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Triptych
by Rochelle Owens
$16.00 paperback / free PDF download
2006, 52 pages, 7.7 x 4.7
ISBN: 978-0971206151
Print copy available through Amazon.com
or directly from CafePress.
Free ebook also available on Scribd.
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The Language(s) of Rochelle Owens (from the Afterword)
Triptych represents a departure from Rochelle Owens’ work, at least upon first glance. Triptych is deeply spiritual, filled with allusions to the meaning-making processes that inform the sacred and sacred texts.
One could argue, however, that Owens has always written about the sacred, and her earlier work, while seeming to be profane, has been, in reality, a deep plunge into the very heart of the sacred. Her work has affirmed the existence of the sacred. Several essays in “Considerations of Rochelle Owens,” curated by Karl Young, and hosted at Light & Dust Anthology of Poets, explore these themes.
Read the entire piece here: “Afterword” to Rochelle Owens’s Triptych.
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Here We Are Like A Leaf Driven
Past two-by-fours scratches word
UTOPIA splintered wood transparent
BLUE larvae how minute bits
of damage punctuate until
you look behind
dust acres wet heaps
parchment there’s more parchment
how minute bits alternate
punctuate ash oil SCOURGE
fingers spreading hour after hour
left-hand writing
Dirt walks in bloodstream spots
of RED turn into doodles smell wet heaps
BLUE wool cool GRAY-GREEN stone
Lucy female surgeon positions
the TRIPTYCH
encapsulating her life darker
background attention drawn
to column of archway black silk hood
pearls & lace WHITE as milk
drawn to The Book of Psalms
DESOLATION dust
Cycles core to core
CLOCK TICKS malt wine oats & straw
coal lead plumber work mills & dams
DAYS collecting how minute cracks
in porcelain light etches
nucleus riddles shell WHITE fear
etches scorn curved
a club-footed newborn detaches
segments of waterjugs BLUE
face to face self spawning
transparent BLUE larvae
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Rochelle Owens is the author of eighteen books of poetry and plays, the most recent of which are Plays by Rochelle Owens (Broadway Play Publishing, 2000) and Luca: Discourse on Life and Death (Junction Press, 2001). A pioneer in the experimental off-Broadway theatre movement and an internationally known innovative poet, she has received Village Voice Obie awards and honors from the New York Drama Critics Circle. Her plays have been presented worldwide and in festivals in Edinburgh, Avignon, Paris, and Berlin. Her play Futz, which is considered a classic of the American avant-garde theatre, was produced by Ellen Stewart at LaMama, directed by Tom O’Horgan and performed by the LaMama Troupe in 1967, and was made into a film in 1969. A French language production of Three Front was produced by France-Culture and broadcast on Radio France. She has been a participant in the Festival Franco-Anglais de Poésie, and has translated Liliane Atlan’s novel Les passants, The Passersby (Henry Holt, 1989). She has held fellowships from the NEA, Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and numerous other foundations. She has taught at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Oklahoma and held residencies at Brown and Southwestern Louisiana State.
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