Gina Lee

Julio Pineda

Vessels and Birds:

Understanding the Lives and Works of Carolyn Kizer and Morris Graves

Carolyn Kizer

The Northwest and feminist poet, Carolyn Kizer, was born in Spokane,

Washington on December 10, 1925. Her poetry writing started early when she was eight

with the help of her mother. Her mother would read her works by notable poets such as

Whitman and Jeffers. Her father, on the other hand, would read Keats to her so much that

during an asthma attack, her father pour[ed] Keats into the porches of [her] ear (Kizer).

Her asthma allowed her to be aware of her breathing and that made her more aware of

meters in a poem. Initially, poetry to her was a means to escape the suffocation and

isolation of Spokane and her radical parents; Poetry, then, was chiefly a means of escape

from a huge, rah-rah high school, from Spokane and from them (McCue 134). In her

later years, her poems become a social commentary as they focused on human

interaction.

This social commentary can be seen on her influential poem, Pro Femina

(2000), which satirizes liberated women writers by mimicking the hexameter used by

the ancient misogynist poet Juvenal (Carolyn). She has spoken out against the injustice

against women both in her work and in her life. She said, women poets of [her]

generation didnt dare take themselves seriously, because the men didnt take them

seriously (Carolyn). Theodore Roethke, one of her influential teachers, compiled a list

of common complaints made against women poets that included lack of sense of humor,
narrow range of subject matter, lamenting the lot of women and refusing to face up to

existence (Carolyn). Kizer attempted to fight against these prejudices through her

work as a poet and an educator in Kinnaird College for Women in 1964. She also

promoted poetry as the first director of literary programs for the National Endowment for

the Arts in 1966. She promoted programs that aided struggling writers and she worked to

have poetry read aloud in inner city schools (Carolyn).

Kizer was influenced by traditional poetic forms not only from the English-

speaking poets but also from other poets around the world. Her fellowship at Columbia

focused on Chinese studies. She was exposed to the different Chinese poets and later

translated their works (Kizer). Her poem, In the First Stanza, mimics the voice from a

twelfth-century Chinese woman poet who telegraphs her poetic devices on her stanzas,

and she has done many imitations of classical Chinese poems, particularly from Tu Fu

(Kizer). She has also translated works from Urdu, Chinese and Japanese poetry

(Carolyn).

Her own creativity, knowledge and perseverance are what brought her recognition

and fame. She thought of her poems as a series of images that you tuck away in the back

of your brain, and the major revisions she has done with her poems are like a giant

magnet to which all these disparate little impressions fly and adhere. Theodore Roethke

was one of her influential teachers that taught her rigorous revision. Revision to her was a

creative act that allows her to find the integrity of the poem (Kizer). In a sense, the

poem inside is perfect but revision allows her to take this perfection out to her readers.

Her process in writing Twelve OClock demonstrated her dedication to her

poems. This poem took her around five to six years to complete, and it started with a
photograph of a beautiful old woman who was trying to get her husbands name taken off

the Lawrence Livermore Lab that produced horrible atomic devices (Kizer). She realized

that she wanted to write about physicists and physics, but she didnt know anything

about it because all [she] had was general science in high school. So [she] began reading

books on physics for about two years (Paris). Through her studies, she was inspired to

write about the dialectic between Einsteins sense that the universe was orderly, and

Heisenbergs and [her] sense that it was chaos (Kizer).

Kizer thought that painters were more important in her life than writers. To her,

painters taught people how to see, a faculty that was not highly developed in poets. The

painters allow people to notice shapes, colors, harmonies, relationships that enhance

[ones] seeing (Kizer). In her twenties, she began buying numerous paintings from the

Northwest painters such as Mark Tobey and Morris Graves. She bought Mark Tobeys

World Egg when she was pregnant, and she also became a sort of repository of paintings

for him, of things he wanted to keep around to look at (Kizer). She also owned a few

paintings by Graves though she said that his work was more expensive then.

Nevertheless, these two artists and others from the Pacific Northwest have inspired her

work tremendously.

Kizer received her Pulitzer Prize in 1985 for Yin: New Poems.

Morris Graves

Morris Graves (1910-2001) was born in Fox Valley, Oregon and shortly after

moved to Seattle, Washington (McCue 27). Contracting pneumonia as a child, he spent

most of his time close to home in the garden instead of playing with his seven siblings
(About). Perhaps this early exposure to nature and fascination by the vast world of

flowers was an agent for his expressions of various flower portraits as an adult painter.

Although he was known mostly for creating mystical images from birds and other small

creatures, many of his later works contained flowers whose petals were often depicted in

bright hues, contrasting from the background. A break from his regular abstract, spiritual

paintings with traces of Asian art, his portrayals of flowers seem to hint at a more

romantic, pictorial side of the painter, with a hint of childhood curiosity.

As a teen, Graves dropped out of high school to sail on American Mail Line ship,

which was one of many steamships in the era to provide transport for freight and

passengers including immigrants and tourists (Steamship). During the voyage, Graves

had a rare opportunity to visit China, Philippines, and Japan, familiarizing himself with

Asian arts, religions, cultures, and philosophies that often integrated life with beauty.

Upon arrival to United States during the Great Depression, Graves traveled around the

country instead of going back to his family, where he feared he would be a financial

burden (About). His uncommon trip to Asian countries and encounters with various

landscapes and nature seem to all make sense in his works. Most likely derived from

these experiences, his knack for catching the inner nature of the creatures was honed in

the brush strokes of the feathers and the curved lines of the long necks. The beasts seem

to come alive and the birds ready for flight at any given moment. These unique

characteristics of his paintings, which later were labeled as mystic and Oriental by art

connoisseurs from the inland, defined his career as an artist and distinguished him and

other Northwest painters from those in the East.

 Eventually, Graves settled in Texas where his aunt and uncle were residing. He

finished the latter years of high school there and graduated at the age of twenty. Then he

moved back to the Pacific Northwest where his paintings were first recognized. In 1933,

he earned a prize at the Northwest Annual Exhibition. Three years later, the young artistic

genius had his first solo exhibition at Seattle Art Museum. In 1941, he became a

nationally known artist, with his works featured at the Museum of Modern Art in New

York (About). After the exhibition, a total of fifty-six of his paintings were purchased

by the museum and other collectors. His paintings were also showcased at Whitney

Museum and Philips Gallery (McCue 27). At the peak of his fame, an article titled

Mystic Painters of the Northwest, issued by the Life magazine, tied his reputation with

other Northwest artists who were also drawing attention at the national stage. Other

featured artists were Mark Tobey who was already an internationally renowned patriarch

of Northwest arts, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson.

In the same year as the published article, Graves left Seattle for Ireland, where he

spent more time drawing local animals and plants, and traveling. When he came back to

United States, he purchased a remote residence in California. In 1996, Morris accepted

the offer from Humboldt Arts Council for an art museum in Eureka, California to be

named after him. He donated over hundred works from his personal art collection to the

new museum that opened to public in 2000 as the Morris Graves Museum of Art

(About). Graves spent his last days at his residence, painting and making sculptures,

until he died in 2001 (McCue 27).

From Morris Graves House

Carolyn Kizers From an Artists House in the 1950s is a tribute to Morris

Graves. The first stanza illustrates a bundle of twigs on the roof of the house, which in

actuality is the nests of hern and crane. It is appropriate for the opening stanza of the

poem to start with this particular image, because Graves was most famous for his

depictions of birds and other small creatures, whose inner spiritual beings were carefully

captured onto the canvas. On the fifth line, Kizer creates a playful twist on the word

faggot; the word is defined as a bundle of twigs or sticks that are bound together, but in

another context, it means a homosexual male, which Graves was.

The second stanza is studded with decorative imagery. The box is described as

inlaid, or ornamented by embedding pieces of different material. It also has a hasp that is

gilded, meaning it is covered thinly with gold paint. Both of these artistic techniques are

commonly seen in Asian furniture and jewelry boxes. Kizer here seems to refer to an

appraised characteristic of Graves artworks that was influenced by Asian art. Kizer also

mentions that in the beautiful, perhaps oriental box that she had just described are no

precious letters or jewels, but rather a bunch of feathers [and] the small bones of a bird.

In Graves paintings, these birds are delicately depicted as not just beasts, but as spiritual

beings, ethereal and more valuable than the most precious of jewels that the remains of

them are kept in an aesthetically beautiful box.

Kizer then focuses the readers attention on another object, the great gold

kakemono, which is a Japanese scroll painting on silk, on which someone painted an

oak-leaf to the silk. Oak trees are one of the most common plant species in the Pacific

Northwest. Therefore, in this line, she is referring to the way the painter fused Asian art
forms with the nature of Pacific Northwest. In the very same stanza, Kizer makes another

wordplay on blaze. In this context, blaze simply means a bright, conspicuous display or

mark on the wall. However, blaze also has another meaning; it is sometimes defined as a

white stripe on the face of a mammal or a bird. Just as Graves did with his paintings,

Kizer uses words to portray the bird as more than a wild creature; the bird is pictured as a

greater being, encompassing the wall and a Japanese scroll as its blaze.

The last stanza remarks on another attribute of Graves paintings, the vessels. The

compote, which is a fruit dessert, is contained in crockery, or tableware made of ceramic

material. Just as he depicted the birds, Graves painted his vessels as subjects of

transcendent eminence, making them immortal. This may well be one of the greatest

praises given to the artists works that the subjects of his paintings come alive in eternal

grandeur. Ceremonial Bronze Taking the Form of a Bird (1947, 22 x 28) is a cumulative

representation of the different characteristics of the painters works. This gouache

painting on paper not only features a bird as a spiritual being, but also a vessel, an

integrated part of the animals body marked with carvings of patterns that mimic ancient

Chinese bronzes.

Upon encountering this painting, the viewers eyes first follow the long, thin neck

up to the small head of the bird. The line curves to form the long beak, a continuous

feature of the face, rather than a separate entity. The birds small eye is simply dotted

with black paint, but stands out on the white head of the bird. Its gaze points downward,

to its own body, almost as if to curiously stare at whatever the vessel is holding. The bird,

ethereal white, seems to shine with an aura that separates it from the rest of the tanned

background. It is as if the vessel contains the spirit of the bird and is coming to life.
Carved on the body are intricate patterns of thin lines and shapes, reminiscent of the

techniques commonly seen on Chinese ritual bronzes. Opposite from where the neck

starts, a triangular shaped tail buds out, adorned with its own patterns of carvings. Three

legs, strategically shaped like arches to hold the weight of the bronze, support the vessel.

Just like the painting by Graves, the poem written by Kizer has the three elements

reference to Asian art, the inner nature of the bird, and the timeless vessel. Furthermore,

the poem is a tanka, a form in Japanese poetry, which serves as a vessel for the words that

she selects to describe Graves artworks. Tanka traditionally consists of five stanzas with

the pattern of 5-7-5-7-7. The poet only loosely follows the given framework; the poem

contains four stanzas instead of five and there are frequent exceptions to the pattern, but

the bone of the form still exists, with each stanza containing five lines. The traditional

structure of tanka to describe an artist like Graves would have been too dry. Although he

lived reclusively in the confines of his property, his art stretched to Asia and his fame was

national. His unique style that combined the Pacific Northwest nature and Asian

philosophy of integrating life with beauty and spirituality, was anything but conformist to

the familiar patterns and structures that prevailed in the art world during that era. In the

painting of a ceremonial bronze, the vessel takes on the striking figure of a bird with

patterns carved on just as those on ancient Chinese bowls. No one thought to integrate

such variety of cultural art forms ranging from ancient to modern, as did the Northwest

artists and poets. Birds and vessels, seemingly ordinary things that are too easily

dismissible by normal people, were brought back from the earliest times and the distant

lands. Kizer, Graves, and other Northwest poets and artists gave eternal significance to

the nature and the art of Pacific Northwest.

Of Spiritual Birds and Omens

The Great Blue Heron, a 1950s poem by Carolyn Kizer, is an elegy to her

mother. The poem starts with Kizer giving a narrative about witnessing a bird with

tattered wings, and hung on invisible wires. Kizer ponders the origin of this bird

wondering if it was scissors that cut him out, and also accuses the bird with a chilling

question, Heron, whose ghost are you? Her defensive reactions toward the bird show

her initial fear and shock of this other-worldly creature. She ran to her mother to show her

where she found the heron, but like many spectral creatures, it disappeared. However, the

mother saw the bird drifting over the highest pines on vast, unmoving wings. Kizer was

perplexed by the birds wings which were grounded, unwieldy, ragged and she

mentioned that they looked like a pair of broken arms yet this bird flew up high. Then,

she had a realization that her mother did not share her confusion; rather her mother

knew what he was. The last stanza of the poem now involves Kizer directly addressing

the ghostly bird. She laments the fact that her summer house has burned, with so many

smokes and fires. Kizer described the barren beach with no driftwood and abandoned

by children. The only remaining figures in this desolate place were her and the bird. She

described the unmoving stature of the bird waiting patiently for fifteen summers and

snows until her mother drifted away like a vapor.

The poem has three stanzas with no discernable pattern with its number of lines.

The piece appears to be written in free verse, but upon closer inspection, Kizer follows a

loose iambic trimeter. The majority of the poem follows this rhythm. She uses the iamb

meter extensively when she describes the bleak beach on the third stanza, which provides

a natural cadence when narrating a story. In the lines when she addresses the bird, such as
What scissors cut him out? or O great blue heron, now, the syllables are mostly

stressed, as if as though she is trying to accentuate the unnatural existence of the bird

with the irregular rhythm. The spondaic rhythm accentuates further her alarmed and

fearful reaction towards the heron. Lastly, Kizer adopts an anapestic meter when she talks

about her mother as seen in the lines, to my mother in the house and and led her to the

scene. This pattern allows more unstressed syllables compared to spondee and iambs,

and lengthens the meter. Her use of anapestic rhythm then shows her wanting to distance

herself from the pain of her mothers death.

The great blue heron symbolizes an omen for her mothers inevitable death. The

grim description of the bird of its unmoving, ashen and tattered wings would not be

adjectives associated to something that is great. Furthermore, the bird is described to be a

shadow without a shadow, in which shadows are thought of evil specters. However,

creatures who do not cast shadows can be thought of from another realm. Kizer further

demonstrates the unnatural creature that she faced by questioning the origin of this bird,

claiming that he came from the top of a canvas day, what scissors cut him out?

Superimposed on a poster. These lines include words relating to artists that invoke their

own creation into the world. Perhaps, the herons ominous and ghostly presence is what

Kizer thought as great.

The only colors mentioned in the poem relate to the blue color of the sinister

heron, and the fire that burned her summer house. This morose mood reflects the sorrow

that Kizer has felt for losing her mother. However, Kizer did not feel upset. Rather, her

tone was more detached and solemn, focusing on her narrative on the heron instead of her

mother. She knew that her mothers death was forthcoming, especially when she realized
that [her] mother knew what [the heron] was. This inevitable feeling of helplessness

comes from ill omens of death which can also be seen in Morris Graves painting.

Crane with Void (1945, unknown size), as the title suggests, features a long-

necked and long-legged bird. The bird perfectly blends into the rough and craggy texture

of the canvas; its colors and texture matches the background exactly. Lithography could

have created the muddy colors of the canvas, the dark spots around the bird and the white

creases throughout the painting which makes the entire piece look like bark of a tree. This

tree must be old, yet full of life to have these features. The only distinct characteristic of

the bird is its white outline that makes as though the bird is etched onto the wood by

some creator. This characteristic makes the bird unnatural and not from the bark itself,

similar to how Kizer describes her heron as cut out from the canvas sky. The white

outline creates an ethereal aura to the bird as though its existence is fleeting. The crane

stands still, impressed on the wood, yet it could disappear in any moment.

On top of the head of a bird, a dark void sits perfectly. The circular object is too

geometric; it is incredibly smooth and round. Instead of an opening to the inside of the

tree, the viewers see nothing as though Graves cut out a piece of reality. A faint yellow

glow peers out at the circumference of the void, giving an appearance of a total solar

eclipse. This type of eclipse is thought of as a bad omen by many cultures that always

bring disruption from the established order. When the sun enters a solar eclipse, some see

it as a time of terror, while other cultures view it as a time for reflection and

reconciliation (Lee). The crane in Graves painting can represent this omen, the harbinger

of death and destruction similar to how the Kizers blue heron brought the inevitable

death of her mother. However, like many cultures viewed the solar eclipse as time for
introspection and also reverence for this event, Kizer, despite the tattered and ominous

features of the bird, thought of it as great and majestic.

Reflection Gina Lee

When I looked through Mary Randlett Portraits for different writers, only a few

stood out to me, one of them being Carolyn Kizer. What drew me to her was a short

excerpt from her work, Pro Femina, a poem that unquestionably reveals the feminist

side of her. As a divorced woman of young age, she was never the one to live by mens

standards for female writers at the time. Her words were bold; she was not afraid to

criticize the patriarchal society and stand up for real women (McCue 137). Growing up

in a very sheltered Asian family with Confucianist ideals that viewed men as superior

counterpart to women, I felt confined and locked away, despite my efforts to be a

feminist. Being soft-spoken and shy did not help the matter at all either. When I read that

poem, it was as if someone was taking a stand for me. Kizer, who was bold and loud-

spoken, translated my unspoken, lingering whispers into loud, eloquent words, not wary

of disapproval. Her words resonated within me and I thought, I am going to choose this

poet.

Upon reading the script of an interview with Kizer online, we quickly learned that

she and Morris Graves were close acquaintances. Her personal art collection included

some of his paintings. In the interview, she said with humor, that Graves was a towering

person, who looked like Jesus (Kizer). In 1950s, at the peak of Graves fame, Kizer wrote

a tribute dedicated to him, titled, From an Artists House. Upon reading the poem, we
thought it was a perfect representation of his arts and decided to choose the painter to

analyze side by side with the poet.

We chose Ceremonial Bronze Taking the Form of a Bird as a painting to pair with

the poem because of the elements of Asian art, the iconic bird figure, and the vessel,

which are all characteristics of Graves works that the poet mentions in the tribute.

During this process, we also found out about some similarities between Kizer and

Graves. Not only did they work in the same geographic location and their works illustrate

the inner spirituality of the small creatures, but the artist and the poet were also both

heavily influenced by Asian art forms. Graves travelled to China, Japan, and Philippines

in a steamship. Kizer completed fellowship in Chinese Studies at Columbia University

and translated from poems that were in Chinese and many other languages (McCue 137).

And as Graves painted beautiful ceremonial vessels, Kizer used the structures of her

poems as vessels for the words she carefully selected.

Knowing that many of Graves artworks contain elements of iconic birds, we

decided to look for similar topics in Kizers works as well. The Great Blue Heron is a

poem discussing the ghostly heron, which is very similar to the way Graves depicted the

inner nature of the birds. Crane with Void by Graves looked like a lithograph, in which

the paint was continuously applied over the whole paper. Beneath it was the bird, looking

like it was etched onto a tree bark and balancing a circle on its head. The void was filled

in with dark gray, but the bird was outlined in thin white line, and looked as if it could be

sucked into the void at any moment, just like the ghostly bird that disappears in Kizers

poem.
Reflection Julio Pineda

The portraits of both Morris Graves and Carolyn Kizer intrigued me enough to

study their work. Graves Morning was an entrancing self-portrait; the hunched man in

his claustrophobic space made me curious about why he looked so pained, why he

avoided the morning sun. This painting made me delve further into his life, viewing his

other works of iconic figures such as birds and vessels. His other works resonated with

me even more as I took interest in his worldviews. Why did he portray such spiritual

creatures? What message did he want to share with the ominous birds? His paintings

were brooding but extremely captivating.

Mary Randletts photograph of Kizer was striking. She sat upright in front of

some paintings in her home, wearing some white linen from Pakistan (McCue 134). Her

confidence in donning her foreign garments and jewelry just struck me with awe as I

could tell how well-traveled and educated she was. I also felt uneasy and nervous just

staring at her stature as if she was ready to snap me in half. However, her words made me

decide to further pursue her work. She said that she used poetry to escape from a huge

rah-rah high school, from Spokane and from [her parent] (Kizer). I came from Spokane,

and even though she lived there in the early 20th century, I also experienced the

suffocation of Spokane and wanted to escape that city as soon as I could. Thus, I felt as

though I had an obligation to read her poetry.

Gina and I found the poem, From an Artist House, by Kizer that was dedicated

to Graves. From there, it was natural for us to pair them up and see how their works were

related. I was more interested in the iconic creatures that were present in Kizers poems

and in Graves paintings. I learned through Kizers biography that she adored Graves
work although she could not afford them when she was collecting art. Nevertheless, she

was definitely influenced by many of Graves works, which allowed me to find the poem

The Great Blue Heron.

The artist and the poet both shared the spiritual representation of the birds. They

were both omens that brought despair but also had an air of magnificence. I appreciated

this multi-dimensional representation of these creatures. The poem and painting told

about brooding stories that incited fear and uneasiness to me. I love this feeling. I tend to

enjoy these despairing stories because I like it when works of art are able to incite these

primal emotions. These stories about sadness and fear are a shared experience by many

people, but I feel as though happy stories are only experienced by a few. Only select

characters in a story experience the glory of being the hero or finding their true love. Not

many people in this world can become famous or notable, but everyone in their life will

feel sad, sorrow and pain.

This process of relating Graves painting and Kizers poem was formative. I am

now confident to explore other Kizers poems or even from other poets and explore more

of these stories that I enjoy. I want to find more paintings from Graves that reveal more

about his inner psyche.

 Work Cited

"About Morris Graves." Humboldt Arts Council in the Morris Graves Museum of Art.
Humboldt Arts, n.d. Web. 17 July 2015.

"Carolyn Kizer 1925-2014." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 21 July
2015.

Lee, Jane J. "Solar Eclipse Myths From Around the World." National Geographic.
National Geographic Society, 2 Nov. 2013. Web. 21 July 2015.

McCue, Frances, Mary Randlett, and Nicolette Bromberg. Mary Randlett Portraits.
Seattle: U of Washington, 2014. Print.

Kizer, Carolyn. "Carolyn Kizer, The Art of Poetry No. 81." Interview by Barbara
Thompson Davis. Paris Review. The Paris Review, n.d. Web. 20 July 2015.
<http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/731/the-art-of-poetry-no-81-carolyn-kizer>.

"Steamship Lines -Transatlantic Ocean Liners and Other Worldwide Services." Gjenvick.
Gjenvick Archives, n.d. Web. 17 July 2015.