Coming to That: Poems

Still later, when I was more in touch with
the world, they told me, You have a future.

I thought that over. Even if I believed them,
what did my little future, whatever that was,
have to do with the real thing, whatever that is?

–from Waiting

In this second daring collection, Coming to That, the centenarian painter and poet Dorothea Tanning illuminates our understanding of creativity, the impulse to make, and the longevity of art. Her unique wit and candor radiate through every poem, every line, and her inquisitive mind is everywhere alive and restless. As she writes in one poem, If Art would only talk it would, at last, reveal / itself for what it is, what we all burn to know.