Commended: Diane Callahan for ‘What is Missing?’

See a list of all the winners and commended artists here.

Diane is a white woman with long light brown hair. She is writing in a book - she is holding a pencil

We are extending a warm welcome this week to Diane Callahan who tells she has lived almost all her dream jobs as a fiction editor, writing teacher, art gallery advocate, and cat wrangler. On her YouTube channel, Quotidian Writer, she provides practical tips for aspiring authors. Her debut poetry collection,The Ship and the Storm, was just released

Diane is another poet who was keen to write about the artist, designer and architect, Maya Lin. She tells us a bit about her interest in Lin under the poem below.

What is Missing?

For Maya Lin

Our rewilding is not near.
It calls from the too far-
future
like the mournful wail of the common loon.
And how can we chase it
if not through seeing
what will no longer be there
soon?
Through turning away from
a study of water
to becoming
students of water—
this is the floodplain of Ohio. How does a river
overflow its banks? A shift in the stream;
the traces left behind. We learn
the vulnerability of ice, the topography
of greed. How does a wave
begin and end?
Her tributaries run
with the blood of artists, poets,
architects
beneath
the stars we can no longer see at night. We will
miss the genesis seed of
our extinction.
Call it by some other name
before we recognize it as our own.
What is missing: abundance,
the light reflected in two cupped handfuls of
glass marbles, like opening a box of water,
our collective memory of the Scioto madtom,
the Hawaiian honeyeaters.
We are designing
our final memorial. But
remember, we are water—
we can overflow.

ABOUT THE POEM

I first encountered Maya Lin’s work at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art. I had been on vacation on Assateague Island National Seashore, following the wild horses as they grazed in the marsh and wandered along the beaches. That connection to nature was echoed in Lin’s work on view—What Is Missing?—which acts as a memorial to the environment. What species and places will disappear in our lifetimes if we don’t protect them?

The exhibition also featured Lin’s piece A Study of Water, with these captivating green-blue marbles spreading into the shape of the Chesapeake and Delaware Bay. It felt like looking at the world from a God’s-eye view, and that omniscience reminded me of how we are only a small part of this grand ecosystem.

After that visit, I read more about Maya Lin’s life and was surprised to discover she was from my home state of Ohio and even had a piece at a place I’d visited dozens of times: right outside the Wexner Center for the Arts on Ohio State’s main campus. That installation piece, Groundswell, evokes dry gardens and Ohio’s burial mounds. Lin has also designed a number of memorials, including the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. (at the age of twenty-one!); the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama; and the Women’s Table at Yale University.

Several lines in my tribute poem were inspired by Lin’s interviews and lectures about her work. Her careful research and attention to the natural world shines through in every piece. As an artist and designer, Maya Lin presents powerful reminders of the precious beauty that we risk losing forever if we don’t open our eyes to what is missing.

Women of Ohio