A new poem, “Cross Bucket Candle Knife,” is up at The Offending Adam. It’s an ekphrastic response to Max Ernst’s Trois Poemes Visibles from his Una Semaine de Bonté: A Surrealist Novel in Collage (1933) and the poem sections align with his collage sections.
It’s part of a triptych of poems. “Caliper Owl Thistle Fork” appeared in Crazyhorse late last year and is in response to Jess’s Ō-blēk, No. 10 (1991). “Color Keyboard Eye Hammer” has yet to find a home, but was the first of these I wrote, a crazy sestina in response to Kandinsky’s Panel for Edwin R. Campbell No. 1 (1914), one of my favorite paintings at MoMA.
Speaking of MoMA, I started a class there last night (it’s been a few years since my last course there) called “The Modern Studio: Rauschenberg, Johns, Cage” taught by Corey D’Augustine who I could listen to for hours in that way the best art history teachers I’ve had in my life captivate me–that ability to weave stories and facts together while examining a movement or period. The class is unique in that it’s part art history, part studio so we’ll be creating work, too–I stretched my first canvas last night! And I was reminded what a treat it is to be back in the galleries after all the visitors have left for the day. I’m a huge fan of Johns, so am excited to examine more of his work.
Two things struck me while we were in the galleries examining some biomorphic pieces, in particular an early piece by Rothko: one, you can see the earliest hint of what was to come with his color fields in a small section of the painting where the pigment is diluted and applied in a wash over other colored layers. It got me thinking how often this is true with writers and artists–that you find seeds and gestures in early work that later grow into the mature work. And two, how my lifelong interest in ekphrasis and pushing it to do new things has led me to the pleasure in cataloging what I think I see in biomorphic works, and what my eye gravitates to in collages, but paring down the language inspired by these works so that it’s driven by sonic play more than sense, if that makes sense.
More musing to come as the course continues this summer.