TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

You’ve probably seen at least one painting by Frida Kahlo at some point in your life. After all, she’s considered one of Mexico's greatest artists. But unless you’re an art nerd like me, you might not know much about Frida, the person. 

She was born in Coyoacán, a borough of Mexico City, and her family’s home is often referred to as La Casa Azul, or The Blue House. And she notably lived with illness and injury for most of her life. Frida contracted polio when she was six years old, and even after she recovered, she walked with a limp. Then, when she was eighteen, an injury from a bus and streetcar collision fractured Frida’s spine and pelvis. She wore a full-body cast for three months and endured dozens of operations. 

It was then, during her long recovery, that Frida’s parents encouraged her to paint. They had a special easel made for her so she could paint while lying in bed. 

Some of Frida’s self-portraits — paintings like Without Hope, The Broken Column, and The Wounded Deer — reflect on the pain and suffering Frida encountered in life, both physically and emotionally. La Casa Azul is now a museum in Coyoacán, where admirers of her work can go and see it for themselves. I’d love to visit it someday.

Today’s poem is an ekphrastic poem, a poem inspired by a piece of art. It opens with an epigraph that is a quote by Frida Kahlo. It strikes me now, reading that line of hers, that while she’s talking about painting herself, it can also refer to WRITING about oneself.

Perspective, Coyoacán
by Corey Van Landingham

I paint myself because I am often alone and I am the subject I know best. 
—Frida Kahlo

She is learning it,  how to foreground,  she is cathedral-large  and stepping
out of frame, out of time, the bed she swims and swims. Swims the avenue, 
past  the  bent-waist  jacarandas,  November  bloomless,  barred  windows, 
shuttered  doors.  Black  glass,  solid  wood.  Swims palest  sky.  In the  early
watercolor  even the bells close up  the belfry. No needles  of light,  no palm 
of  God.  Somewhere  else,  deer  lick  the  snow.  A  river  birch  hand-trained 
miniature.  Whelks hanging,  in deep water,  their ghost-spirals  of eggs. But 
her world is here,  mirror and  sable brush,  canopy of no stars,  her face and 
face — reflected   her   crown   of    eyebrows,   strict   part.   Also,   boundless 
acreage.  The Necaxa  River  dammed  and  10,000 miles of track.  Order  and
progress  and  the  streetcar  at  full  speed.   Its  rails  trace   the  border  she 
paints. Passes through her, almost. She’s not whittling the chambered days 
but  walking out of them,  from the  aggregate of history,  she is  turning her 
back  to  all  of  that,  the  Porfiriato,  her  room  like  a   lung.  No,  look,  she  is 
turning toward—

“Perspective, Coyoacán” by Corey Van Landingham. Used by permission of the poet.