Maria Mitsotaki

About this artwork

I am a literature teacher at The New School and at NYU and publish academic articles as Margaret Boe Birns, but I show as an artist under the name Meg Boe Birns. I have always though I had a Literature Self and an Art Self, and the slight difference in name expresses that. MyArt Self, is however, often inspired by literature--writers such as Willa Cather, Stevie Smith, WH. Auden, T. S. Eliot, Rainer Maria Rilke, Marina Tsvetaeva. This paint pen on picture, is my imagined reincarnation of Maria Mitsotaki, a character who appears to James Merrill in seances in his poem “The Changing Light at Sandover." The Yes and No words refer to a Ouija Board that summoned her spirit.