POETRY INSPIRED BY MIMI CHEN TING'S ARTWORK
Mimi Chen Ting's work inspired poets Lance Larsen, Tanner Millett, and Lindsey Webb to write ekphrastic poems. Read three of these poems below!
no void
by Lindsey Webb
after Will I Hear the Blue Bird Sing, Mimi Chen Ting, 2019
today I knock again
on the shell
of the past
blue and pulsing
a little room
where a parent
and child sleep
enfolded
here in winter ice
illness and money
hang over the cornfields
like a thin flag
inside the flat unbounded
blue keeps them
like the temperature
of an egg
despite a quiver
in the shape
of her wing
a tremble
beyond the fields
children are being robbed
adults fold back
into the past unseeing
so I knock again
as if to hurry
their stillness
from the shell
who will keep us
all—I knock
—from the unknowable
and cold future
death cold
shock regret
help me find the room
without them
and its glowing yolk
A Primordial Rose
by Tanner Millett
after Blue Rose, Mimi Chen Ting, 1977
IN THE BEGINNING of days,
stuff surged as one
indistinguishable mess. Silt
and sputum, mud
and milk, blood
and biomes, broken shorelines—
all mixed together in an eternal mire.
No “I” or “you,” not even a “we,”
simply that singular, unrefined gray.
But then—at a WORD—fingers
begin to grow, gentle as coral.
The slope of a mountain
forms, a nose bearing first breath
in the absence of amniotic fluid,
and a cry breaks into the blue air,
thin and sharp as a thorn.
Soon, womb-wet eyes blink
at the pocked white ceiling,
at the nurse, tired behind her mask,
at the faded linen drapes,
as primordial miasma coalesces into
the limits of the body, the will of the soul.
And the incarnadine babe, still little
more than a wrinkle, lies upon his mother,
her bared breast slick with sweat. She
grasps a tiny hand and holds the boy close
as the flushed reds of their separate flesh
become indistinguishable.
In All My Wandering, This Orange Bird
by Lance Larsen
after Vesper, Mimi Chen Ting, 1991
always songs and wind and a quicksilver moon
barn door ajar clouds leaning in like a listening ear
no worries Kate I’ll keep your note in my shoe
time to thumb my way west which way is Gallup
barn door ajar clouds leaning in like a listening ear
is this taunting bird my guide when will I sleep
time to thumb my way west which way is Gallup
or hop a train pulling for Santa Fe I taste a storm
is this taunting bird my guide when will I sleep
one heaven or many I’ll make my home this guitar
or hop a train pulling for Santa Fe I taste a storm
broken hills without fires a sky without stars
one heaven or many I’ll make my home this guitar
no worries Kate I’ll keep your note in my shoe
broken hills without fires a sky without stars
always songs and wind and a quicksilver moon
About the Poets:
Lindsey Webb is the author of Plat (Archway Editions), a New York Times best poetry book of 2024, and two chapbooks. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in BOMB, Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, and Iowa Review. She is a visiting assistant professor of creative writing at Grinnell College and an editor at Thirdhand Books. As an undergraduate, she worked in the BYU MOA Cafe making sandwiches and wiping tables, and often wandered the galleries before and after her shifts.
Tanner Millett is a writer of novels, short stories, and poetry on special occasions. He currently works as an adjunct professor of creative writing at Brigham Young University, a course developer for Independent Study, and a freelance editor for a local publishing company that focuses on Latter-day Saint scripture research. He enjoys reading everything from classics to contemporary fantasy, so long as it's interesting. In his spare time, Tanner enjoys listening to Jim Croce, John Denver, and Gordon Lightfoot while imagining living further away from the city than he currently does.
Lance Larsen, professor of English, currently serves as department chair. He teaches American literature and creative writing, especially poetry. He is the author of five collections of poems, most recently What the Body Knows (Tampa 2018). He has received a number of awards, including a Pushcart prize and fellowships from Sewanee, Ragdale, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2017, he completed a five-year term as poet laureate of Utah.
