.png)
9 Aug 2025
Craig
Smith
Full
Moon
Jean-Baptiste Rodin
After August Rodin‘s bust
of his father Jean-Baptiste Rodin
(modelled 1860, cast 1980)
I carve your cheek, append your hair,
eradicate at last the whisker
that plagued me from your nostril.
The tips of my fingers shape your lips,
make you as I want you,
strip back the dementia.
Father, I tried to paint you,
to present you as a single plane,
but find it best to sculpt your head
so I can live among you.
Your eyes, though, I abandoned.
I could not find the sense
that was once within.
I work on you when the clay is soft,
when I can change you,
as you worked on me
when my clay was soft,
and set me for my cast.
Behind the poem...
I saw Rodin‘s bust of his father Jean-Baptiste Rodin in the Rodin museum in Paris. Here is a sculptor whose work can leave me astonished – and of all the wonderful things he created, his sculpture of his father was the one I found most moving. I saw it not long after losing my own father, and was touched by the idea of Rodin‘s father first making his son, then his son remaking him. An added layer of personal resonance comes from the fact that this statue enabled me to write a poem about my own father – who looked not unlike Jean-Baptiste Rodin.