#robin coste lewis

[lifeinpoetry]

— Robin Coste Lewis, from To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness

[whisperthatruns]

And those words

          you finally found.

                      And the other words

I found---too---to say

           back to you.

                      All of it

will be

           erased, all of it

                      will never be

recorded

           in the fossil record.

                      And I don’t care---

our black

           deep mystery perfect---

                      you and me---

sitting here---

           one hundred

                      thousand years ago---

without any possibility---

          or need---for

                      documentation. 

Robin Coste Lewis, from “The Evolution of Speech,” To The Realization of Perfect Helplessness (Alfred A. Knopf, 2022)

[ro-sham-no]

a (tiny) excerpt from "pleasure & understanding" - robin coste lewis

... Sanskrit poems sing of how the rose trembles whenever the bee hovers near

sam is the bee, hovering and flitting around, seeking sustenance from the rose.

dean is the rose. his whole being is devoted to providing for the bee; to providing for sam. the rose's entirety - heart, soul, and mind - sings when the bee is near, responding to the proximity by putting out the most delicate scent - a scent of home, of love and devotion - in a desperate attempt to keep the bee returning. he's desperate to keep sam returning, so that the rose will be fertilized and subsequently flourish. so that dean, the rose, will be kept nourished and able to produce pollen and nectar for sam, the bee, to lick from the rose's petals.

the rose trembles whenever the bee hovers near. all of its features earnestly cultivated throughout its life in a bid to capture and keep the bee's, sam's, attention on the rose, on dean, forever. because the bee may be able to flit away, to migrate to a different flower garden, but the rose is rooted deep, helpless to do nothing but watch as the bee goes where the rose can't, won't, follow.

[garadinervi]

Radio Imagination: Artists and Writers in the Archive of Octavia E. Butler, Edited by Janet Duckworth and Savannah Wood, Foreword by Julia Meltzer, Clockshop, Los Angeles, CA, 2018. Contributions by Tisa Bryant, Lynell George, Robin Coste Lewis, and Fred Moten, and artworks by Laylah Ali, Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade, Lauren Halsey, Mendi + Keith Obadike, and Connie Samaras

[wickershells]

Robin Coste Lewis, “Plantation” from Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems (2015)

[kitchen-light]

Beauty is as old as dirt. Beauty is dark, complex, transformation–and not for the faint at heart. Beauty is the Sublime, which means you cannot stand in its presence, but must fall to your knees. It is often unattractive, what it brings in its hands for you and only you. And the question is always Do you have the strength to stand here and take it. That experience is often unpleasant, or it is a journey, a quest. But if it is true, that Beauty is a particular face of the Goddess, why would you ever run? Regardless of what Beauty asks of one, one must stay to the end.

Robin Coste Lewis, from “Robin Coste Lewis: “Black Joy is My Primary Aesthetic””, published in Lit Hub, November 14, 2016

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Nepal/Mustang, Nepal Photo : julian.keliananta

[Red Pine (translator) :: Bill Porter (author)]

* * * * *

The World wants to know what I am made of. I am trying to find a way to answer Her.

— Robin Coste Lewis, from “On the Road to Sri Bhuvaneshwari,” Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems (Alfred A. Knopf 2015)

[quidnunc]

[smokefalls]

The World wants to know / what I am made of. I am trying / to find a way / to answer Her.

Robin Coste Lewis, “On the Road to Sri Bhuvaneshwari” from Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems

[sanya888]

— Robin Coste Lewis, from To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness

[aemperatrix]

[lifeinpoetry]

— Robin Coste Lewis, from To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness

[whisperthatruns]

viii.

One day, I come out onto a street in New York. A very old man is on the sidewalk selling antique maps. I smile. I walk up to him.

“Sir, do you have any of the Arctic?”

His eyes look into mine more deeply now. For one quick second, we make love, the way strangers who are not really strangers---they just have never met before---touch each other deep inside with their eyes.

“Of course I do, Darling,” he says in a thick and gorgeous Urdu accent. “But,” he hesitates, and holds up his index finger: “I have only one.”

We smile at each other. We are suddenly in love, and we understand our whole love affair---from beginning to end---will take place right here, between our words, for only these few moments.

I look at the map. On the small sheet of paper, there are two frames: the North Pole is on top, the South Pole on the bottom. All the water is white. The scattered lands are green. Besides the fine black print, these are the only colors. In large bold letters across the middle of both poles is the word UNEXPLORED.

Later I will think: How like this map I am. The top and bottom of me---both---so unknown. My most essential pivots: uncharted yet toggling in perfect geometry. My heart a country called Greenland, yet always covered in ice. My brain an Iceland, but greener than every sea. Prehistoric elephants embedded beneath my skin, along with carved ivory ornaments ten thousand years old that belonged to me when I was someone’s wife during the last ice age. Always something in me freezing harder, while another part insists on melting. And then this equator in the middle of my body---so hot, so lush---I can visit, but only for a day.

I buy the map. It is fifteen dollars. The man and I smile at each other. His face is a whole flock of starlings, which suddenly alights upon me---me, bare winter tree. In one minute, we have lived fifty years together. In one minute, we’ve had ten children. I’ve tended a goat and brought him a cup of its frothy milk. He’s covered my head with a white muslin scarf, then stood beside me while we cremated my father. We’ve grown gray together. I have loved his body and mind thoroughly. I say goodbye. I rub red ochre into the middle part of my hair. I throw garlands of marigolds into his casket before the moment closes the lid.

Robin Coste Lewis, from “The Ark: Self-Portrait as Aphrodite Using Her Dress for a Sail,” To The Realization of Perfect Helplessness (Alfred A. Knopf, 2022)

[andrumedus]

I [...] cursed God—His arrogance, His gall—to still expect our devotion after creating love.

Robin Coste Lewis, “Summer”

[californiastatelibrary]

Winner of the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, Robin Coste Lewis’s To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness is last month's Discovery in the Stacks. Lewis brings poetry and photography together in this stunning exploration of the history and life recorded in a collection of old photographs found under her late grandmother’s bed, rescued just before the house was destroyed. To learn more and read previous Discoveries in the Stacks visit: https://www.library.ca.gov/california-history/discoveries/.

Discoveries in the Stacks is a webpage where the California History Section's librarians share moments where they have stumbled upon materials in the collection that made them think or made them laugh or simply were too good not to share.

[waywordsstudio]

Review: "Voyage of the Sable Venus" by Robin Coste Lewis -

Lewis's work is lush, virulent, and at times suffocating, but a necessary and vibrant meditation on the uses of black women and the idea of beauty across history and in contemporary thought.

[kitchen-light]

Self-Care by Robin Coste Lewis While watching a movie with a lovely, unyielding, Well-founded black female Character, the ten-year-old Says, Mom, I love How fierce Black people are.

Published in the Paris Review, Issue no. 227, Winter 2018