Barbara Lydecker Crane

June 5, 2020

“You Will Remember Me” by Barbara Lydecker CranePosted by

Barbara Lydecker Crane

YOU WILL REMEMBER ME

in the imagined voice of Frida Kahlo, painter of “The Broken Column,” Mexico, 1944

Does it make you gasp to see this fissure
in my naked torso, revealing pieces
of my shattered spine? No surgeon’s scissor
ever since that accident decreases
constant pain, as if I have been nailed
like this. My trunk is buckled up in straps—
support that shortens every breath inhaled.
Polio and accident have trapped
me in a body crisscrossed by ravines.
Across my stoic face a dozen tears
are scattered pearls. I’ve made quite a scene;
in art and life, I’ve done that all these years.
Between these straps my breasts bulge out like eyes.
Don’t I look a strange and sexual prize?

—from Rattle #67, Spring 2020

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Barbara Lydecker Crane: “It’s been fascinating to research many artists’ lives and their paintings, and then write sonnets in each artist’s imagined voice. I’ve learned much more about the artists than I ever did as an art major in college, and it’s all the more interesting as I used to be a professional artist myself. In that work and now in poetry, I have the luxury of not having to earn my living; if I did I would surely starve!”

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March 27, 2020

“Mother and Child” by Barbara Lydecker CranePosted by

Barbara Lydecker Crane

MOTHER AND CHILD

“Mother and Child (Nancy and Olivia),” a painting by Alice Neel, New York City, 1967

Portrait painting, so long out of fashion,
was all I did. Not by commission—I’d ask
a friend whose face was lined by life and passion
to sit. Then I’d distort a bit: a mask
would simplify and heighten their emotion.
This Harlem neighbor’s eyes are spelling fear
as she holds her baby tightly with devotion
and protection from who could appear
through that open door. I told my story,
how my husband stole our second daughter
and fled the country. I told my friend the gory
gist of losing our firstborn. I caught her
terror as she sat, and watched it spread
into her baby’s eyes, as fixed as dead.

—from Rattle #66, Winter 2019
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist

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Barbara Lydecker Crane: “This year I’ve been immersed in writing ekphrastic sonnets about well-known paintings in the imagined voices of their makers. I’ve learned a lot about artists, their works and their personal struggles and determination. During the abstract expressionist era, Alice Neel quietly persevered in her own unpopular style of social realism; she finally gained some recognition late in her life. All the information about her in this poem is accurate, but I do not know how much she confided of her own traumatic life to this young mother. I can almost hear Neel telling her story, though, as I look at the mother’s expression of alarm and her protective hold of her baby.”

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March 26, 2018

“Love Refrains” by Barbara Lydecker CranePosted by

Barbara Lydecker Crane

LOVE REFRAINS

a ghazal

Mom banged her hairbrush down in a reprimand of love.
“What an awful question! You don’t understand love.

“Of course Dad loves you. How can you question that?
He doesn’t have to blare it out, like a brass band of love.

“You aren’t a princess to be coddled on a lap or praised
without good reason. That’s a never-never land of love.

“Your father works hard, with a great deal on his mind.
Now don’t go causing trouble, making a demand of love.

“Yes, I know he yells and sends you to your room a lot.
But be glad he never hits you with the backhand of love.

“Once, banished to your room, you drew a picture poem
for him. I watched him beam at you with unplanned love.

“He said he’s proud of you. I’ve heard him tell you twice.”
She brushed my hair, hard. “Barb, that’s a brand of love.”

—from Rattle #58, Winter 2017
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist

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Barbara Lydecker Crane: “When I first took a poetry class in 2005 (by chance), and the teacher was focusing on formalist poems that semester (by chance), I felt as if a fuse in me had been lit, and I’ve been writing both light and serious poems ever since, always in meter and almost always in rhyme.”

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