barbmarq

Barbara Marquardt's Writing and Art Showcase

The following pages show samples of my art and writing.  I have an M.A. in creative writing from the University of Illinois and am now retired from teaching English literature and writing courses at the college level and English, Biology, and Environmental Sciences at the high school level.  I am an amateur artist in the sense that I have never earned my living from art or earned an art degree, but I have taken many courses and have shown my work at art fairs and in galleries and shows.  My books, Squirrel Girl and Whinny, are available on Amazon.com, self-published through Createspace, and can be purchased either in paperback or Kindle versions. They are also to be found in the digital library Google is compiling. Anyone interested in my art or perhaps in ordering a pet portrait from a photograph may contact me at barbmarq@tds.net.  I expect to be changing the samples of my poetry from time to time, so if you like the poems you read here, please come back again. I also will be displaying more art in the future; right now I am just showing the art I did for my book covers. The following is the title poem from my collection called Whinny, available at http://www.amazon.com/Whinny-Poems-about-nature-otherwise/dp/1438296959

WHINNY

The black patches

on winter’s pinto hills

are nothing but mud.

The splashes of earth tones,

only dried grass

or weedy detritus.

And the white coating

most of their rolling rumps,

porous old snow.

Rows of Lombardy poplars

make the combed gray manes;

willow branches, ochre tails.

 

Playful these mild days,

actual unstabled trail horses

sport in fenced fields, frisky

in anticipation of spring’s

succulent green eating.  And

later inevitable hay-making.

 

But January can take us

for a ride and then stall

all horsepower with a blizzard

that turns the world albino.

After the blur, blinding sun-

shine’s work waters the earth.

And the land goes palomino,

glowing gold and flaxen.

Green creeps beneath its bleach.