Light, Depth and the Magic of Chance: Introducing the Poetry of Cathleen Cohen and the Artwork of Conrad Schirmann
Within Cathleen Cohen’s poems we feel each footstep, the touch of each hand—the quotidian made magic through the poet’s eye. I found that magic matched within Conrad Schirmann’s canvases—paintings that catch the world seen in a flash, out of the corner of your eye. Or within eyes opened underwater. What do we see beyond our sight? A magic removed from the everyday. These two artists open the beyond and are speaking across these pages, to each other and to us.
Glimpse ( Avalon Marsh, UK) I’ll be honest, it’s nearly Sabbath. We traipse through fields on the lookout for starlings who might swoop over the marshes at dusk. We should be settling ourselves at the hotel, preparing candles. But it’s been stormy all week, we’ll fly home soon and have come to see the murmurations, to witness thousands of souls drawing images in air with the beating of wings. Now they’re streaming above us like tendrils of smoke forming into funnels, into whirligigs and vessels. Are they evading a hawk? The flocks murmur for safety then roost in grasses, bodies pressed close for warmth. Or do they rise and fall, rise and flicker as a form of prayer? Look, the sky burns rosy on a wick, a whisper as sun beds down.
Hawk I wake to a red-tailed hawk outside my window, perched shockingly close to the ground, vibrating but guarding no obvious prey. Female, I think, for her generous size and luxurious markings – ocher of dry grass, umber, blue smoke. Did I call her forth? For years I’ve dreamed of hawks since the time one alighted and trained her sharp yellow eyes on my son and I, moving from path to curb to stoop where we kneeled and watched. A headless squirrel lay nearby. For hours, she didn’t approach, just surveyed her prey then us then any branch that flinched. Finally, she snatched him, winged off low to the earth, zigzagged through hedges. Through dusk she dove, as into a vast ocean. This can’t be her now, it’s been too many years. But the windows and walls of this house tremble. I tremble.
Yod
It’s a sixty step climb to the sanctuary
near Via di Ghetto.
Getto from the old copper foundry in Venice
where Jews were first walled in.
But ghettos spread quickly,
like the one in this fortress,
a grid of alleys and chipped limestone.
Sixty steps and my knees are crumbling.
While the others climb upward
I find a gift shop filled with kiddush cups, stitched shawls
and dusty prayerbooks in Croatian and Italian,
even English, like mine from childhood.
The saleswoman looks doubtful
as I study framed photos of families long gone,
but I’m not just browsing.
Our grandchild’s bat mitzvah will come soon
and I’ve been searching for a yod
so her fingerprints won’t mar
the Torah’s skin when she reads from it
when she reaches that threshold.
Several pointers glitter on a shelf,
each charming – each with a silver hand.
I choose a blue one on a braided chain
to wear around her neck, to cool her hands –
a discernment, a sharpening.
When Jews were ejected from Spain
some came here as merchants and craftsmen.
Then, power shifts and wars and wars.
Each night the ghetto gates were locked.
By now, those few who remain
have abandoned Sabbath. To reach a rabbi
takes a six hour drive over mountains.
Lately tourists rent the space,
it’s got fine acoustics, an echo chamber.
And what prayers should I say to my grandchild
when I press this gift upon her?
Ramparts If a rope bound the old walls it would stretch slightly more than a mile. But we traipse for hours with our guide through gridded streets, clutching hands so not to slip on pavers underfoot. This fortress has two names, Ragusa (rocks) and Dubrovnik, (oak woods), each from a different language. Both are true. We gaze from stone walls to vast forests. Moti, our guide, can trace his line back to those expelled from Spain during the Inquisition. Yet his blue eyes and blond hair recall my grandfather’s from Russia. There’s been such dispersal, so much wandering. Turning a corner, we meet a young woman he knows –last name, Levi from Levite, the priestly class. But her family is Marrano, hidden since medieval times, now Catholic. Marrano means “pig” or “dirty person” in slang. I look this up later, he doesn’t mention it. He invites her to to a social next week in the old synagoga, whose cobalt ceiling hovers over Torah scrolls with tarnished breastplates. Moti stands for Matthias, zealot priest who sparked revolt against the Hellenistic empire. But here live less than seventy souls who think they’re Jews. It’s a slow campaign he wages.
My Ghost Is Losing Her Memory
Maybe it’s leaking, the way our old furnace
leaves rusty traces on walls.
She telegraphs dreams
I can’t decipher, wild chases
through foreign cities.
We climb skyscrapers and bridges
then hover like hawks
who forget to track prey
and ignore chittering squirrels
as they dash through detritus.
She swivels her head and stares
with sharp, yellow eyes at me,
who has no answers.
I can only offer what I love:
quivering brushstrokes, my trying
to map atmosphere,
to translate sky’s moods,
(cobalt, cerulean, turquoise, amethyst),
to render clouds and tides
with skills I can remember.
Cathleen Cohen was the 2019 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, PA. She created the We the Poets program for children from diverse cultural and faith communities (www.theartwell.org) and has taught students and educators in the USA and Israel. She teaches poetry and painting to adults through local venues, including Ritualwell, Or Zarua, and Kol Tzedek. Her poems appear in literary journals and four collections: Camera Obscura (2017, Moonstone Press), Etching the Ghost (2021, Atmosphere Press) and Sparks and Disperses (2021, Cornerstone Press) and Murmurations (2024, Moonstone Press). Two of her poems were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her artwork is available through Cerulean Arts Gallery (https://ceruleanarts.com/pages/cathleen-cohen).
Conrad Schirmann
“Amidst the imposing mountain landscapes of the Dolomites, Conrad Schirmann, born in 1957 on the Baltic coast of Kiel, has found his artistic home there. As a counterbalance to the high mountains of the Fassa Valley in Trentino, northern Italy, he is drawn to the sea on the Mediterranean coasts.
Schirmann learned the art of “capturing moods” from his father Heinrich, a passionate amateur photographer, at an early age. Together they explored nature, always searching for special moments of light and shadow. These early experiences, especially at dusk, shaped his fascination with the nuances of light and the depth of shadows in the landscape. This sensitivity runs like a thread through his work.
After a period of life full of adventure – travels through Greece and Morocco, as well as his first professional steps in Munich – Schirmann established contacts with renowned artists and gallery owners who influenced his creative path. In particular, his friendship with the art dealer and gallery owner Otto Stangl, as well as the works of the artist group ZERO and its contemporary greats such as Otto Piene, Heinz Mack, and Günther Uecker, sensitized him to new forms of artistic expression. These explorations of color, structure, and composition led to a creative approach that, using traditional painting media, boldly expanded the classic medium of oil painting in style and composition.
Such evocative poems. I am honored to be Cathy’s poetry student and dear friend.
This is such a treat. I'd read some of Cathleen Cohen's poems before. It's wonderful to read more. Thank you.