Category: art

Soils

Of intentions and nourishment.

Born carried away, of a desire that will neither die nor introduce itself by name to a stranger, it becomes obvious that I am that, too. So taken––from every place and the self, too––I cannot arrive.

At the end of everything, when the flow continues, so does this singular insistence. Bleed.

Hand opens soil to hide these delicate hopes, even at the end and especially then. Flower? Maybe. Of course, they will be trampled, as lives are. And yet. They will live, too. There is no certainty in this, but there it goes, happening.

Another Invitation

To a dear poet.

To inscribe passion, make of it a history, burning with love and regret, holding posture ever toward the mortal crowd at the gates, immersed in time’s noise, still listening, long after Eden, for the miracle, knowing any journey can be a stand-in for all journeys, ever, the constant flight to another life: the dying, recalling; the oblivion, searching.

But what is this moving at the bottom of loss? It won’t be sold another scandal when it’s time to gather signs. I will lose myself and go again.

One day, when the barbed-wire walls are down, I hope you will come and see me in this bird-painted room. We will sit here together, watching the light move with the cat.

Grammar of Mystery

How much in shadow.

To resist the floodlight’s patrolling glare, its demands and agendas, its attendant megaphone, in favor of a posture of listening, a touch whispered enough to elicit shivers of recognition. This earned denial of easy access. The elegant strength, to hold a posture possessed of substance so rich that it will be perennially misunderstood in this landscape, resisting the impulse to break the pose of perfect opacity––to correct, as the saying goes, by shedding some light.

How else could you photograph sound?

Here is the wise light of the dark surface, opening,

in praise of the unknown, unnamed

here is a deft grammar of mystery.

How much to be,

how much to be imagined

in these shadows.

Look, do not look,

but see.

***

Inspired by the work of Roy DeCarava.

Solitary Shining

Starry notes.

Consider the ancient star’s strange courage and this large man, reading. Watch this spirit storm the walls, the transparent body trying to translate its former substance.

Most poets are too late and too soon, with too much of the world to rush forward, pulling back, having nothing but this cry for the occasion, a flash of voice calling keep you to what goes and come to what will not.

***

Opening lines nod to this verse from William Carlos Williams: “It’s a strange courage/ you give me ancient star:/ Shine alone in the sunrise/ toward which you lend no part!” (“El Hombre,” 1917).

Diving in the Desert

Metaphor and unknowns.

The space between fiction and nonfiction is often a no-man’s land, but the artists know it. Which is to say, they have become accustomed to its strangeness. Which is to say, accustomed to not claiming to know anything about a space so wild. 

Now it is dense to the point of opacity, now translucent. Now deep dives under desert waves, now a barren ocean. Now the weather is a cat. 

We asked one, what is your work about? When they were done laughing, they told us. It is about encounters with other people, they said. And water. Also, the search. For water, and for the others. In some places, both are elusive.

***

Inspiration: While considering the work of Ivan Vladislavić,  I came across this article: “Diving the Reef: Water Metaphors in the Work of Ivan Vladislavić” and today’s post sprouted from my notes.

Necessary Work

Art of the possible.

It was a time of redreaming, of finding our way. The old compass was broken. We wanted to learn to make new. It is possible, we reminded one another, to do this.

Where mass death pervades, it contaminates the horizon of the possible. There is a very thin line, in these times, between rebirth and psychosis.

To be reborn in an age of mass death means that you will speak and act in ways not encouraged as you push against the killing, which has its way by silence.

***

These are notes made over a brilliant conversation between Amal Khalaf and Adelita Husni Bey, featured in the most recent issue of  BOMB magazine. One point of particular interest to me involved discussion of the work of Italian anthropologist, Ernesto de Martino. The second paragraph is a paraphrase of de Martino.

Rebirth

The sign of life.

From this cocoon

I will burst one day

a healed woman

to carry the babies

inside a new dream.

We will walk

toward the seven

mountains again,

no longer in terror

of Time.

***

Inspired by Toni Morrison: “One looks to history for the feel of time or its purgative effects; one looks through art for its signs of renewal” (from “The Future of Time” in The Source of Self-Regard).

Survey of Poetry

With cephalopod.

I mean to tell you about the artist whose paintings, according to some, have a brittle, airy alloverness. How insistent they were, melancholy like the memories of a landscape.

I am thinking about the way that every human eye has a blind spot. How the blind spot, instead of appearing as a black dot in the vision field, is conveniently filled by a process of extrapolation, based on visual information at the border regions.

Taking a break from the paintings, I notice someone at the fountain, playing guitar. I would like to tell you about the poetic arc of the neck, leaning over the instrument, the taut curve of intention.

But I am distracted by thoughts of cephalopods. I have recently read about Otto, the six-month-old octopus at the Sea-Star Aquarium in Coburg, Germany, who was caught juggling hermit crabs. Otto was known to rearrange the contents of his tank to, as the aquarium director put it, “make it suit his own taste better.” Otto made international news for short circuiting the aquarium’s electrical system several nights in a row. It turns out he had learned to turn out the light above his tank by squirting water at it. It seems he did not care for the light. 

Octopus have eyes like ours, but no blind spot.  

Each arm has a mind of its own, unobstructed by central control. And now I cannot stop thinking about this looming intelligence of the sea, how when we’re not reminding ourselves to fear its presence, we are replacing it with a cartoon caricature. 

I want to talk about the art of this cephalopod, the poetry of its symphony of intelligent parts in motion. But between this blind spot and the limits of my language, I cannot take it in.

***

Otto’s story is available here (to Telegraph subscribers). I found it in James Bridle’s Ways of Being––Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence.

Aquarian Drip

These dazzling portraits.

When the artist came to visit, we were moved by the shining colors in attendance.

We had questions. One was, how would you describe the world you are building?

There are all these characters, see? Part divine and part human, all in a state of transformation. During each metamorphosis, a being glows these wild colors. It’s magical.

Are these self-portraits?

A lot of them are, partly. Also, part fiction, part archetype.

Can you talk about your materials?

They are loaded. They appear to be surface-level decorations. And yet, the objects themselves emerge from grief. So many people were dying. I was thinking of memorials, how decorative they are. And then I had all these sequins, and was like, I know what to do with those! 

Because people are so much, you know? All these glittering layers, and then when they are gone, you have all this extra sometimes, this overflowing sense of all you see, all you wanted to say, all that they were beyond the simple obit. 

It wasn’t long after I started down this path that I was like, I am going to need a lot more sequins. 

***

Inspired by the work of Devan Shimoyama. The title of this post comes from one of Shimoyama’s paintings.