for cole
erica kaufman
Word count: 216
Paragraphs: 17
Cole Heinowitz. Photo: Joshua Beckman.
for cole
(an elegy composed of language from Jack Spicer’s Afer Lorca)
upon a soundless carpet
the shadow demands beauty
is spelled is able to enter
books. an inquiring leg
wants to extend me
its branches i ask
for the poem called
seagull, big and green
asleep on my lips. inevitably
friends like words too—
perspective drawings hidden
in your cheek, the sky
has coastlines. gulls circle
little fingers, not as an image
or a picture that lemon
i would like a single
bird, arms full of paper,
an archangel ripe
with sunburn, magical,
the fish traded for
a song across time.
i wish i could tell you
how my eyes are water,
wide-awake a single
tree, a hard landscape.
newly cut flowers become
without trumpet. finally
a scarecrow a white lily
seaweed the jasmine of night
violet-colored big roses
a bowl of hot tea.
Cole was an extraordinary teacher. In Fall 2023, I covered some of Cole’s classes and taught
Spicer’s After Lorca for the first time, a book she loved and students loved because of her.
Teaching this text through Cole’s eyes was a revelatory experience for me, and I think of
Spicer’s magic and deep playfulness with language when I think of her. “I again begin to
write you a letter on the sound of a poem.” (Spicer)
erica kaufman
july 1, 2025
poet, writer, and teacher, erica kaufman is the author of three books of poetry: POST CLASSIC, INSTANT CLASSIC (both from Roof Books), and censory impulse (Factory School). she is co-editor of NO GENDER: Reflections on the Life and Work of kari edwards and a collection of archival pedagogical documents, Adrienne Rich: Teaching at CUNY, 1968–1974. recent poems can be found in Ursula and e-flux. kaufman's prose, focused on contemporary feminist poetics and pedagogy, appears in: The Color of Vowels: New York School Collaborations; Approaches to Teaching the Works of Gertrude Stein; The Supposium: Thought Experiments & Poethical Play in Difficult Times; Urgent Possibilities, Writings on Feminist Poetics & Emergent Pedagogies; Reading Experimental Writing; and The Difference is Spreading: Fifty Contemporary Poets on Fifty Poems. she is the director of the Institute for Writing & Thinking and the Language & Thinking Program at Bard College where she is also Writer-in-Residence.