Home | Introduction | Laurie Simmons | Stan Cohen: Poems | Roman Opalka | Archive | Links | Contact | Editions
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
|
Home | Introduction | Laurie Simmons | Stan Cohen: Poems | Roman Opalka | Archive | Links | Contact | Editions
|
|
|||
|
|||||
|
||||||
|
|
Art Poems As a self-diagnosed artaholic (though
others who know me would probably agree), I become mesmerized by things that dazzle my eye and absorb my brain, especially
when both happen. And sometimes, even more when I can talk with the actual person who made that dazzling, absorbing thing
and we can talk about it and its relationship with the world. And then all of these tangents explode so that I have to write
some of my thoughts down, doing so in poetic terms when I can, because the rhythms and beauty of language parallel and intersect
that visual and conceptual framework and because my fingers extend from my brain onto the page, so that the words and lines
take their own form. I’ve
had the privilege and pleasure to work with several wonderful artists to create work together, responding to each other, combining
my words with their images, sharing the process. Glenn Goldberg started the process and did a set of pouchoirs, each with
two elements to accompany my first volume of poetry, which were two columned poems, to be read by two individuals in harmony
or sequence. He designed the cover as well without any markings so that the reader had to explore inside to see what was there.
Gary Stephan French-folded drawings into the book so that his art appeared in and around the text of multicolumned poems.
He played with the text as well and then designed the cover so that the ink would intentionally wear away as people read the
book, so it would have an organic feel. Ed Ruscha then laid a number of wordless drawings in a volume of poems where I tried
to invert that paradigm and create minimalist poems, paring down to a few lines or a few words. I also worked with Robin Bernat
on a series of six prints with her etchings at the top and my poems beneath, printing those ourselves in her studio. I’ve done a series of three line poems that sit in
the place of the typical advertisements that sit on the bottom of wooden rulers or yardsticks. I called those Measured Words
and Twisted Words when I bent the wood into different angles. A totally fun project. I issued them in an edition of 14.28
along with Artist Proofs that were numbered so they had some relationship to pi. I continue to write, though that is often impeded by my real job, finding that crafting a great
sentence or stanza sometimes feels like I’ve inhaled the world and exhaled joy.
GENEVIEVE, YOU STILL OWE
ME A PAINTING
You always used your right hand to push your grayed hair back up and into place, place being important, an identified location whether in your kitchen preparing for fifty guests, or studio-sequestered, or on your careful canvases that graphed India and Egypt, at least the corner you saw, at least what your right hand said you did, noting its place, now growing used to eternity lying at your side. 7 April 2006
GINZER, GATTITO
for Jamie and Kiki The long haired girl poses on a shelf, pale as a ghost stroking her lost cat, their grey noses must be wet if they are some bleeding marble Marys. She presses cat to heart, whispers his name stating her innocence, recognizing his as if he is all innocence, as if she was as well until loss broke the spell and now nothing rhymes.
April 28, 2006 ANOTHER
ARMORY SHOW got Saturdays switched and lost the latest Armory show presenting art I’d want but shouldn’t, consigning dollars to my retirement instead of renting another painting, sculpture, drawing for a single lifetime resting my eyes feeding the family rather be reversed, misreading the date saving shoe leather, though I now mostly wear rubber soles. HAVE YOU ANSWERED ALL YOUR QUESTIONS, SOL LEWITT? First the lines and rules were rigid, a midpoint to somewhere, a calm corner to another where; then they widened, gained heft, as they absorbed a decade, and angled or began an arc, defining shape as if it were form; two dimensions filling three; the edges often enough, capturing air in endless cages; counting sides in an explosion of metered geos, teaching multiplication to aesthetics, subtracting all unnecessary else. Then suddenly letting the lines tangle, weave and waver, insisting the forms soften as if they were Oldenburgs, fighting time to see how other well they can move majestically, how color can become socks and slide on, bold and brightened, or scrubbed into walls; turning never twisting, defining itself until each piece becomes its own catalogue raisonne. 31 May 2005 MASKED MAN The African masks were faked, I know At least now, the patina wrong, The wood still too heavy—the hands That carved them generations younger Than those that fashioned a unique prayer In greener wood that saw real use. Now they are expensive souvenirs masking Whole industries and too simple plots. They hide what I do not wish to. I will dance to well drummed rhythms Without a wooden face, opening My own smile and whole heart In exchange for yours, knowing I get the better part of the deal. Glenn’s drawings poems The curtain is being pulled back or rather, it was, gradually as we arrived, revealing deception and despair, Mother Courage drawing her wagon, the audience attentive, always waiting
Trees are only a veil shadowing the landscape pulling the low sun into earth shielding both from each other parting God’s waters sucking them for sap The open air crowds itself with too empty breath, unless we follow the good, grey Walt singing where the road descends and scrambles round the hills then up the forever steep grade Words sit well on paper while landscapes tie us in convincing us of climate consoling tired eyes of choice
and perspective, promising summer will soon follow fall. THE PROTRAITIST For
Sid Chafetz Eyes intent, moving rapidly, (matching, alternating with the speed of his hands) narrowed into a squint, then down, back behind the angled canvas to replace his sitter’s soft, supple reality with uncompromised image locked into time, ten thousand impressions working amongst themselves, until they are only one—the one that will stare back endlessly perpetuating the argument. May
24, 2003 ONLY TIME FOR TODAY for
Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid Death circumscribes that loop
of life provides its meaning, so this
poem declares, without a question
mark appended, adopting some theosophical bullshit as if a wine must be
drunk simply because the bottle must
empty, and this poem must encompass
all others because its pluperfect truth
is that simple. Nay, the naysayer must say. Life is its own reward; passion
and giving its untimely base, replacing
clocks and calendars with semblances of
love, defined in any hundred ways,
all gathering and gathering, finally
releasing with smiles and similes, as
if, as if having is better than halving--until
it isn’t; as if things possessed don’t
reverse all roles over time, Ozymandius; as if
a single canvas can contain everyone’s
favorite painting; as if elephants should paint rather
than dance and I should bow reverently
to yesterday’s truths while I await tomorrow’s. Corroboration
For Ed Ruscha How we contort words Or couple them to images Vague mists rising from debris, Anecdotes seeking a fulcrum From their inheritance Into airless bell jars, Signifiers cascading from memories, Trying to snag real answers Before they evaporate Are we reconstructing Indians By drawing their vanished tents Remembering they too died in Viet Nam And on the highways to suburbia Or in darkened houses there Feb
26, 1989 THE GALLERIES OF DAVID BRODY Entering quietly and with caution hands handed to each other scapulae touching as much as lips with fresh eyes open in those twenties
respectful, grateful for frames and pedestals to say, "This is Art," with what we ask worth the minutes of your eyes and feet,
the time you ignored the metaphors of paint and light put on canvas to illumine you for the centuries and the nameless gods that have eaten them swaggered fallibly despite years in their bellies Not knowing even the questions the artist asks, but conceivably answers, the words are formed the same way as the world and image before wanting, expecting knowledge to ascend with all the Jesuses that have risen in a hundred flesh tones with silence and awe for place and presence ended as if the antecedents and accomplishments could now be understood combined in meaningful order so that you / we can walk among gods and measure some part of your / their movement. To sanctu sanctorum, beyond artificial walls of this month's exhibition to the vaults of an eternity vanished and held like my own renewed, reviewed under the guise of a painting that restates some fractioned truth in less than monumental passages, but monumental enough to acquire and allow vision of the hidden offices that reverse questions now asked of us such that we pretend our answers may be theirs chronicled and perhaps worth retelling. |
|
|
||
|
||||||
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
||||||
|
|
|
|
|||
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
