Art Museums

Let's go with Larry D. Thomas to visit Art Museums. Here's the docent, shining "the cadenced light / of his learning"; the visitors, who ." . . navigate / the treacherous seas // of permanence," "the pristine yard / between viewer eye / and canvas"; the security guard who can "identify // each canvas by its scent." Thomas takes us to spaces as varied as the MFA in Houston, the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi, the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, all the while calling our attention to the details: "the sibilance / of shuffled / shoes," "the light, deferent / with silence." This is vintage Thomas: spare and lean, no extra words or images, each stanza a tight little block creating a construct that works, on the page, like a small masterpiece hung on the wall of a fine art museum. -Barbara Crooker, author of Radiance, Line Dance, More, and Gold