90
2014
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
number 23
2013 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE FINALIST
Available Beauty by Robert M. Wallace Courtesy of the Greenville Museum of Art
This painting by Mark Rothko was a surprise. When I first saw it, I was tired, waiting In my wife’s busy office. I noticed the postcard With Untitled 1957 reproduced on it Stuck on a cluttered cork board, almost hidden. The painting is so very clean and simple: Two green rectangles, one small and one bigger, Separated by a thin blue rectangle. There is something beautiful in the colors, Something so peaceful in the basic shapes The longer I studied that stark simplicity, The deeper that dappled green seemed to me, The slower that blue rectangle became, Suggesting an available beauty, Splendor even in my tangled life. The painting overwhelms me, makes me small, And then it makes me part of something Colossal, beauty and its peacefulness. I tried to surf one time, to ride the waves. What I recall most is a tired feeling. I couldn’t pop up on the swaying board; My legs weren’t strong enough for me to stand. But as I lay flat on the rocking water, Holding the slick surfboard with all my strength, Catching my breath from yet another fall, I felt myself rising within the green, Even higher within the blue.
Robert M. Wallace is a Professor of English at West Virginia State University. He grew up in Winston-Salem and attended Pfeiffer College in Misenheimer, NC. He graduated from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville with a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. He is a past recipient of a grant from the West Virginia Humanities Council. His poems have appeared in such publications as Georgetown Review, Cold Mountain Review, and Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine. This poem will also appear in his first collection of poetry, Hawk on a Power Line (Louisiana Literature Press, 2014).
Mysteries: West Light (acrylic on canvas, 48x48) by Kenneth Noland
Asheville, NC, native Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) is recognized as one of the twentieth century’s most influential American artists. After serving in the Army Air Corps as a glider pilot and cryptographer, he returned to North Carolina and attended Black Mountain College on the G.I. Bill, where he studied under Josef Albers and Ilya Bolotowsky. After further study in Paris, he returned to the US and settled in Washington, DC, where he taught at the Catholic University of America and at the Institute of Contemporary Art. With Morris Louis, Noland co-founded the Washington School of Color, an important part of the postwar style of abstraction identified as Color Field painting, a movement that included Mark Rothko. Noland’s work has been shown internationally in solo and major group exhibitions. His works are in such collections as the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Phillips Collection, located in Washington, DC. He received the North Carolina Award in Fine Arts in 1995, and a Doctor of Fine Arts honorary degree from Davidson College, in 1997.