January 2015
I am the mother of one lovely teenager and three mischievous cats, and I live in Houston, Texas, where I teach at a local community college. I am the author the best-selling novel Six Weeks to Yehidah and the recently-released poetry collection, I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast. Some nice folks have seen fit to occasionally bestow awards upon my works, including the Forward National Literature Award and the International Book Award. In addition to my job at the college, I serve as a reviewer-at-large for The National Poetry Review, a teaching artist for The Rooster Moans Poetry Cooperative, an interviewer for American Microreviews and Interviews, an editorial adviser for The Criterion, and a host for Tiferet Talk radio. To learn more about me, please see www.melissastuddard.com.
Johannes Vermeer - Young Woman with a Water Jug - ca. 1662
Oil on canvas - 18 x 16 in. - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Oil on canvas - 18 x 16 in. - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
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LOOKING AT 'YOUNG WOMAN WITH A WATER JUG' Can you see the way Vermeer twirls light around his thumb, pulls it straight again and lays it across a vase or table— how the instant between a smile and a smile expired can be brought to focus with color? No more are shadows hid in dark but something felt in sanguine or cobalt— a cold shimmer at the rim of a golden jug, as if friction between objects required only nearness, as if a pale, blue drape had kindness to give to a brass wash basin. Our human minds are like these objects— delivering and seeking the same light from different points, casting radiant shadows on other minds, like some swart alchemy brewing in a basement lab, the commingling of hues in a cast-iron pot, and the rising of mind laid bare on mind, the rising of pure idea. -originally published in Connecticut Review |
©2015 Melissa Studdard