{"id":5360,"date":"2012-08-01T00:10:45","date_gmt":"2012-08-01T05:10:45","guid":{"rendered":"\/nashvillereview\/?p=5360"},"modified":"2015-02-15T21:49:01","modified_gmt":"2015-02-16T03:49:01","slug":"water-bearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/5360","title":{"rendered":"Water-Bearing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Fountain of the Great Lakes, Lorado Taft, 1913<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Oxidized breasts no water falls on <em><br \/>\n<\/em>is what I think of when I think of winter<br \/>\nin Chicago: bare vines, bronze figures.<em><br \/>\n<\/em>The rounded arms bore rust and vessels<br \/>\nthey might have poured. Too lovely,<\/p>\n<p>said they, a century ago, who seemed to know<br \/>\nwhere contours of natural phenomena end<br \/>\nand art\u2019s begin. Indecorous in delicacy,<br \/>\nthe figures couldn\u2019t embody<br \/>\nsurge and wave, wind-scourged expanse<br \/>\nof the Great Lakes they\u2019re named for.<br \/>\nNor were gentle fold of robe<br \/>\nor trickle so terrible as the myth<br \/>\nTaft suggested of them, damned<br \/>\nDanaides forever pouring water<br \/>\nthrough a vat that won\u2019t fill.<\/p>\n<p>The broad bronze women need no one<br \/>\nnow to save them, unremarked-on<br \/>\nas anything else aging in public spaces.<br \/>\nPolite despotism of symbol has reigned<br \/>\nwaterflow and human form alike.<br \/>\nWe expect their submission<br \/>\nto antique allusion, lofty gesture \u2013<br \/>\nwe who invented ourselves and our passions<br \/>\nboundlessly, without tame, stolid molds<br \/>\nthe unsexed dead bent to.<\/p>\n<p>So we say. By <em>we <\/em>I mean <em>you, <\/em><br \/>\nof course, as in plural, as in not me.<br \/>\nYou threatened to tear my attention<br \/>\ninto pieces, your color and appetite<br \/>\ncoursing down Michigan Avenue:<br \/>\nTeenagers drilled out a trash-can rhythm<br \/>\nfor the clicked pace of beleaguered mothers,<br \/>\nshoppers grappling purchases, art students<br \/>\n(plumed, affected, eying each other),<br \/>\nand the man selling papers at the crosswalk<br \/>\nwho tried indignantly to convince me<br \/>\nthat \u201csome pervert takes pictures every day<br \/>\nup ladies\u2019 skirts who sit on the stairs\u201d \u2013<br \/>\nthese currents, prosaic, unmastered.<\/p>\n<p>I wintered within you, but oftener<br \/>\nalong your edges, in an effort to see<br \/>\nyou as you were and a whole.<br \/>\nWhat remains, most of all, are things<br \/>\nthat don\u2019t move: the hotel\u2019s Moorish roof,<br \/>\ngold, molten (coldest days<br \/>\nwere the brightest); bridges and cornices;<br \/>\nand that small, well-mannered park<br \/>\nwhere the women\u2019s coiled hair,<br \/>\nthough metal-wrought, looked <em>wet,<br \/>\n<\/em>around their throats and collars clinging.<\/p>\n<p>I considered them and the poems<br \/>\nthat might come from them all<br \/>\nwhich would also be small,<br \/>\nand well-mannered, held carefully in.<br \/>\nA few blocks east, under ice sheets,<br \/>\nthe lake tossed and groaned in its sleep.<\/p>\n<h6><a href=\"\/nashvillereview\/archives\/5465\">Ashley Keyser<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fountain of the Great Lakes, Lorado Taft, 1913 Oxidized breasts no water falls on is what I think of when I think of winter in Chicago: bare vines, bronze figures. The rounded arms bore rust and vessels they might have poured. Too lovely, said they, a century ago, who seemed to know where contours of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[25],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-1os","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5360"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5360"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10251,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5360\/revisions\/10251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}