Roses

By Barbara Guest 1920–2006 Barbara Guest

“painting has no air . . .”
—Gertrude Stein

That there should never be air

in a picture surprises me.

It would seem to be only a picture

of a certain kind, a portrait in paper

or glue, somewhere a stickiness

as opposed to a stick-to-it-ness

of another genre. It might be

quite new to do without

that air, or to find oxygen

on the landscape line

like a boat which is an object

or a shoe which never floats

and is stationary.

Still there

are certain illnesses that require

air, lots of it. And there are nervous

people who cannot manufacture

enough air and must seek

for it when they don’t have plants,

in pictures. There is the mysterious

traveling that one does outside

the cube and this takes place

in air.

It is why one develops

an attitude toward roses picked

in the morning air, even roses

without sun shining on them.

The roses of Juan Gris from which

we learn the selflessness of roses

existing perpetually without air,

the lid being down, so to speak,

a 1912 fragrance sifting

to the left corner where we read

“La Merveille” and escape.

Source: The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest (Wesleyan University Press, 2008)

Biography

Barbara Guest rose to prominence in the late 1950s as a member of an informal group of writers known as the New York school of poets whose membership included Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, and James Schuyler. Their innovative approach to poetry was influenced by modern art, especially surrealism and abstract expressionism. Guest drew on her own background in art (she worked for Art News magazine in the 1950s) to create poetry . . .

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