Walking around a gallery full of Picasso’s work on Jacqueline made me realize how dedicated and incredible the artist was throughout his life. What particularly stuck out to me, however, was his linoleum cuts. In the process of this particular art-making, Picasso gouged out the image in a piece of linoleum against a block of wood. Traditionally, artists make separate linoleum cuts for each color used in the art. Picasso was innovative, in printing one color from his linocut, then going back to the same piece of linoleum and carving deeper for the next color. There was no room for error, which again proved to me how sensational Picasso was.
Since the image is cut out into linoleum, there’s potential to play with different color schemes. One of my favorite linoleum cuts from Picasso is called “Life Under the Lamp.” This painting may seem fairly simple on the surface, but looking at what went into each and every color is astonishing to me. I first saw the image upstairs in the Pace Gallery, up the spiral staircase in a room set off to the side. “Life Under the Lamp” was one of the only images in the gallery not of Jacqueline, so it was also refreshing to see an image that was not an abstract representation of Picasso’s love.
To see the full process of making “Life Under the Lamp,” the British Museum outlines it here.
A full gallery of Picasso’s work showed me (someone who doubted that he was an incredibly special artist apart from his name) that art definitely is a lifestyle. For example, Picasso created his linocut “Life Under the Lamp” when he was 80 years old. His name is known everywhere you go, and this gallery allowed me to have a greater respect for an image I grew up seeing in my home, shown below
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In a lot of ways, I think it’s very easy to disconnect a writer from their work. When you read a book, for instance, you’re generally not dedicating a whole lot of thought to the person behind those words. No one reads Dracula and wonders what Bram Stoker was feeling when he wrote Lucy’s death. No one stops to consider how Mark Twain’s childhood affected the way he described Huckleberry Finn’s adventures.
This is one of the primary differences between novels and poems. When reading a poem, you are forced to take a walk in the writer’s shoes- or ‘slip into their skin’, as Laurie Ann Guerrero might say- which results in a more intimate, occasionally uncomfortable experience. A poet’s writing is raw, demanding nothing but a reader’s undivided emotional attention.
So, after meeting both Saeed Jones and Laurie Ann Guerrero, I can’t help but wonder: what is it that makes a poet?
The first thing that comes to mind is perhaps the most obvious: pain. Mrs. Guerrero was particularly forthcoming about the hardships she had experienced as a child and young adult. She was repressed, silenced, marginalized. Mr. Jones faced something similar to this as well; as a gay man of color, he talked about his struggles with identity and his place in the world.
The second factor ties into the first in a willingness to explore and discuss that pain. Being an artist, in many ways, is about vulnerability. Much in the same way that painters put a piece of their soul on display when they frame a piece of art, poets give their readers a personal invitation into the workings of their minds. Fears, doubts, indulgences- all of these things are on display in a poet’s writing in a way that bares their soul to anyone who cares to look.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, is a flexible, introspective view of the world. Anyone can describe the world around them. To do so with insight and structured, creative language is another thing altogether. Both Mr. Jones and Mrs. Guerrero do this, providing personal and social commentary that really makes one consider the impact they have on others.
To write is to be an artist. To write poetry, however, is to be human.
Whenever I am asked if I read poems, I never know what to say. I always think, “Does it count if all I did was read the words?” The reason for this is that I hardly ever successfully interpret poems. I know it’s supposed to be all up to the readers mostly to interpret things the way they see fit, but it’s still a confusing question for me.
When I read Laurie Ann Guerrero’s poems before class, I didn’t really feel confident that I understood them. But, when she spoke in class about her background and her drive when she was writing the poems, I suddenly understood. Or at least my efforts were doubled so that this time I was determined to understand.
I came to the conclusion that sometimes a little background knowledge is important to fully understand a work of art. For me, putting the pieces together throughout the class was the fun part. In the intense and emotional time that Laurie Ann was in our class, I felt inspired because poetry really can express the essence of a person.
What I found really interesting was her “crown of sonnets”- mainly because I was in awe that she actually wanted to put herself through that grueling process! I remember in my junior year of high school, I had to write a normal sonnet and it was SO DIFFICULT. I mean getting the iambic pentameter right, then the rhyme scheme, all the while making sure the poem makes some kind of sense…it just goes on and on. The point is, one sonnet consumed so much of my time. But then in class I heard from Laurie Ann a couple of poems from her crown of sonnets and suddenly I was inspired to try my hand in poetry again.
Laurie Ann said that she attempted the crown of sonnets when she needed something to distract her and I’m thinking now that that sounds like a good idea. Who knows? I might try one!
I remember when I was in middle school, so many of my classmates were using and combining these small beads to create colorful works of art. Today when I was walking home from East River Park, I saw a small store near my apartment that was displaying a bunch of cool bead art in its windows and wanted to share this unique style of art.
Bead art is essentially using several individual small beads (about 2 cm tall) and connecting them with small amounts of glue (or string) to form a cohesive, larger image. You can kind of 
think of bead art as a new form of mosaics. Often bead art recreate popular images or icons seen in other places especially from video games and television shows.
The aspect I enjoy most of bead art is how it can create images that look almost digital. Many works of bead art have this sense that they are pixelated. They make me feel like as if I was looking at something from an old video game created in the 1990s or something created using a digital image program.
Overall, I really like the idea that, similar to a mosaic, you can use small fragments to create a cohesive image. Beads were objects that I viewed as insignificant especially with how small and disposable they are. However, bead art can really make a person appreciate how useful and creative these tiny things can be.
Last Thursday during my lengthy 4-hour gap between classes, I went down to meet my dad for lunch at his office. He works in the World Financial Center, which is conveniently located right next to the newly opened Freedom Tower. Each time I visit him, I am awed by the beauty of this large, spiraling building, along with the heart wrenching 9/11 memorial that seems to dig into the earth infinitely.
This day in particular was a special day because at my dads building there was an exhibit that was unlike any other that I’ve seen before. Upon taking the down escalator to the plaza, I was stopped in my tracks by a series of sculptures made out of cans of food.
After walking over to them, I realized that they were all part of a competition called Canstruction. In particular this was the 22nd Annual Canstruction NYC Design/Build Competition. This competition is run to raise awareness of the role the food banks play in communities all over the country. Canned food in particular is one of the most important things for food banks.
There were about a dozen sculptures of all different sizes and themes. I admire them because it looked like whoever made them spent a lot of time and hard work to make these perfect. Also taking what most people think is just a metal container that is used to store food and turning it into a piece of art is truly fascinating. The winners of the competition are decided by the public on their Facebook page as well as by 5 jurors who have the final say. Voting ended yesterday Thursday November 14th and the winner was Hungry to the Core, my personal favorite. Other than “Hungry to the Core”, other sculptures included a seal with a beach ball on its nose, an owl, and a thinking man.
This was definitely a great surprise for me to be able to see this as it was not there for long and was not the art I am used to seeing. I hope that next year I am able to see the new contestant’s sculptures as I am curious what else could be made out of cans of soup and sardines.
I was scrolling through Tumblr, an Internet blog network, the other day and I stumbled upon these paintings by Picasso. What intrigued me was how drastic the change between his earlier paintings and his later paintings were. To me it seemed as if his skill to create art diminished because the paintings he drew before his twenties looked more realistic. Then I realized that it wasn’t a factor of ability that had changed the way he painted but rather a change in the style of his art. Yes, the paintings that Picasso made during his earlier years seem more difficult to create, well it does to me at least, but it does not have that peculiarity of abstractedness that makes a Picasso a Picasso. As we have learned in class, Picasso’s style is to develop an abstract representation of an image in order to create movement within the painting. It is evident that he built onto his style of work from when he first began creating these images by looking at the complexity of the “pieces” of the image. I mean, look at the one he drew when he was ninety years old! I particularly enjoy the painting he made at the age of 60 because it reminds me of the drawing Professor Eversely had put up back in the beginning of the year. From that class, I’ve learned that not everything has to be done perfectly from point A to point B. In fact, I enjoy Picasso’s notion of flux within his paintings now that they don’t seem so beyond-me and daunting.
“Little red, little kidney, little mouth
singing, calling: I’m here! I’m here! I thought
the dirt would give you something to take hold of:
I’ve buried everything I’ve ever loved.” (Laurie Ann Guerrero)
Reading these lines along with Laurie Ann’s other poems on my own was fascinating. But hearing these words come directly from her, accompanied by a flow of emotions that almost brought me to tears, was a completely different experience.
The truth is, I never expected to be able to identify with poetry to the extent that I did this last Tuesday, when the poet Laurie Ann had given us the honor of coming and openly discussing her life and experiences in our class.
Laurie Ann has a tremendous talent, and certainly, she has been successful in making it public and enlightening us, the readers, with her work. During the discussion, she had stressed the fact that her primary intention is to bring the reader into her space; “to see everything that is happening through my skin,” and to use all senses in order to bring the poem into the reader’s life.
After she told us about all the difficulties and the challenges that she had endured as a child, I grew to appreciate even more her determination and courage. I suddenly recognized her poetry as something that was realistically crucial for her own survival and success. She further supported this idea with a quote that I will not forget: “Poetry is not a luxury.” Indeed, poetry is often viewed as a luxury, when in fact, it often becomes a necessity and a source of motivation to believe, and to never give up. As for Laurie Ann, writing poetry was a way of documenting the events in her life. It enabled her to break the silence that she had been forced into, and to discover her own body and identity. Her poetry emerged from a very dark, lonesome place, and after so many years, it grew to become something that is so beautiful and well appreciated.
In addition to learning about Laurie Ann’s life and struggles, I also learned to view poems from a different perspective and appreciate them in a different way. Poems are not just a blur; they are not just a collection of random words. Every word has a meaning, and every meaning has a value, and every value is significant for the understanding of the poem and our ability to perceive it as part of our own lives.
Laurie Guerrero’s talk about “A Crown for Gumecindom” and how she named her crown of sonnets after her grandfather because she wanted everyone to say his name right, reminded me of a poem that I had read that had a similar message. Although it’s a bit long, it’s beautifully written and I think everyone should give it a shot. It’s also something that everyone who has a name that isn’t considered “American” has to go through. I know my name is pronounced differently in Spanish and that’s the way it was meant to be said, but because I live here, it has become normal for me to “Americanize” my name in order for people to pronounce it correctly or comfortably. Spelling my name right is also a huge deal and one I know a lot of people have to deal with.
The Names They Gave Me by Tasbeeh Herwees
i.
“Your name is Tasbeeh. Don’t let them call you by anything else.”
My mother speaks to me in Arabic; the command sounds more forceful in her mother tongue, a Libyan dialect that is all sharp edges and hard, guttural sounds. I am seven years old and it has never occurred to me to disobey my mother. Until twelve years old, I would believe God gave her the supernatural ability to tell when I’m lying.
“Don’t let them give you an English nickname,” my mother insists once again, “I didn’t raise amreekan.”
My mother spits out this last word with venom. Amreekan. Americans. It sounds like a curse coming out of her mouth. Eight years in this country and she’s still not convinced she lives here. She wears her headscarf tightly around her neck, wades across the school lawn in long, floor-skimming skirts. Eight years in this country and her tongue refuses to bend and soften for the English language. It embarrasses me, her heavy Arab tongue, wrapping itself so forcefully around the clumsy syllables of English, strangling them out of their meaning.
But she is fierce and fearless. I have never heard her apologize to anyone. She will hold up long grocery lines checking and double-checking the receipt in case they’re trying to cheat us. My humiliation is heavy enough for the both of us. My English is not. Sometimes I step away, so people don’t know we’re together but my dark hair and skin betray me as a member of her tribe.
On my first day of school, my mother presses a kiss to my cheek.
“Your name is Tasbeeh,” she says again, like I’ve forgotten. “Tasbeeh.”
ii.
Roll call is the worst part of my day. After a long list of Brittanys, Jonathans, Ashleys, and Yen-but-call-me-Jens, the teacher rests on my name in silence. She squints. She has never seen this combination of letters strung together in this order before. They are incomprehensible. What is this h doing at the end? Maybe it is a typo.
“Tas…?”
“Tasbeeh,” I mutter, with my hand half up in the air. “Tasbeeh.”
A pause.
“Do you go by anything else?”
“No,” I say. “Just Tasbeeh. Tas-beeh.”
“Tazbee. All right. Alex?”
She moves on before I can correct her. She said it wrong. She said it so wrong. I have never heard my name said so ugly before, like it’s a burden. Her entire face contorts as she says it, like she is expelling a distasteful thing from her mouth. She avoids saying it for the rest of the day, but she has already baptized me with this new name. It is the name everyone knows me by, now, for the next six years I am in elementary school. “Tazbee,” a name with no grace, no meaning, no history; it belongs in no language.
“Tazbee,” says one of the students on the playground, later. “Like Tazmanian Devil?” Everyone laughs. I laugh too. It is funny, if you think about it.
iii.
I do not correct anyone for years. One day, in third grade, a plane flies above our school.
“Your dad up there, Bin Laden?” The voice comes from behind. It is dripping in derision.
“My name is Tazbee,” I say. I said it in this heavy English accent, so he may know who I am. I am American. But when I turn around they are gone.
iv.
I go to middle school far, far away. It is a 30-minute drive from our house. It’s a beautiful set of buildings located a few blocks off the beach. I have never in my life seen so many blond people, so many colored irises. This is a school full of Ashtons and Penelopes, Patricks and Sophias. Beautiful names that belong to beautiful faces. The kind of names that promise a lifetime of social triumph.
I am one of two headscarved girls at this new school. We are assigned the same gym class. We are the only ones in sweatpants and long-sleeved undershirts. We are both dreading roll call. When the gym teacher pauses at my name, I am already red with humiliation.
“How do I say your name?” she asks.
“Tazbee,” I say.
“Can I just call you Tess?”
I want to say yes. Call me Tess. But my mother will know, somehow. She will see it written in my eyes. God will whisper it in her ear. Her disappointment will overwhelm me.
“No,” I say, “Please call me Tazbee.”
I don’t hear her say it for the rest of the year.
v.
My history teacher calls me Tashbah for the entire year. It does not matter how often I correct her, she reverts to that misshapen sneeze of a word. It is the ugliest conglomeration of sounds I have ever heard.
When my mother comes to parents’ night, she corrects her angrily, “Tasbeeh. Her name is Tasbeeh.” My history teacher grimaces. I want the world to swallow me up.
vi.
My college professors don’t even bother. I will only know them for a few months of the year. They smother my name in their mouths. It is a hindrance for their tongues. They hand me papers silently. One of them mumbles it unintelligibly whenever he calls on my hand. Another just calls me “T.”
My name is a burden. My name is a burden. My name is a burden. I am a burden.
vii.
On the radio I hear a story about a tribe in some remote, rural place that has no name for the color blue. They do not know what the color blue is. It has no name so it does not exist. It does not exist because it has no name.
viii.
At the start of a new semester, I walk into a math class. My teacher is blond and blue-eyed. I don’t remember his name. When he comes to mine on the roll call, he takes the requisite pause. I hold my breath.
“How do I pronounce your name?” he asks.
I say, “Just call me Tess.”
“Is that how it’s pronounced?”
I say, “No one’s ever been able to pronounce it.”
“That’s probably because they didn’t want to try,” he said. “What is your name?”
When I say my name, it feels like redemption. I have never said it this way before. Tasbeeh. He repeats it back to me several times until he’s got it. It is difficult for his American tongue. His has none of the strength, none of the force of my mother’s. But he gets it, eventually, and it sounds beautiful. I have never heard it sound so beautiful. I have never felt so deserving of a name. My name feels like a crown.
ix.
“Thank you for my name, mama.”
x.
When the barista asks me my name, sharpie poised above the coffee cup, I tell him: “My name is Tasbeeh. It’s a tough t clinging to a soft a, which melts into a silky ssss, which loosely hugs the b, and the rest of my name is a hard whisper — eeh. Tasbeeh. My name is Tasbeeh. Hold it in your mouth until it becomes a prayer. My name is a valuable undertaking. My name requires your rapt attention. Say my name in one swift note – Tasbeeeeeeeh – sand let the h heat your throat like cinnamon. Tasbeeh. My name is an endeavor. My name is a song. Tasbeeh. It means giving glory to God. Tasbeeh. Wrap your tongue around my name, unravel it with the music of your voice, and give God what he is due.”
Meeting poet Laurie Guerrero was extremely inspirational for me. Not only is her work exceptional, but her attitude was amazing. Being a Hispanic woman also made me appreciate her work and attitude a lot more. Her message that power can also come from vulnerability is something we’re not often taught and it definitely made me think further about the topic. Her unapologetic character was also something I really looked up to. She was unapologetic about her vulnerability, her past and her thoughts; I think we should all change to try to think this way. I liked how she was so open about her life, especially the negative aspects, and didn’t try to sugarcoat anything. The fact that she went to college while having to raise three kids at an age where most people would have just given up because they they would think it’s too hard and not worth it is something I really look up to.
One of the things she said that got me really emotional and I thought was so beautifully put was “I want to slip my hand in the photograph and fix your hair like I once did”, or something very close to that (I was way too immersed in her reading to take notes during it). It’s something that everyone can relate to, not just about someone who has passed away, but perhaps someone you’re no longer close to or someone who’s changed and you no longer feel like you know them. This was one of the favorite things she said and I honestly started tearing up a bit and had to quickly wipe my tears. You could also tell that during the reading of the book about her grandpa, she was emotional. It’s a given that she would emotional over the loss of someone who has raise her and that she spent 5 years taking care of, but I found it so strong of her to be able to relive all those feelings and thoughts and do it so powerfully file exposing her vulnerability.
All in all, Guerrero has definitely become one of my favorite poets and I’m definitely going to try to write a crown of sonnets.
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