Editor's Note
Contemporary ekphrastic poetry has come to mean verses that are written about works of art, and Deborah Leipziger ‘Eve Creating Eden’ would certainly be a powerful example. However, more interestingly for me, these poems —all of them— seem to return to the broader ancient Greek understanding of ekphrasis, which referred to describing a scene, an object, or a transformation in vivid visual detail. This ancient, expansive idea of how poetry can sometimes be art and art can sometimes be poetry, unifies Leipziger’s suite that spans cities, wildlife and relationships
This artist-writer weave is strongest in her references to the graffiti artist Lady Pink, who painted moving subways in New York City in the 1980s, and was featured as part of the famous ‘Writing the Future’ exhibit. Leipziger however, offers us an extended metaphor of creation through another interesting leap: the act of naming. Naming, this time by Eve, becomes a carefully subversive way of generating identity, even ownership.
And if creation occupies one end of this suite, endings occupy the other. Not individual endings either, but endlings, the term for the very last creature of a species. I’ll leave you to enjoy how these very different poems and their distinct preoccupations are framed by Eden, the very first garden, and by of course, the God of Endlings.
— Pervin Saket
The Bombay Literary Magazine
God of Beginnings, God of Endlings
Somewhere in the forest
by the Ayampe River
perhaps today the last two
Esmeraldas woodstars
court and create offspring
God of Nests protect them
Purple body ruby throat emerald feathers
I hear your wingbeats
In Brazil you are beija flor
“kissing flowers” to suck nectar
for hovering
A glittering a bouquet
a shimmer a tune a charm
of hummingbirds
God of Hummingbirds watch over them
When the last hummingbird is gone
what will become of the God
of Hummingbirds?
Eve Creating Eden
Lady Pink splays graffiti at the feet
of the city, conjuring jungles and story
on murals gritty crevices subways
A hibiscus city erupts from her spray
to raise morning from night’s alley,
she elevates & celebrates me
At night she paints the train
writing the future calling out for the city
its flora and forms
She paints a moving train
wakes up inside the tunnel,
somehow she knows my name and I know hers
She is my twin,
painting the dark persimmon
awake inside the poem
Lady Pink paints her name
makes the city her own
tagging and naming herself
Inside the cells of the city
of the train she paints, she must depart
to paint the city’s tiger lilies
Come into Totality
At the edge of the woods
we take in the eclipse
waiting for the moon
to seduce
the crescent sun,
now moonlike
the liquid sun
pours itself
around the edges
of the moon
the sun flares
embraces the rim
the parting
& slow release
I am fluent in eclipses
Acknowledgments
Image credits: © Lady Pink. The Death of Graffiti.
Lady Pink, who is sometimes referred to as the ‘first lady of graffiti, is an artist whose work embodies Émile Zola’s (alleged) statement: “If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, I will answer you: I am here to live out loud.” [Jon Winokur. Writers on Writing (1986)]. The street wall was her canvas, now it is the world itself. Deborah’s poem referencing Lady Pink and the train made this selection obvious, perhaps even necessary.
See also: Sadhna Prasad’s painting which to accompanies Shalini Agrawal’s set of poems in this issue.
Author | DEBORAH LEIPZIGER
DEBORAH LEIPZIGER is an author, poet, and advisor on sustainability. Born in Brazil, Ms. Leipziger is the author of several books on sustainability and human rights. Her collection of poems, Story & Bone, was published in 2023 by Lily Poetry Review Books. Her work appears in numerous anthologies, including Tree Lines: 21st Century American Poems. Her poems have been published in ten countries in such magazines as Revista Cardenal, Inkwell, and Salamander. Deborah has advised companies, governments, and non-profit organizations around the world on issues relating to sustainability and human rights. She has taught at the Bard MBA in Sustainability, Simmons, and Hult. She serves as a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Social Innovation at Babson. She is currently working on a Lexicon of Change, which shares the vocabulary we need for social and environmental transformation. Deborah has spoken numerous times at the RISE World Summit in India and has lectured in Mumbai on corporate sustainability as part of the Institute of Directors conference. Her blog is featured by the Institute of Directors in India.
Photo: Copyright 2008 Jim Kaye