Abstracts and Interviews

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Impressionism as Expressed in the Poetry of Newman and Catnip

Catnip and Leslea Newman's poetry broils with vitality, vibrancy, and admirable recognition for the potential beauty in the situations of daily life. Like the impressionists of the late 19th century, both women treat their subjects without sentimentality; instead they treat them with striking sensitivity, tribute, and sensual tincture.

Newman's poem The Bath begins each stanza with the poet's base observation of a woman about to enter a tub. Newman captures the gestures of her subject with "When she lifts her hair / into a bun," "When she slips her robe / from her shoulders," and "When she reaches into the tub." It is not the sequence of gestures that Newman presents which grab her reader's attention. It is, instead, the simple sketches of these gestures against the uninhibited imagery that follows.

In a similar way, Edgar Degas, one of the most innovative of the impressionists, known for his perceptive analysis of movements, captured the lushness of his subjects. For example in Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub (1886), the viewer is given access to the artist's subject while in the midst of a private moment. The beauty of this image relies on the artist's faithful and frank recording of his subject's gestures making use of the rich interplay of shadow and light.

Unlike Newman, however, Degas' viewpoint is detached from sexuality. For instance, when the viewer's eyes move toward the exposed neck of his subject, the contours demanding thoroughness are those revealing the tension of the subject's arm as she positions her weight in the tub. By contrast, Newman's lines "When she lifts her hair / into a bun / it is like peeling a peach / exposing the sweet moist meat / to the night's teeth," are more sexually suggestive.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, like Degas, was a keen observer of humanity, particularly of women, with whom his work is preoccupied. He preserved his impressions of the theater, circus, and brothels with portraits and sketches of startling originality and power. Although considered a postimpressionist painter, Lautrec's use of brilliant color achieved effects of naturalness and immediacy in much the same way as the impressionists Monet and Pissarro. Lautrec departed from Degas, however, in that he never cultivated objectivity. His taste for the colorful cabarets in the Montmartre district of Paris and his fascination for women with red hair, fertilized his canvases with imagination. In one outstanding example, Woman with Red Hair, Lautrec projects his sitter's zest for life by contrasting primary and secondary colors, a technique which brings out the vivid quality of each. Although his subject sits serenely by her hairbrush in an ordinary setting, the viewer is given the impression that Lautrec is in the presence of an extraordinary woman.

Like Lautrec, the Liverpool poet, Catnip, also uses a hairbrush to reach beyond the ordinary as well as to suggest sexuality. When she states in the first line of The Fascination of a Hair Brush, that "A broad wood back and bristles" is a "Simple thing," she reminds the reader of the universal experience of the brushing of hair. She begins like other impressionists, with an ordinary object. In the lines that follow, "Your long and luscious auburn hair / I love, I love, your auburn hair / The way it frames your pale-skin face / The brown eyes set in contrast / The pale brown lashes, tinged with gold" the poet builds, with color polarity, the intensity she feels toward her subject. When Catnip ends her poem with "The rhythmic motions of your brush / In my careful hands," the reader is well aware that the "simple thing", the hairbrush, is anything but simple.

Traditionally, the objective of the impressionist was to achieve a spontaneous, undetailed rendering of the world through careful representation of the effect of natural light on ordinary objects and setting. The poetry of both Newman and Catnip achieves this objective, and in doing so their words, like the painters' lines, leave room for the reader's own spontaneity of imagery.

The Fascination of a Hair Brush

The fascination of a hair brush
Simple thing,
A broad wood back and bristles,
Hypnotic as it smooths your hair,
Your long and luscious auburn hair,
I love, I love, your auburn hair:
The way it frames your pale-skin face,
The brown eyes set in contrast,
The pale brown lashes, tinged with gold,
The sunlight on the curls,
The rythmic motions of your brush
In my careful hands.

The Bath

When she lifts her hair
into a bun
it is like peeling a peach
exposing the sweet moist meat
to the night's teeth

When she slips her robe
from her shoulders
it slides down her back
smooth as a lover's tongue
landing at her feet

When she reaches into the tub
the waters part like lips
to embrace her hand which she
lifts listening to the drops
falling from her wrist

Abstract by: Paula DiTallo

Works by Catnip: Catnip's Online Poetry, Interview with Catnip

Works by Leslea Newman: Still Life With Buddy : A Novel Told in Fifty Poems, A Letter to Harvey Milk : Short Stories, Sweet Dark Places, Love Me Like You Mean It