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  Home>Stories>Poet Teri Ellen Cross Davis Responds to a Sculpture by Alexander Calder
      

      
      Search Art in Focus Poet Teri Ellen Cross Davis Responds to a Sculpture by Alexander Calder min read
 As part of our “Poetry is a country” festival we invited celebrated American poets to compose something new inspired by art in our collection. Teri Ellen Cross Davis responds to Alexander Calder’s mobile Little Spider.
 This free-standing sculpture is made up of a sweeping, backward-facing C shape supporting a series of ten curving, interlocking, thin wires that cascade down and to our left in this photograph, each one ending in a flat, leaf-like paddle on either end. The C-shaped arm forks into three feet, on which the sculpture sits so the other branches float freely. The S-shaped arms are linked by tiny rings at the center of each arm, and they descend in size as they arc down and to our left. Each S-shaped arm has a black, roughly triangular paddle at the top; the third paddle from our right has a hole in it. The paddles at the bottom of each arm are each a different color, with ruby red to our right, then marigold orange, pine green, honey yellow, and the final four to our left are white. The size of the paddles also descend in size from our right to left. The branch connecting the S-shaped branches to the C-shaped base is curvier, and has one black paddle, the largest of all, at the bottom point.
      
        
        
            
         	  Alexander Calder, Little Spider, c. 1940, sheet metal, wire, and paint, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Klaus G. Perls, 1996.120.18
 On Little Spider by Alexander Calder Teri Ellen Cross Davis
 Whisper said Movement to the Spider. Casting off light, propelling into color’s true power. Heaving, thinking: Spider grows: awaiting Itself:  its pointed intuition: its gnawing hunger fuels fruition. Heaven is heavier in cognition. Belief:  a tri-prong stand. A web— a glistening intention.  A web— a glistening intention. Belief:  a tri-prong stand. In cognition heaven is heavier, fueling fruition— itself— its pointed intuition. A gnawing hunger heaves into thinking: Spider grows: waiting casting off light, propelling into color’s true power. Whisper says Movement to the Spider.
 Please note: We have tried to preserve the formatting of poems, but some devices may distort how text appears. Read the poem in its original formatting here.
 Explore new creations by some of America’s most important living poets.
						
						
							Read more
 Teri Ellen Cross Davis Poetry coordinator of the Folger Shakespeare Library
 August 28, 2023








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