November 7, 2022 Poetry In the beginning is the end By Meret Oppenheim Meret Oppenheim, X-Ray of M.O.’s Skull (Röntgenaufnahme des Schädels M.O.), 1964, printed 1981. Hermann and Margrit Rupf Foundation. Kunstmuseum Bern. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art. Born in 1913 in Berlin’s Charlottenburg district to a German Jewish father and a Swiss mother, Meret Oppenheim lived out the initial decades of her life in the shadows of Europe’s two world wars. Yet hope is inherent in her artistic practice, which spans painting, sculpture, works on paper, jewelry design, and poetry. Oppenheim’s work isn’t particularly uplifting, much less cheery; indeed, the language in her poems is often exceedingly dark and piercing. But her inventive verse opens up spaces for transformation—even under circumstances in which any sense of possibility is veiled by cruelty, and is therefore fleeting. Such contradictions come to life, for example, in an untitled poem that opens with the exclamation “Freedom!”: Freedom! Finally! The harpoons fly A rainbow encamps on the streets Undermined only by the distant buzz of giant bees. Read More