under the wide eyes of the man who buried his small son
and struggled to heal a split nation.
Days after news of General Lee’s surrender,
Edmonia learns President Lincoln was shot.
Mourning moves through her hands.
Grief knows no borders.
But sometimes she feels glad
about the way there’s no space between
her hands and clay, like sky touching earth.
Another Queen
In the line before the gallery, Edmonia listens
to people use the words talent, genius, and peculiar.
One lady says, Miss Hosmer grew up near Boston,
though now she makes her home in Rome. Her father
did his best after her mother passed over,
but the girl rode horses, paddled in the river,
was raised rather like a wild Indian.
The line moves on until Edmonia stands before a tall statue
of a woman who raises wrists bound in shackles
as if they were as light as ribbons. Zenobia’s gaze
and gait look steady, even with chains around her ankles,
punished by Romans for her greed for land.
This is how her ancestor might also have been forced
to walk if she hadn’t plucked an asp from a basket of figs.
Zenobia holds out her hands, even in shackles,
to show they couldn’t take her spirit.
The marble’s polish reflects light.
Smooth as teacups, there’s no sign of human hands.
The Invitation
Harriet Hosmer enters the studio room where Edmonia works.
The sculptor’s cropped curly hair is pushed under a cap.
A purple jacket is pulled over bloomers.
Her voice is brisk as she says, My old neighbor spoke of you.
Mrs. Child praised your ambition, but it was her comment
that you can get ahead of yourself that brought me here.
She turns to Edmonia’s bust of Colonel Shaw.
It’s popular enough that she’s been taking orders.
This is better than I expected from someone
so young, Harriet Hosmer says.
Though I started young, too. No one could keep me in school.
I never saw a statue as tall as your Zenobia,
or as powerful.
I worked from a stone three times my height.
I was terrified it would break.
Why did you choose to sculpt a queen who became a slave?
Maybe she chose me. I escorted the statue here,
hoping for a sale. Then I’ll go back to Rome,
where marble costs less, as it’s cut from nearby mountains
and shipped down the river on barges.
In Italy, statues are our teachers. Come.
A sculptor must work in marble and make whole figures
to be great, though that’s a word a lady isn’t supposed to use.
I’ll show you how to use hammer and chisel.
I could introduce you to a friend, a wealthy actress
who looks out for women artists. She’ll give you a place to live.
Artists reveal. Artists hide.
Edmonia remembers a dream of going to Europe.
Can she swap clay the color of her hands for pale marble?
Carve entire bodies instead of life broken at the shoulders
and live where the ground is never hard and white?
The Gift
She makes one bust after another: seventeen,
forty-four, sixty-seven small faces of Colonel Robert Shaw.
She finishes one, collects money for another
to adorn mantelpieces in elegant parlors.
She likes molding clay, and setting those shapes in plaster,
but marble is smoother, with a sheen like pearls.
She calculates that the price of about a hundred will buy
her a ticket across the Atlantic, a train across Europe to Rome.
When she gets a commission for a bust of Abraham Lincoln
to be done in marble, she knows pine floors must be swept,
chickens fed, and dried apple pies baked without her.
She packs the few things she owns, writes to tell Ruth
she is leaving. In the kitchen, Mrs. Child is making jelly
from plums a neighbor thought too small to save.
Study the classics, she says, but don’t forget
your Christian education. She spreads newspaper
under clear jars, stirs the bubbling, warm fruit,
licks a deep red stain from her wrist.
Perhaps you can wait until the currants come in.
There’s little ill a good currant jelly can’t cure.
The harbor will still be open, not yet iced over,
but Edmonia won’t wait for that or a reply from Ruth.
She must go while she has the money and an invitation.
Mrs. Child gives her a knitted pair of slippers.
Did I tell you how much sickness can be avoided
by putting on slippers every morning?
Edmonia folds them so they fit in her hands
like the small sculptures of deerskin
her mother made when she was a baby,
smooth as a swan’s wings collapsing back
into her own feathered body.
Rome, Italy
1865–1875
City of Marble
Snow-colored stone marks horizons.
Edmonia disappears into her own shadow,
past a marble emperor on horseback,
Neptune wrangling an octopus,
and tortoises diving past water-spouting fish.
A perfectly still Venus crosses her arms
over her breasts. Stone cherubs cling
to lampposts, bearing long silence,
always on the verge of breaking.
She shouldn’t have come. History opens and shifts
like the present in a city where churches and forts
are overgrown with moss and ivy.
Even aboard the ship and riding the train
through England, France, and Italy, she was certain
she was going the wrong way. Here in a city
where carved men are part goat,
a girl turns into a tree,
and churches hold tales of transformation,
Edmonia remembers how much she hates change.
Stones don’t give second chances.
Even marble can break like a mirror,
leaving no trace of anyone’s face.
Tin Cup
Men scoop roasted chestnuts into paper cones.
Edmonia is hungry, and shouldn’t be late for dinner
at the palazzo where Harriet Hosmer’s friend
has given her a room, but she crosses a bridge
where angels seem carved by wind.
She heads into a museum where marble saints
fill rooms and hallways. It’s forbidden,
but she glides her hand over a surface smooth
as a lake with no wind. What harm can that do?
She stops at a display of ancient coins,
one sculpted with a profile of Cleopatra.
She leaves to walk across stone older than the forests
where her aunts sculpted small homes.
Stalls display small papal flags, cathedral-shaped
inkwells, and miniature Santa Bambinos for sale.
Slate-colored birds fly over the piazza.
Rows of monks in rough brown robes chant.
A beggar in a ragged dress stretches her arms.
Without words, she shows what she needs:
Food. Shelter. Kindness.
She holds out a cup like the one of water an angel
gave to Hagar, though this might be empty.
Under Chandeliers
Crystal and silver gleam on the cloth-c
overed table.
Miss Cushman, a Shakespearean actress, has invited
Harriet Hosmer and other sculptors for dinner.
She assures Edmonia of the freedom she’ll find
in Rome, and asks about the nation after the war.
There’s jubilation and grief, she replies. As before.
A war means more monuments and memorials, an artist says.
We heard they melt cannons to make bronze statues.
Bronze can’t honor like smooth white marble, Harriet says.
Though it can stand up to New England winters.
Where in America did you come from? a woman asks.
Her fingernails look worn by stone. They’re rimmed
with dried clay. Her silk gown and pearls
and gold around her throat and wrists glimmer.
Another artist asks, Why did you leave?
Glances between guests
suggest that stories crossed the sea before her.
Edmonia wants to loosen memory’s tight sleeves.
She glances at a servant who doesn’t glance back.
Miss Cushman told her that Sally could make
a proper cup of tea and tame the actress’s hair.
The more she praised her loyalty,
the more Edmonia felt forced to see
Sally’s dark skin and Miss Cushman’s pride or guilt.
She signals Sally to clear the dishes, invites guests
to the parlor for cheesecake and cappuccino.
Potted palms lean over a glass case displaying historic swords,
pistols, and knives. She points out the dagger
she used playing Lady Macbeth in New York,
the vial that she mimed held poison
when performing as Romeo in London.
Edmonia won’t join the games of charades
or cards under chandeliers. She won’t stand
between the grand piano and the case of weapons
while others sing Home, Sweet Home.
The gold-framed mirrors and velvet drapes
are far from the Oberlin boarding house’s braided rugs,
wooden chairs, plain walls, and narrow beds.
Or they’re exactly the same. China teacups clatter.
The Studio
Under a high ceiling, Edmonia looks through
tall arched windows to a courtyard.
The door is bigger than some in barns.
I used to work here, and before that, Queen Victoria’s
favorite artist did. As if she can see her worry, Harriet says,
Miss Cushman trusts you can pay back the rent.
You won’t always be sculpting folderol for tabletops.
You need the courtyard so no one must haul marble
slabs up steps and finished statues back down.
This neighborhood is convenient for tourists to stop in.
People watch you sculpt? Edmonia remembers
her aunts weaving sweetgrass while strangers stared.
Those who wouldn’t be caught spending money
on art back in America want a souvenir and to say:
We found this in Europe, and saw the artist at work.
Yes, some come to stare. I explain that my short hair
makes it easier to brush out plaster dust.
Dresses are dangerous when climbing ladders
to work on tall statues. They don’t listen,
but they buy my art.
Your story might bring patrons, too.
It’s not true.
Most gossip isn’t. Harriet laughs.
Come. I’ll show you where to buy marble.
At the Landing
By the brown river, men wedge and push
marble slabs off barges. Harriet explains
how to check for consistent color and signs
of soft spots where the stone could crack.
Edmonia examines a stone about the size of a campfire.
I have orders for marble busts
of Colonel Shaw and one of President Lincoln.
Who would you most like to sculpt?
I don’t know.
Of course you know.
Heroes, friends, maybe even a queen.
Edmonia stoops beside stone
she might know only when it’s broken,
splintering light, casting new shadows.
She can almost hear it breathe.
Dreams
Two cream-colored oxen pull the cart with the stones
Edmonia chose. She and Harriet walk behind,
passing houses the colors of lemons, melons, and grapes.
Sprites grin from stucco walls as if they grew there.
Small statues of Madonnas stand over doorways.
Wide doors and tall windows are open.
Boys roll shirtsleeves past their elbows.
Girls’ bright skirts swing around ankles.
Young women with bare feet bathe children
under spouting dolphins and splashing gods.
In some windows of shops,
bolts of silk catch the light.
China dinnerware gleams like milk.
Gold, diamonds, emeralds, and pearls blink,
looped around marble cherubs or dangling
from the chubby stone hands of imps.
Edmonia touches her hair, imagining pearls
that might make strangers see her worth. Then
she looks up at a girl leaning on a windowsill,
drying her black hair. Maybe she’s dreaming.
Edmonia doesn’t miss the sounds of dormitory
doors opening and closing, gossip after dark,
the sparkle on bureaus, combing and pinning
someone else’s hair, or a boy with green eyes.
But sometimes she misses being a girl.
The First Winter
Harriet and a few other artists sometimes stop in
to advise or demonstrate ways to wield mallets,
chisels, and points. Edmonia learns
to chip away what’s softer than what remains.
She breaks marble and memory, practicing
the art of taking away, so people will see
only what she chooses to save. She hammers
out stillness, holding a life in mid-speech or stride,
like a deer between danger and trust.
Her mallet pounds a chisel, which strikes stone.
The sound is sharp, like icicles splitting in sun,
louder than a china teacup settling onto a plate,
or heavy footsteps across a cold field.
Every day, she makes her own snowfall
of white chips and dust.
The Sculptor of History
Why learn about people from the past
if there isn’t a chance they move among the living?
Edmonia doesn’t expect, or at least not entirely,
her arm to be tapped by someone invisible,
or a whisper to arrive as if from nowhere, or stone.
But there’s more to the living than touches and words.
History is made of forgetting as much as remembering.
Through the next year, she keeps up a conversation
with the past, sculpting busts of abolitionists,
senators, and the flag-bearer of the 54th Regiment.
Some seek her busts of Colonel Robert Shaw.
Unlike a person, a sculpture holds only one expression,
which Edmonia considers changing. She remembers
Anne Whitney saying that even heroes have fears.
Can a sculptor show not just glory, but its costs?
She carves the brave soldier as if doubt
never crossed his face.
Hers
Edmonia has worked for a year and sold many busts,
when Harriet suggests she start on big statues.
I’ll give you the names of workmen who will follow
your models and measurements to c
ut rough forms
of the marble. Critics who know little
claim that means the art isn’t ours, but it’s how most work.
Edmonia curls her palm around a mallet’s smooth handle.
She can’t afford to pay for help, and
won’t risk any hint that the work isn’t all hers.
She wants to feel every stroke,
leaving signs in the muscles of her arms,
claiming every triumph, even every mistake.
The Room
She makes enough money to move from the palazzo
into a room with one small bed.
There’s no carpet to sweep or shake, no sink to scrub.
She has a woodstove to warm coffee, but no oven
to scent the day with pie and procrastination.
No rumors or truths are laid like silver on a table.
There’s just enough space to set her trunk
under the one window. There she keeps her clothes,
some tools, the wool slippers from Mrs. Child
she never took out from the brown folded paper.
Her strong, sore arm is a pillow as she falls asleep
to the sound of metal on stone. The beat won’t leave
her ears at dusk, but blends with rain tapping
on windows, gushing through gutters,
teasing out scents from the lemon tree
by the door.
Hunger
The smell of fresh rolls, hot chestnuts, rosemary,
and sausages makes her belly feel bare as winter.
At the marketplace, Edmonia pretends
to study the color of apples, the shapes of oranges,
while calculating what she can afford. She knows
how many coins are in her purse and doesn’t know
when she may fill it again. Empty is empty.
Was it a mistake to move from a place where breakfasts
and dinners were gifts? She returns home with one orange
she peels at the old table. She sips water, pushes back bills,
finds fresh paper and ink. On the worm-eaten wood,
she pens another plea. Borrowing makes her teeth ache,
but she needs money for marble to sculpt and sell.
Does Mrs. Child know of a park
or meetinghouse in need of another hero?
Splitting
Stone Mirrors Page 7
