POEMS/ Reading the Reader: On Winslow Homer's "The New Novel" - 1877
"The New Novel," by Winslow Homer
Reading the Reader: On Winslow Homer’s “The New Novel” - 1877
No odalisque, this reclining red head.
Pillowed on her book bag, she has gone
into the novel’s world, and holds it
close within her arms lest it escape
before she has devoured it. In yellowed grass
she lies on a bed of wildflowers that seem
in full retreat before the lush ripeness of her youth,
the fullness of her hip a sensuous curve
that her concentration, her absorption in her reading
do little to belie and that the boisterous orange
of her gown, the crimson ribbon on her shoe
sustain. Yet, posed against the slanting black-brown
of the stones of the wall on which she leans,
she seems quite unaware of any viewer then or now.
Content to find herself within the novel’s pages--
she is walled off from anything or anyone beyond.
From All Roads Go Where They Will (Antrim House, 2010)
No odalisque, this reclining red head.
Pillowed on her book bag, she has gone
into the novel’s world, and holds it
close within her arms lest it escape
before she has devoured it. In yellowed grass
she lies on a bed of wildflowers that seem
in full retreat before the lush ripeness of her youth,
the fullness of her hip a sensuous curve
that her concentration, her absorption in her reading
do little to belie and that the boisterous orange
of her gown, the crimson ribbon on her shoe
sustain. Yet, posed against the slanting black-brown
of the stones of the wall on which she leans,
she seems quite unaware of any viewer then or now.
Content to find herself within the novel’s pages--
she is walled off from anything or anyone beyond.
From All Roads Go Where They Will (Antrim House, 2010)
