Why I am not the Little Dancer of Fourteen Years

To begin with, I am too old.
At fourteen, I suppose I could
have been, but it was too late:

Edgar Degas was already dead,
I had poetry and rock music in my head,
and I wasn’t made of wax or bronze.

In adult years, I found her
nor far from here,
at the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich.

I was close enough to touch
her tutu. I was very much
impressed (Degas was, after all)

an impressionist. And then I discovered
he had sculptured her uncovered –
exhibited nude in Copenhagen –

and there is more than one:
two plasters, forty-nine waxes and ten in bronze,
while there is only, uniquely, me.

Kim M. Russell, 7th April 2025

‘The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years’
(also known as ‘Little Dancer Aged Fourteen)
by Edgar Degas, Sainbury Centre, Norwich

It’s the seventh day of this year’s NaPoWriMo, where today’s daily resource is the Canadian Museum of History, where one can take a virtual tour or enjoy several online exhibitions, including one of Inuit prints from Cape Dorset.

The optional prompt takes us back a couple of days to Frank O’Hara’s poem, in which he explained why he was not a painter, and then brings us back to a poem by Jane Yeh, ‘Why I Am Not a Sculpture’, in which she both “compares herself to a sculpture and uses a series of rather silly and elaborate similes, along with references to dubious historical ‘facts’”. Our challenge is to “write a similar kind of self-portrait poem, in which you explain why you are not a particular piece of art (a symphony, a figurine, a ballet, a sonnet), use at least one outlandish comparison, and a strange (and maybe not actually real) fact.”

16 thoughts on “Why I am not the Little Dancer of Fourteen Years”

  1. Degas couldn’t stop at one—he was a perfectionist ¿mayhaps? And we’re better off indeed to have just one Kim. Your logic is brilliant. I love your poem. Thanks for sharing. Xo, selma

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  4. Yes, I’m glad we have the unique Kim. But this little dancer is very appealing. (Particularly to Degas, it seems.) I like the way the poem moves through various stages of your relationship with her, through Degas himself, to loop back to you.

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