Elizabeth Joy Levinson

I think the reason this time of year is so difficult in the midwest is that it seems so hard to find beauty.  It is still too cold most days to linger outside and the flowers that bloom in rare warm weather wilt before they can go to seed.  I am missing color: the hard shells of beetles, the purple morning glory that covers a tired fence, the feathery astilbes I searched for last spring.  I want to make something with my hands, to write something, to grow something simply for the beauty of the thing.

A few years ago, I was involved with The Silver Series, a photography project by my dear friend Adeline Sides.  She had a series of nudes, models in silver body paint, and she enlisted about a dozen poets to write for the photographs.  I remember how challenging it was to write about the images.  The human body, removed from any context, a study of beauty for the sake of nothing else.