Elizabeth Malaska at Russo Lee Gallery

This is Elizabeth's second show at Russo Lee Gallery in Portland. She is a dazzling painter and a dazzling thinker and a dazzling speaker. I'm so glad this talk has been recorded on video because I want to hear it again! [Click on the link to watch it.] It was quite a feat, considering that she had been up all night with a sick child.

During Elizabeth's talk, she quoted from various sources. One quote I especially liked was this:

"Poetry creates a space for unsolvable things."

I was intrigued by this idea and kept trying to remember it so I could write it down. I kept failing! Finally I managed to scribble it in a corner of my last journal page. After the talk, I caught up with Elizabeth in the parking lot and asked her the source of the quote. "Ada Limón," she said. I was staggered.

I had collaged two quotes onto that empty journal page, and the day before had written a poem there while waiting for a medical appointment. The quotes, which had enabled me to create a poem after a long fallow period, were from a magazine I was using to work with collage glue. Sometimes I find interesting reading that way. In this case I had cut out two quotes and glued them to my blank journal page because they seemed true to me as a poet. But I felt guilty because it had been a long time since I'd written a poem! (Blipping is not the only place where I've fallen woefully behind.) The quotes I had collaged into my journal are these:

"You always start with the poem you want to write, but that's not always the poem. The poem is usually smarter than you, and it wants to go someplace that most likely will surprise you."

You end up writing a poem that is an interpretation of the original poem... It's like going after a butterfly with a pair of pliers."

The reason I was staggered when Elizabeth Malaska told me the source of her quote is that the name she spoke was ... Ada Limón! The journal page where I had scribbled the quote and where I had collaged two other quotes about poetry held the thoughts of one and the same poet. 

I'm not familiar with the poetry of Ada Limón, but clearly that's a defect that has to be rectified. Meanwhile I'm delighted by this adventure in the creative process.