Essay on Boundaries

For Robert Hass

They meet on a winter Tuesday morning

fifteen minutes before the arranged interview

in the university gallery 

with the glass doors. The artist has installed 

two collapsable walls before the doors 

so no one can peer in. The young poet 

knocks patterns on the drywall barricade 

to announce her premature arrival 

and not frighten the artist, who is unrolling 

large sheets of plastic on the gallery floor, 

on her knees, slightly flustered, the young poet 

can tell, peering through a gap between the panels. 

Their interview spills over the allotted time.

Other candidates gather in the hall outside,

wait impatiently, then leave. The artist 

appreciates the student’s unwavering 

eye contact, even when that gaze suggests doubt 

or trepidation. The artist demonstrates 

how to prepare the paper surfaces 

for her immense photographs, low reliefs 

shaped by personal ephemera and 

stained with organic and inorganic matter, 

earth tones that bloom before fading. Her work 

resists tidy classification, manages 

to fuse the aesthetic gestures 

of Minimalism (sharp lines, reverence 

for material and the solitary mind) 

with humanist ideals. Rather, 

the artist’s work is beautiful 

and the poet struggles to articulate how 

or why. When studying the diagram-like forms 

the poet notices, in the moments that order 

wavers or breaks, a covert sensuality 

pulsing beneath the polished surface. The artist’s 

face pulses like this too, as when she sharpens

pencils or segments oranges. 

In truth, the poet finds the work “beyond 

her depth,” knows she holds a precarious 

position in the artist’s life. There are other 

potential assistants more competent 

and technically adept than her. She commits 

herself to the study of paper, blade, 

adhesion, and line, bringing the materials 

home with her, practicing late into night. 

Evenings in bed are marked by sensations 

of the blade in her hand, scoring 

a sheet of paper. Her sleep that winter

is clear and vast, is dreamless. The only image 

that appears to her is a gray grid set against 

a neutral expanse. The grid shifts in and

out of focus. What she doesn’t know is “beyond 

her depth” is how the artist always feels. 

They agree to continue working together 

after the exhibition and after 

the poet defends her thesis on Barthes. Her text

	fuses a researched meditation on 

the problem of autobiography with scenes

from her youth, first encounters with reading,

the spectre of one's face in the mirror. 

	When she tried severing the threads, the halves alone 

lost their color, the healthy flush a text should have.

The poet rents, for a reduced rate, the attic 

of the artist’s country home above the Hudson,

provided she also assists with walking 

the child to school on mornings she or her husband 

are unavailable. The husband was himself 

a poet, at least in his youth, though he yielded 

his dream of a career in the arts in service 

of hers, whose work surpassed his own in appraisals 

by critics and aesthetes alike. He has since joined 

a legal firm to which he aspires to make 

partner. His division is intellectual 

property law. “Envy” or “resentment” 

do not represent his feelings on the matter. 

The young poet, being a guest, refrains 

from inquiring about the husband’s practice. 

He, in turn, refrains from opening her chapbooks, 

which the artist added to their home library

beside his journals and Collected Williams. 

The poet has a tangible presence 

in the family’s daily life. They find themselves 

eating more vegetables, encountering 

bouquets of wildflowers in jam jars 

which the poet hides in odd corners of the office, 

playroom, or tea cabinet. When she returns 

to the kitchen after a run for a tall glass 

of water, (artist and husband watching 

from the kitchen table) water and sweat spill down 

her heaving chest. One morning on the walk to school

the child asks, “Are you family?” The poet 

pauses, invisibly heartbroken, then replies, 

“No, but that's a very good question.” In her dreams

of late, the poet carries the child down a cliff 

	in rain, being very careful. Seasons pass. 

Winter again. The artist has just laid the child 

to rest, moves now to the courtyard 

where the poet works, organizing images 

in the digital spreadsheet with great care, adding

their most recent project, a private space

atop a rush pasture, a pergola

made of reclaimed mantles, air vents, lamp harps. 

The artist approaches the poet, moves aside

the computer in her lap so she may sit there,

press her hips into the poet and feel,

through layers of fabric, a quick tightness 

	in the girl’s abdomen, a warm drop in her own.

The poet was until now content with stealing 

brushes from the artist’s studio and 

sucking on their ends at night. She hadn’t 

considered the prospect of fulfilment, 

is ill-prepared to greet the scale of this 

proximity. In the first gesture of their kiss, 

the poet’s mouth is too earnest,

off center, neglecting the artist’s upper lip, 

engaging her chin, even. The kiss is cause for 

immediate embarrassment and regret. 

But, having crossed an absolute threshold, 

the two are desperate to justify the trespass, 

discover a contact after judgement

and after cynicism. Their efforts

are fruitless. It is then the husband climbs the hill 

on which their home stands, glances the open attic

window above the courtyard. This has been a point

of contention since the poet’s moving in. Her

forgetfulness. He resolves to pen a missive 

and tape it to her window’s filter screen, writing:

“I don’t know how to impress upon you 

that your taste for leaving windows open

comes at a great cost to my wife and I,

and worse than that offense, you’re wasting heat.”