Sarah Carey
—
Ars Poetica: Negative Capability
After the life model rises to dress
and another class vanishes into the night,
charcoal nestles back into cigar boxes
in the absence of light. The last artist leafs
through her leftover sketches,
remnants of attempted interpretations,
knows only a few will be keepers
like the ones her fingers pressed to life—
in silhouettes, or fleshed-out figures,
outlines of every man or woman lending a body
rendered familiar in a stranger’s shape
in which the artist imagines an ancestor
resurrected in relief against the dark—
a raised pattern, a form of smudged remembrance.
A galaxy of newsprint hides its black holes,
but wasn’t the point a universe reversed?
White space or invisible history?
Who we were when others couldn’t see?
A North Carolina native who grew up in Florida, Sarah Carey’s debut full-length collection of poems, The Grief Committee Minutes, was released in 2024 from Saint Julian Press. Ars Poetica: Negative Capability will be included in her second book, Bloodstream, forthcoming in 2026 from Mercer University Press. Sarah writes often about place, about familial and environmental loss, and about the perpetual discovery and exploration of roots.
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