Colorscapes

“Colors are words’ little sisters … I’ve loved them secretly for a long time”…

—Rolf Jacobsen

My life has been drenched in color, one joyful splash after another. As a kid in India, I absorbed the rich oranges and red spices in the marketplace and the wild combos of yellows, greens, and purples in village women’s saris. In the spring festival of Holi, I got smeared with bright blues and pinks, and the smells are still in my nostrils.

College studies in European and American art history introduced me to color theory and the phenomenology of perception. I took many studio courses—painting, silk screen, graphic design, ceramics—and broadened my art horizons during a year at the University of Paris’s l’Institut d’Art et d’Archéologie and the Louvre. I was so excited, I could hardly sleep!

Then came a career at The Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, and other wonderful stewards of art, architecture, technology, and science. So many opportunities to submerge myself in color. Think Alma Thomas’ Eclipse, 1970—wild concentric bands of yellow, red, and blue stripes.

Color in nature and the laboratory continues to fascinate me. Where do different dyes come from—shells, rocks, insects, chemicals? What did artists Josef and Anni Albers teach us bout color relationships? And what do psychologists and philosophers from Goethe to Isaac Newton to Carl Jung tell us about color perception for human beings?

Why is a particular music style called the Blues? The red chroma of Coca-Cola a closely-guarded trade secret? The turtleneck in a catalog sold as Sea Foam green one year and Mysterious Mint the next? How does your favorite color make you feel? What is chiaroscuro, anyway? Join me on a journey to talk about, revel in, and see color in a brand new light.

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Colorscapes, Poetry by Lee Woodman

Praise

Virginia Mecklenburg

Colorscapes is a book about life—about green and yellow and “provocative pink,” about bugs and bluejays and bunnies. It speaks of ancient rocks, of flitting butterflies, of the colors we see, and those we feel. Lee Woodman’s poems blend sound with color in cadenced, syncopated rhythms that are primal and instinctual and fresh and new. The smallest objects and life forms—a pebble, a wood frog, a bumblebee—speak to us through color. And through color we relive experiences we’ve had, people we’ve met, and passions that have enriched our lives.

Colorscapes tells us truths about ourselves and our lives that we sometimes forget, or more likely, ignore. Like the musicians, poets, painters, and natural forms that inspired her, she charges us to live and breathe through color. Woodman says when she dies she wants to be dirt that nourishes and sustains the earth. She reminds us that everything counts, nothing is inconsequential, and that color suffuses our lives with meaning and memory.

Virginia M. Mecklenburg, chief Curator Emerita, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Margaret Hasse

The poems in Colorscapes, Lee Woodman’s latest book, seem born from a deep study and a passionate enthusiasm for color, which she explores in the natural world, at the heart of stories, and in the hands of artists. Her images can be dazzling as a peacock’s spread tail, especially when describing birds, flowers, and gardens. Readers will enjoy, as did I, an inviting variety in poems’ tone, content, and type. One witty narrative poem, “Devil with My Green Dress On,” recounts a laugh-out-loud incident featuring an emerald green velvet gown worn by a usurper. Many of Woodman’s poems offer not only fancy but fascinating fact, such as that Tyrian purple dye used in ancient Greece “came from milked sea snails.” Among my favorite poems are the ekphrastic ones that respond to art and artists such as Leibovitz, Bonnard, and Vermeer. In “Caravaggio, a Story in Tenebroso” the painter “confesses/ through drama of color, he’s/ John himself in fiery shroud . . .”  When you have Colorscapes in hand and are ready to read, you’re in for a treat. The drama of color and its beauty suffuses the book.

Margaret Hasse, poet, author of “Belongings” (2024) and eight other poetry collections

Reviews

CHICAGO CITY BOOK REVIEW

COLORSCAPES

MANHATTAN CITY BOOK REVIEW

Colorscapes

PRINTED WORD REVIEWS
https://www.printedwordreviews.com/bookreviews/9781962082860

BOOKLIFE
https://booklife.com/category/poetry/blreviews/1

KIRKUS REVIEW
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/lee-woodman/colorscapes/

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