Painting Valle Grande

​Poems by Carolyn Tourney Florek
​

Mutabilis Press (2003), Softcover, 64 pages
ISBN 0-9729432-0-X

​Cover painting: "Valle Grande, New Mexico"
​by Carolyn Tourney Florek, 1985

Price: $12 plus $4 shipping and handling
​

Poem Excerpt:
​Painting Valle Grande

Be careful of red, he says,
as I paint the sky
over Valle Grande, New Mexico,
an immense meadow flooding
a collapsed caldera--
flowing grasses fingering round
volcanic peaks:  Redondo,  Pajarito.
 
Broadly I scumble red paint
over sage-green mountains;
reflecting a blood-radiance
on impasto clouds curling upward
off the edge of painterly illusion;
drip blue-violet down from the sky
to a shimmering mirage of water
and grazing cattle.
 
I am not afraid of red or violet
or remembrance of flood
or raging fire;
fire snapping through pines,
fire charring all to a bitter taste
astringent in the air
after a sudden rain.