Poetry / Leah Umansky 

:: Ars Poetica: Chroma ::

     for Scott 

The world is made up of so much color. 
At the European Collection 1300 - 1800 at The Met,
I am oversaturated with the baby Jesus, and so
Many severed heads, so much death, so
Much despair. All those faces in agony.
It is straining, draining, and I drag my eye
Away from the red, the dead, and the fervor. I
Am full of so much fear and anguish. I know, 
The purpose of art is feeling, is to feel, and to think,
But my eye longs for light, and not the light of angels,
But the natural light of sun, of the water-kissed, and the plain,
The mundane, the simplicity of a field seemingly untouched. I
Urge you to the bright, to the color of Monet, all those water lilies,
All that green, yellow and peach. I lavender around the gallery
Of the Impressionists, and the warmth, that brightness is an escape. 
I look at the rowboats, the gardens, the sunrises, the poplars, and sigh. 
I want to escape into these oceans, these fields, the sunlight. Life
Is for living, I think, and isn’t the world dark enough?

:: Easy ::

     after The New York­er Pod­cast with Donika Kel­ly and Kevin Young

Tonight, I spilled the salmon all over the kitchen floor,
Picked it up, and dropped it again right off the spatula.

There’s no use crying over spilt salmon, I thought to myself,
But really, do these things happen to other people?

And this afternoon, we started to walk up to the reservoir, 
But it ended in us both going back to mine, where I then

Continued on without you, to the river, where I walked, 
Drawn by the sun and the summer beckoning. I 

Felt cheerful, despite you heading back to yours. I  
Felt warm and happy, watching summer at its start. 

Where are the poets who use ‘cheerful’ in a poem?  
Right here, and unafraid of  protocol.

I don’t hold back in a poem, or at least I try not to. 
I saw two birds looking for food in the dandelion patch, 

And stilled myself to stand there and watch them, but 
I could only hold my still for so long; I wanted to for longer,

But I also wanted to keep walking. I couldn’t still 
My self, even with a podcast, so I started naming

Things I was grateful for on the walk:  blue sky, ducks,
Green leaves, the silver river water, yellow sun, my steady steps.

What more can we do? It is so easy to fall to despair. 
And when do I ever do what’s easy.

From the writer

:: Account ::

My part­ner is an artist and he was mak­ing notes for a pro­pos­al for a course he want­ed to teach for chil­dren and one of the lessons was on ‘chro­ma.’ I had no idea what that was, and so I wrote it down in my note­book and looked it up. Lat­er in the week, we went to The Met and the Euro­pean Wing had reopened. Like the poem states, I just couldn’t do it. The world is some­times such a ter­ri­ble place, and late­ly, it’s just get­ting worse. It’s not a world I want to be in and I have to con­stant­ly reframe my see­ing, lift myself up, and fol­low my joy. On this day, we both decid­ed to have a muse­um day, though clear­ly, we had dif­fer­ent ideas in mind. The pow­er of art is how trans­for­ma­tive it can be, but also how ther­a­peu­tic it can be. On this day, I need­ed chro­ma. I need­ed col­or. I need­ed water. I need­ed sun­light and vibrance and glee. I need­ed oth­er world and oth­er words and oth­er ways of see­ing. I need­ed imag­i­na­tion. I need­ed beau­ty. And some­times, beau­ty is the answer; it’s there, in our lives, if we choose to see it.“Easy” is a poem I wrote after a lit­tle lovers spat. First, my part­ner and I were walk­ing togeth­er up to the reser­voir in Cen­tral Park, but after I decid­ed to take a dif­fer­ent path, west­ward, to The Hud­son Riv­er, where I walked along the river­bank and lis­tened to The New York­er Pod­cast. This poem came out of that med­i­ta­tion. I love lis­ten­ing to pod­casts when I go on walks, some­thing about my foot­falls and the sound of peo­ple in con­ver­sa­tion grounds me. I often lis­ten to inter­views, and this episode real­ly inter­est­ed me in terms of the word, ‘cheer­ful.’ It made me think about one of the man­u­scripts I’m work­ing on—one on won­der, joy and love—and how that book is sur­pris­ing to me as I’ve nev­er writ­ten such ‘cheer­ful’ poems. Most of the time a walk is a good dis­trac­tion and a good way to find clar­i­ty. I’ve said this before in a dif­fer­ent poem, but it’s  true: you nev­er regret tak­ing a walk.

Leah Uman­sky is the author of three col­lec­tions of poet­ry, most recent­ly, OF TYRANT (Word Works Books 2024.) She earned her MFA in Poet­ry at Sarah Lawrence Col­lege and has curat­ed and host­ed The COUPLET Read­ing Series in NYC since 2011. She is the cre­ator of the STAY BRAVE Sub­stack which encour­ages women-iden­ti­fy­ing cre­atives to inspire oth­er women-iden­ti­fy­ing cre­atives to stay brave in their cre­ative pur­suits. Her cre­ative work has been fea­tured on PBS and The Slow­down Pod­cast, and in such places as The New York Times, The Acad­e­my of Amer­i­can Poets’ Poem‑A Day,USA Today, POETRY, Ben­ning­ton Review, and Amer­i­can Poet­ry Review. She is an edu­ca­tor and writ­ing coach who has taught work­shops to all ages at such places as Poet­ry School Lon­don, Poets House, Hud­son Val­ley Writ­ers Cen­ter, Memo­r­i­al Sloan Ket­ter­ing and else­where. She is work­ing on a fourth col­lec­tion of poems ORDINARY SPLENDOR, on won­der, joy and love. She can be found at www.leahumansky.com