May 13, 2009 / Creative Writing
I watched Rebel Without a Cause on TV late one college night when I learned …
The unfinished: it’s one of Rodin’s gifts.
But once we’ve taught ourselves to see his work,
there’s no difference between the whole body
and parts of it: hands, head, feet, the torso—
no difference between rough-hewn surfaces
and others where we find ourselves
in sheer glass finishes, equal in beauty.
Encircled by the rotunda’s windows,
where light from Palo Alto disappears, appears,
Despair keeps her stance, left foot in one hand,
head bent so her face, almost out of sight,
maintains there’s no pain. The granite features
Rodin left as unfinished as cement
we put to our feet daily. That journey.
About the Author
Peter Cooley
Peter Cooley has published eight books of poetry, seven of them with Carnegie Mellon, which will publish his ninth, Night Bus to the Afterlife, in 2014. He is Senior Mellon Professor of the Humanities and Director of Creative Writing at Tulane University in New Orleans.
Susan Lilley
May 13, 2009 / Creative Writing
May 13, 2009 / Creative Writing
Mary Van Denend
May 3, 2011 / Creative Writing
May 3, 2011 / Creative Writing
Mary Van Denend reflects on Simone Weil’s “Waiting for God,” a seminal piece on Weil’s understandings of grace, affliction, and our “sacred longing” for God.