Marion Starling Boyer
Relaying the Load in Antarctica
Ross Sea Party, February 1, 1915
We slog toward the barrier in thigh-deep snow.
Over a thousand pounds are loaded on our sledge.
In harness, a team of bone-tired men and dogs.
Mack takes a bearing and estimates distance.
There's no going on with this load on our sledge
so we decide to relay. Mack hollers, whips the dogs.
He takes another bearing, reads the distance.
We unload half the load, haul forty yards forward, return
to relay the second half. Mack beats the dogs.
I fall a long way down a small crevasse.
We haul half the load forty yards more, unload, return.
Repeat. In two hours we advance a hundred yards.
Mack sinks to his shoulders in a crevasse.
We heave and heave just to get the runners started.
Repeat. In eight hours we gain four hundred yards.
Mack's hands fester with sores. My toes are going.
We heave and heave knowing that this job's just started
and already we're a team of bone-tired men and dogs.
Mack's hands fester with sores. My feet are numb.
We slog up the barrier in thigh-deep snow.
Icebound in Antarctica, 1915
After B.H. Fairchild
The bloom of nicotine puts me right—
the minute flares in the deep dark,
in hands telling stories. Drowsy voices.
Bad news craves cigarettes.
I've seen grief let smoke gather slowly,
rise and rise, unravel in frayed strands.
Cigarettes make bleakness nutritional, or at least useful.
They tell us the work is done, done well;
whisper
yes, yes, oh yes.
* Lines for this erasure are from B. H. Fairchild's poem "Cigarettes."
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The Poetry by the Sea Spring Celebration is available for viewing on Youtube as a permanent memorial and tribute to Mezzo Cammin's founder, Dr. Kim Bridgford (1959-2020). Click here to watch.
The 2021 Poetry by the Sea conference was canceled due to COVID-19. The next conference is planned for May 24-27 2022.
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| Gina Occhiogrosso: I am a painter whose work is composed not only through the application of wet color on a surface, but through processes of disassembly and realignment, and the incorporation of common, everyday materials like thread and yarn. These activities and elements allow me to explore anxiety, loss, humor and heroic femininity. The hallowed and often masculinized tradition of painting is subverted in my work through a repeated process of cutting and then sewing painted surfaces together to develop new forms, dynamic connections and illusions of depth. Where these freshly stitched edges join, there is a seam, which has both linear and sculptural qualities. The seam acts as a geometric disrupter of curvy ellipses and other organic forms that are carefully rendered and then carved up with alternating precision and chance. The ghost of those cut edges has its own subtle presence. I am interested in developing a surface that’s full of the suggestive qualities that abstraction can create. The stitched paintings supply this through the deliberate recalibration of shapes and their relationships to one another.
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