Robbi Nester Verse-Virtual 2016 June

June 2016

To all appearances, I inherited my poetic ability from my maternal great-uncle, the WWI British poet, Isaac Rosenberg. Rosenberg was a painter as well as a poet. While I didn't inherit his chops in visual art, I have always been drawn to ekphrastic poetry, writing about works of art, generally visual, but sometimes including other media as well. Following this inclination, I have completed a manuscript of ekphrastic collaborations with mostly visual artists, Together, which is now seeking a home. It contains about 76 pages, about 35 of which consist of mostly color plates. If you have any ideas about publishers who might be interested and who have the graphic know-how such a project entails, please let me know.

Mockingbird

All night the mockingbird trilled in the pepper tree
outside the bedroom window, so loudly even I,
despite deafness and heavy sleep, could not help listening.
For hours he warbled, his song about nothing
and everything unspooling like the river,
percolating over rocks on its way to nowhere.
I’ve heard that he sings so long and hard
out of desperation, as all poets do,
wanting to be heard by others, to stun them
into silence, and by me, trying vainly to compete.