Piétâ de la Liberté (almost finished except for child’s face and hair) life size papier mâché
Tag Archives: Phoebe Sparrow Wagner
KAMALA HARRIS— PORTRAIT
Reposting Papier Mache pieces from ten years ago
Poème en Français (and translated)
I have not shared here how utterly in love with the French language I have become. Last July, and I do not even remember exactly what happened but something did…last July I fell head over heels in love with French and all things Français. Like my other full blown long-term passions — field botany was the first, then poetry, then ——, then art, and now French — the transformation from someone who a few minutes before had no use for whatever it was — French in this case — into someone wildly passionate and devoted to the object of her desires happened in the space of moments. It was as usual truly like a religious “conversion experience”, no other expression adequately expresses this sort of Road to Damascus lightning strike experience. One minute I was just going along, doing art of course, and passionate about it, but having zilch interest in French…then with a nearly audible WHOMP! everything changes, as it changed last July and I literally transformed from someone who was at best lukewarm towards French, and France, to someone passionately in love!
i will write more about such experiences another time. (And never fear, my passion for art remains. ) but for now I wanted to share this poem, originally written in English for my book, LEARNING TO SEE IN THREE DIMENSIONS, but which last night I was moved to try to translate. If you perhaps are francophone and even a native speaker, I would LOVE any criticism or critique you might provide for how the French actually sounds to someone who knows it well.
Be that as it may, the translation in English, that is to say, the original version, is also below.
qui pourrait être assis, comme moi,
dans un fauteuil vert, un thé à la main
regardant à travers de la porche
jusqu’au lampadaire sans lumière au dehors du restaurant,
livre sur les genoux, le mien j’espérerais,
le seul livre que je dois évoquer
si j’évoque aucun livre dans un poème,
au lecteur, le méticuleux,
qui pourrait être se demandant pourquoi
sur la page 47 il y a deux « et »
l’un après l’autre, et à qui est la faute,
et au lecteur qui est peut-être fatigué
après un long trajet en bus chez lui
après un repas qui ne valait rien,
un lecteur qui ramasse mon livre, mais s’endort
avant de l’ouvrir, à tous je dis : Pardonnez-moi
je ne suis qu’une écrivaine, assise
dans un fauteuil vert, un thé à la main,
je ne peux pas expliquer ces deux « et »
ni le lampadaire mystérieux
ni réchauffer les pieds d’un lecteur fatigué
dans son lit. Je ne peux que mettre la musique
et raconter histoires
pour que des films tournent dans la tête,
pour le réveiller avec la compréhension soudaine
que c’est la poésie qui peut faire achever la vie,
eh bien, il peut faire achever ma vie au moins,
et peut être la sienne, et peut-être la vie
d’un méticuleux, et votre vie aussi,
tous ici assis, regardant à travers de la porche
jusqu’au lampadaire sans lumière,
là où ce qui se passe si mystérieusement
est de la poésie –
et la nuit entière est enveloppée
dans les mots dits par deux étrangers
qui là se rencontrent,
ou peut-être les mots non-dits,
ce qui est de la poésie aussi,
et tous qui écoutent, nous attendons
la musique de ce qui se passera.
—————————-
TO THE reader
who may be sitting as I am
in a green recliner with a cup of tea
staring out through the porch
to a darkened streetlamp outside the diner,
with a book in her lap, mine, I hope
the only one I feel I should have to mention
if I mention a book in a poem I write;
to the reader, the nitpicker, the one
who may be wondering why
on p. 47 there are two ands, one
right after another, and whose fault that is;
and to the reader, who may be tired
after a long ride home on the bus
after dark and a meal not worth mentioning
who picks up my book but finds his eyes
closing before he has opened the cover,
I say: Forgive me
I am only a writer sitting in a green recliner
with a cup of tea, I can’t explain
those two ands or the mysterious
streetlamp or warm the feet of a tired
reader in his bed. I can only put music on
and tell him stories to make movies
turn in his head, to let him wake
with the sudden understanding that poetry
may be all it takes to make a life—
well, my life at any rate, and maybe his,
and maybe the nitpicker’s and yours, too,
staring through the porch to the streetlamp
where what happens so mysteriously ispoetry—
and the whole night is wrapped
in the words spoken by two strangers
meeting there, or not spoken, which is poetry too,
and all of us who listen are waiting
for the music of what is to happen.
M.
Song, in French with translation
Phoebe’s translation:
Ever since we were kids,
My friend, we struggled,
But now that we are men
I want to put the oars/ struggles behind us
If tears come to you
Come then, and give them to me
Gypsy men and women
This is what we were made for
Tiago, I have taken the time to write you
A song in a thousand smiles
Tiago I have put in the time to say it
But my friend, I will be here for the worst
Whoever makes fun of you
Also makes fun of me
In 20 years you will see
How we will laugh (about it)
If that turns into a fight
We will play it four-handed
Gypsies
God gives us fists (for this purpose)
Tiago, I have taken the time to write you
A song in a thousand smiles
Tiago I have put in the time to say it,
But my friend, I will be here for the worst.
My friend, Tiago.
(Repeated)
The girlfriend who leaves
And will never return
It’s about time for us to see each other, yes,
And talk about you
If your heart is broken
Bring it here now
Gypsies,
We are good repairmen.
Tiago, I have taken the time to write you
A song in a thousand smiles
Tiago I have put in the time to say it,
But Tiago my friend…
Tiago, I have taken the time to write you
A song in a thousand smiles
Tiago I have put in the time to say it
But my friend I will be here for the worst.
Tiago
TRUMP TOILET THRONE: ART FOR SALE!
see my art blog for new posts
including this one
Review of my Last Book
Not sure why link is not working but if you click on it you will get to Disability Arts Onljne, from there go to magazine, then click on newest reviews. The second one in, so far, should be about O-rings and Cathode Rays, that is to say, the review.
i will try posting this address which may copy and paste better than the link does.
see my comment at the bottom of the review
Phoebe Spiro Wagner: Learning to See in Three Dimensions – O-Rings and Cathode Rays
From my art blog
OH DONNIE BOY…(Scary!)
(Sung to the tune of Danny Boy)
Oh Donny boy, republicans are gawking
Your racist house of cards won’t long abide
The Dems are here and Michael Cohen’s talking.
If it’s all true, impeachment’s justified:
The loans you got, the tax bills you evaded
The conning schemes and hushed-up bribes you paid,
Your wall, your wall, which Mexico won’t subsidize
Its clear that you won’t get that Nobel prize…
But we won’t care or listen to your keening
We won’t weep moats for loss of your golf greens
We’ll celebrate by speaking truth to trumpery
We’ll speak it loud, from sea to shining sea.
So slink you back, in orange jumpsuit, cowering,
Mike, Paul and Rog will go to jail unbowed
It’s not fake news we’ve caught you with your panties down
Oh Donny boy, oh Donny boy, who’s winning now?
by phoebe sparrow wagner 3/2019
See my Art Blog…arteveryday365.com
Carolyn Spiro, MD, May she R.I.P.
Restraint Chair Art, Work-in-Progress
No comment necessary… this is VERMONT 2019
See my art at Jim Gottstein’s psychrights Everyday Horrors site
“Twin Realities”: schizophrenia article from 2003

Kathleen Megan’s story from 2003, while DIVIDED MINDS was being written.
http://schizophrenia.com/stories/twins.htm
Carolyn and Pamela, after she put on 60lbs on Zyprexa (olanzapine)
“The thing about twins is they invite comparison. Even though they may look identical, one usually has the edge — a little more confidence, a quicker smile, perhaps a bit more talent.
As babies and little girls, Pam Wagner and Carolyn Spiro were like that. They danced and acted and held promise that delighted their parents. They loved it when people mixed them up. They were a tight club of two.
And then in adolescence, Pam, the one with the edge, lost touch with her own mind. Life became confusing and the twins’s lives took separate paths, diverging and then intersecting repeatedly, as they once again do now. Pam is a poet and Carolyn a psychiatrist. In midlife, they’ve come together to write a book, to try to capture their story for the benefit of others, and also for themselves.
Their story is a tale of the inseparable bond of sisters, of twins, and their struggle when their lives became anything but identical.
• • •
When you enter Pam’s apartment you can’t escape the photo test: two adorable baby girls, ribbons in downy hair, one gazing intently, the other head-tilted, tentative. Both bright-eyed, identical. Which is which? Which is Pammy and which is her twin, Lynnie?
You can’t tell. Is that thoughtful tilt a Lynnie trait? The more focused expression Pammy’s? Impossible to say, so you guess and you guess wrong.
And you wonder, was the die already cast at so young an age? Were they already – though indistinguishable on the outside – so very divergent on the inside? The seed of illness, perhaps, already planted; the roles of caretaker and cared-for so early ordained. You try to reconcile these photos – these identical babies and later, mirror-image school girls – with all you see a half-century later.
So very different are they now. How do they live with this, the undoing of their twinhood? And, how has their family, so accomplished and talented, coped with the slap of fate? That one became psychotic, the other a psychiatrist. Pam catches you staring at the beguiling babies. “You know,” she says, “I was well once.”’
click on link above to find rest of story, written after a years long series of interviews, both at home and in hospitals.
The DEEPER DIG at Vermont Digger — on Mental Health Care challenges
Features me and a poem…as well as a discussion of mental health “care” with DMH commissioner, Mourning Fox
https://vtdigger.org/2018/11/16/deeper-dig-hospitals-struggle-psychiatric-care/
This Art print is Available
I cannot find the email or the name of the person who mailed me wanting a print of this piece, but I wanted to inform her that art prints and other posters etc are now available at this link at Redbubble.com. Also posted at Zazzle.com.
ZAZZLE STORE
https://www.zazzle.com/psychiatric_take_down_someones_watching_photo_print-190152500586657512
REDBUBBLE STORE