” was produced at the Theater for the New City, NYC in 2019. She founded and produces “the Poet and the Poem” for public radio, now from the Library of Congress, celebrating 44 years on-air. Among other honors Grace holds The Associated Writing Program’s George Garrett Award, plus the Pen-Fiction, the Allen Ginsberg, Bordighera Poetry, and Paterson Poetry awards; the “Annie” Award; The inaugural Folger Shakespeare Library Columbia Award; The National Working Women Commission Award, and The CPB Silver Medal.