Michael Montlack

Stein on Bishop
first place, 2005 poetry contest

One could not deny that for her, being was expressing and being in the motion of being, and that to be in any other state of being, or motion, was to be unnaturally expressing denial of one’s natural being. Some said of her, when those some spoke of her rarely spoken-about life in motion, that it was her rarely spoken-about life and its motion that set the motion of her art and its being into its natural and necessary—so necessarily so—motion. Others, like her, said little of the rarely spoken and little spoken of motion of her life, saying more of the art itself, itself saying so much more, more than what any others could say or deny or deny saying. Some said and say and will say of her that she was necessarily in motion in her words and her movement through words struggling to express struggle through the motions of her life always always moving and expressing moving.

Some will say little of this motion.

Others will say nothing or something.

Though certainly all will be moved.

Moved by the motion that was her being, her expressing, her moving—the motion being what it was, what it is, what it will be to be moving and to move being.

And that being Bishop is all.