A Careful Hunger

Poems

Judy Young, John K. Young

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780813177847
• eBook ISBN:
  9780813177861
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Contents

Foreword

A Note on the Text

Blue Kitchen with East Window

History

Brightness

Little Girl, Little Girl

Secrets

Music

Photograph, 1952

Not My Life

Snowlight

The Dark Room

What She Wants

Blackbird Poem

Cicadas

The Conspirator

Drought

The Geometric Progression of Sadness

Stillbirth

The Persimmon Tree

Notebook: Allusion to Images

Blue Paper

Recovering from Joy

Song for Which There Are No Words

A Scientific Education

The Silent Ships

My Paradise Varies

I Can Feel My Bones

If Mykonos

Red Curry

The Burning Woman

Not Looking Back

Carousel

Cold October Morning

Revolutionary Music

Lost

Deer on the Highway

Turning

The Sun

From the Bath

Swinging Statues

This Poem Keeps Disappearing

Child at the Edge of the World

Such Existence

Way In or Way Out

On the Front Porch

The Apple

The Road

Light Years

The Moth

The End of My Life

Migration

Night Journey

Foreword

We never called it The Art Group. That definite article was way too definite for us. Likewise the capital letters. We called it art group, or just group. Mainly, we just said, “Can everybody meet Thursday the twenty-third? And where?”

It took a while to collect ourselves, but finally there were seven of us: Donna Boyd, our musical genius; Carolyn Hisel, an extraordinary painter of light-filled rooms, mysterious landscapes, pure souls, and comical little figures; the writer/poets Susan Richards, Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, and Jane Gentry. Audrey Robinson and Judy Young were both visual artists and poets.

Judy had been a student in a poetry workshop taught by Mary Ann’s husband, James Baker Hall. He introduced Judy to Mary Ann, thinking, quite rightly, that they’d be glad to know each other. So they got accustomed to meeting for lunch every few weeks, where they may have talked a little about their lives as writers, but also, most urgently, about the organization of their clothes closets.

Then one day (no one can remember exactly the year—we’re guessing 1985), Judy came out to Mary Ann’s home in Harrison County, Kentucky, for lunch and brought with her Audrey Robinson. Audrey had come to Lexington with her husband, Don Robinson, from a commune in Northern California because Don needed to help his aging father run the family horse farm. She felt out of place in the horse world of Fayette County, pining for California and her lost Tassajara life. A less similar pair than Audrey and Judy could hardly be imagined, but a teacher at The Lexington School, where they both had children enrolled, had suggested that they might like to meet each other. Audrey told us, years later, about Judy wearing a suit to visit her for the first time. “A suit!” said Audrey, still shocked. “And heels!” Audrey was receiving company that day barefoot, in her usual shorts and T-shirt. But they learned quickly that the teacher who introduced them was right—they did have a lot in common. Both of them were writing poetry. And both were free-ranging visual artists—mainly painting for Judy and sculpting for Audrey—but both of them exploring many new art forms.

Anyway, on that afternoon in Harrison County, they told us about a group of women who were calling themselves the Stuck Artists. The group had been organized by the art photographer Linda Butler (about to decamp for Pittsburgh).

Well, both Mary Ann and Sue were, for complicated reasons, good and stuck at the time, so it sounded at least nonthreatening and worth a try. Their game, Judy and Audrey explained, was to pull three words out of a box and go home and play with them. And come back in three weeks with whatever they’d made of them.

Play became the operative word.

The idea was to let ourselves loose, and we did. We remembered how to play. We loved what we were doing. We stopped calling our group anything. We just drew the words out of a box and went home to do something with them.

We—Mary Ann and Sue—both thought of ourselves, when we entered the festivities, as unadulterated fiction writers with a certain degree of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• A Note on the Text
• Blue Kitchen with East Window
• History
• Brightness
• Little Girl, Little Girl
• Secrets
• Music
• Photograph, 1952
• Not My Life
• Snowlight
• The Dark Room
• What She Wants
• Blackbird Poem
• Cicadas
• The Conspirator
• Drought
• The Geometric Progression of Sadness
• Stillbirth
• The Persimmon Tree
• Notebook: Allusion to Images
• Blue Paper
• Recovering from Joy
• Song for Which There Are No Words
• The Silent Ships
• My Paradise Varies
• I Can Feel My Bones
• If Mykonos
• Red Curry
• The Burning Woman
• Not Looking Back
• Carousel
• Cold October Morning
• Revolutionary Music
• Lost
• Deer on the Highway
• Turning
• The Sun
• From the Bath
• Swinging Statues
• This Poem Keeps Disappearing
• Child at the Edge of the World
• Such Existence
• Way In or Way Out
• On the Front Porch
• The Apple
• The Road
• Light Years
• The Moth
• The End of My Life
• Migration
• Night Journey