Never a More Generous Man

Never a more generous man have I met than poet and friend, Matthew Rotando. I take great pleasure in singing the praises of his first book of poems, THE COMEBACK’S EXOSKELETON. I wish you could all know him too, as you will find that once you fall in love with this collection, you will long to meet the person who has such zest for life as well as an eye not afraid to behold our evils. It’s really a lovely collection — and I’m not just saying that because I’ve been waiting for years for it to appear. You should throw caution to the wind and take up this EXOSKELETON! Discover how well dresses up your own worldview!

What others are saying:

Incorporating the density of Spanish surrealism and a sprawling Whitmanesque line, this amazing first book finds Rotando engaged in a poetic biathlon which draws equally from maximal and minimal traditions. There are tight, economical poems, free verse forms derived from the sonnet, poems leaping about the page, but my favorites are the wonderful prose poems tumbling over and under themselves toward gnomish statements that feel both didactic and self-parodying. –Tim Peterson, from the Foreword

The rich, exultant writing in Matthew Rotando’s first collection is both comic and cosmic. Lyrics steeped in the Latin American literary tradition disclose what might be called the surreality of reality in contemporary American culture, while cadences of Stein and Barthelme make the prose poems in The Comeback’s Exoskeleton ring with laughter of great philosophical depth. This is a writer unafraid to love and to err, and to do so with irrepressible grace and humour. To read such unapologetically joyous work is a tonic for melancholy and a prescription for wonder. –Srikanth Reddy, Facts for Visitors
And a few short poems from the collection, though there are many longer ones to gleefully sink into:

THE OCTOPUS MAN, TO HIS SON

 

Son, watch the way the eaves bend when you breathe.

They move the way a star would

If you could corral water into spheres.

 

Shadows play in the paint under the floor:

Tentacular spirits!

They will hold your cages and laboratory equipment.

 

Your time as a human is near at hand;

I am repealing all the old regulations

Regarding prostrations and guttural pronouncements.

 

There will be things called Souvenir Shops;

Bring back an “I ♥ Mt. Rushmore” keychain for your mother.

 

~~

 

TOM DEVANEY, LON CHANEY

 

I snave this heaking suspicion

That the poung yoet, Tom Devaney,

Is really the mold oviestar, Lon Chaney.

If lou yisten to the way they laugh,

Or notice their hartling, storror movie eyes,

You’ll sefinitely dee

That they’re both obvious dasters of misguise.

 

 

AMY, I’M GOING TO CALL YOU THE TROUBLE GIRL

 

I like trouble. I like to shoot watermelon seeds at passing barges. I wanna

put Elmer’s Glue in your hair and make it stick straight up. I wanna go

down to the docks and kick some ass! Your shoes small like skunk. And

so do mine. If we were lizards, I bet we would both be geckoes with

sticky round fingers. A friend is someone who decides to find you out.

Let’s have a broken bottle party! A Chinese dude, Shih-Wu, said, “Pine

trees and strange rocks remain unknown to those who look for mind

with mind.” So let’s not bother. Let’s just walk arm in arm through a

crumbling metropolis, clacking castanets.

 

–From THE COMEBACK’S EXOSKELETON by Matthew Rotando

 

 

In the mood for one more? Try this one, complete with a nearly naked pic!

☻☺☻☺☻☺

Dusie, Dusie, Dusie CHAPS!

hands half face. (king)

a bodyfeel lexicon. (gordon/bozek) dimestore operetta say. (bowen) developing poetic ideas. (chirot)
time space repetition. (armentrout) vie et pli. (giovenale) afar buzzing stars. (scappettone)
props of henwifery. (sprague) digress into residency. (berridge)
laced with forethought. (murphy) postcard of the. (tate) I posit no. (fieled)
erratogenic paraparasitic postpoem. (goodland) erotic false consciousness. (ward) first swifts come. (shaeppi)
will be waxing. (art) &lipstick&moss&bodice. (carignan) flamenco pierced her. (tabios)
a citizen I. (snyder) engirth, discorrupt, linger. (workman) correspondence, obscure, reveal. (fletcher)
enhanced ego-interference patterning. (orange) fairly clear the. (boyer) telephone as intermediary. (hunter)
vista of verdancy. (stengel) pale blue twilight. (phipps) (an historical site) magi.
little decisions thrumming. (boykoff) writing records eden. (farr) production of hormones. (marcacci)
our crops far-flung. (sand) going not gone. (hofer) informed by light. (compton)

my embroidery she (abulhassan) ruby large enow. (gardner) composition as process. (hayes) like you tiger-shock. (smith)
distance presence print. (pusateri) certain fields escape. (muench/allegrezza) fragile engines flashing. (detorie)
the great desire. (nakayasu) behold a glimmering. (quimba) splendid drifts of. (kunz)
salt, line, obedience. (cox/cox-farr) eyes glass hands. (lamoureux)
template, some vicissitude. (mauro) little red song-book. (newman) imagistic kinetic dizzy. (stamatakis)
a need for. (behm-steinberg) gaga futurism pales. (cooper) a lavish spectacle. (deming)
him, wings adjacent. (heide) hands half face. (king) presently be said. (stempleman) known as “we”. (nelligan)
underground I go. (graham) adorn honour bright. (mangold) paced awning graces. (klinger)
courting in earnest. (spahr) grew inside we. (madison) a running plotline. (janssen)

AWP New York City

Photo by Brent Cunningham, who voted me the one to “Most Likely Blog About This Blog.”

~~

* Ana and I hung out at the AWP bookfair for one day only. We paid no money, but luckily, I got to share a table with Cannibal, Kitchen Press, and Soft Targets. I saw lots of nice books, though I had no money; moreover, I chatted with lots of pleasant poets — too many to recount. But you should certainly see a few photos of said poets here.

* I’m sorry I missed Daniela Olszewska, who stopped by my table and left her chapbook for me while I was wandering. Thank you, Daniela!

* The always lovely Matthew Zapruder gave me a poetry bus t-shirt.

* William Howe slipped me Tom Orange’s “American Dialectics” hot off his Slack Buddha Press.

* Cannibal Books dropped Dustin Williamson’s “Exhausted Grunts” into my little hands.

* Matt Hart handed over “B^Sides” by his band, Travel. I’m looking forward to hearing what sounds emerge …

* John Deming passed along his Dusie chapbook, “Toadous,” forthcoming.

* Jennifer Bartlett stopped by with a copy of her most gorgeous “Derivative of the Moving Image.”

* Billy Collins came over and offered me his “dirty” candy bar, pictured below, which I accepted. I then offered him my latest book, which he politely accepted. I asked him to please not take it if he was going to give it away. He said he would read it and left. True story.

~~

Not Thinking Alike

“It is not best that we all should think alike, it is differences of opinion that make horse races.”

–Mark Twain

~~

A few new poems written by my non-pseudonym in Jacket Magazine:

* The Arm of Eden
* Where Bullfinches Go to Defy
* Two if by Land, I Do
* A Martyrdom Should Behave Us All

This is an early appearance as Jacket #35 is still under construction though you’ll find a little action there already.

Please enjoy!

~~

4 Responses to “Not Thinking Alike”

Kiss Me With the Mouth of Your Country

 

 

I have just finished sending out my chapbook copies for the DUSIE Chapbook Kollectiv.

The title is this post’s title. I have a few copies left over, so if you’re interested in receiving one – freely and imminently  – I’ll post it to you before the holidays.

My DUSIE chapbook from last year can now be viewed online here, “The Good Campaign“. Read a review of it by Chris Rizzo here or read another review of it by Fionna Doney Simmonds here.

5 Responses to “Kiss Me With the Mouth of Your Country”

How Red Are Your Poppies?

If you aren’t sure, read these new ones:

ARI BANIAS

“who is ghost”
“From Somewhere in the Middle”
“Find Love in Brooklyn Now!”
” If Fear Were the Teacher”

~~

KATE BELES

“Faulkner’s Caddy”
“Count Me In” –
“An Apology for my Father”
“The Signified”

~~

ANA BOZICEVIC-BOWLING

“Voicemail Anthem”
“Oranges”
“Fall Hopscotch”
“The Moment of Love! (a Board Game)”

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SAMPSON STARKWEATHER

“A Review of a Review of Robert Olen Butler’s Severance”
“Prussian Dance Steps are Making a Comeback, Or a Review of a Review of Zoli by Colum McCann”
“A Review of Ms. Pac-Man”

~~

Enjoy!

Amy
MiPOesias Editor in Chief

~~

2 Responses to “How Red Are Your Poppies?”

Pardon My Dust

 Kevin Cornell

And my absence. I’m at work on a number of things, including a tenure application. That means lots of non-blog time; I hope you’ll come back in a few weeks to find me rising from the dust, phoenix-like. Or zombie-ish, if necessary. Either way, there’s a distant blurry plan which will narrow its retina and find something of me in focus.

In the meantime, enjoy some poems I found in a random journal, “whis*key“, as well as a post from Stephen Vincent that is timely and political. Vincent posted this to the Poetics List, where he is a regular poster of merit.

~~

clouds like hatchets & carrot sticks

the clouds today over the sea
look like hatchets & carrot sticks,
mercury poisoning & green tea,
a frothing latte in a red mug
the teeth of a bloodhound,
throwing the i ching, rhapsody
in rebounding sheaves of gold
& glimmer, flesh & fasting
the mercilous pebble bath of
the raging ocean, french wine
marigolds on rye no mustard
the look on yr face when i
explained everything i would
do if you only gave me half
a chance, sleeves, buttons
retreating rings of the moon

–mark s. kuhar

~~

in love with a raving liar

when you fell in love with me
i told you i worked for NASA
designing space shuttle components,
hell, it sounded better than
saying i worked at radio shack.
no, i don’t shop at the friggin’ mall
i go to volunteers of america
whenever i can, cheap 1970s suits
make me look like gabe kaplan on speed,
my idea of a good time is reading
the directions on the back of cereal boxes
but i’ll read them to you, twice if you want
if you’ll stay in love with me
just don’t believe everything i say, in fact
listen carefully, i’m only going to say this once,
i’m a raving liar
i’m a raving liar

–mark s. kuhar

~~

And, as mentioned, from Stephen Vincent:

For urgent reading, go to Sy Hersh’s current New Yorker article on Cheney/Bush and Company’s apparently intractable intention to make ’surgical strikes’ on Iran and Syria.

These folks apparently want to play the Mideast like an old-fashioned juke box. Bing-Bing-Bing.

The consequences of such madness are beyond their concern or
imagination. Unless they are just committed to infinite global mayhem.

Such attacks – apart from being inevitably (more again) self-destructive of whatever remains of this ‘democracy’ – will drive gas prices through the ceiling.

Does one have to wonder much why Chevron just bought back 15 billion dollars worth of its own shares?

Are there any spines left in this ‘roll-over we serve your terror, Mr. Bush,’ Congress?

Stephen V

~~

2 Responses to “Pardon My Dust”

Two From CITIES AND TOWNS

 Ross Von Rosenberg – “I Am The City”

I like these two poems, very much, from Arthur Vogelsang’s book, CITIES AND TOWNS.

~~

NEW STREET

The final light is the last fur and no animals left.
Listen to me as if you’ll be on earth forever.
Some lamps of the rehabilitated enriched neighborhood
Like six approaching mocking bodies in space
Are ochre, white, sorrel, sulphur blue-white,
Imitation suns of the sun letting go of us
In late winter under a big blue steel bridge
Where the warehouses and their repulsive sidewalks
Have been washed and dried as if they fit in a dishwasher.
Would you listen as if I were gone,
A time from now, but gone,
A time from now, but gone,
And you were around, not to pass on my impression
Of the lamps gathering in a darkening space
Like a round-up of suns in a solar-system prairie
Between the bridge and our building,
Not to pass on my impression
As an immortal impression (pitiful desire),
But I think it would not be too like hell
For you to travel alone by foot through the rare light
Under the obnoxious domineering bridge
Between the phonied buildings where the jobs will never come back.
Listen, I don’t know if everything’s an accident,
A continuing explosion in which the myths of eating and love are beside the point.

–Arthur Vogelsang

~~

2215 SPRUCE

On the one hand, the shady side of the house,
The window built of leaves, shifting,
The rooms adequate and cool,
But the other way
The sun in the street flat and finding everyone.
They are very still in it.
A new song about Durango from next door,
They thud when they dance to it,
An American on the tape sings some verses in English,
To tell the moot story,
And sings some verses rawly in Spanish.
People you want in the mega coastal city
To the south and to the north, to be absorbed in them.
The boiling short poems of a student four years ago.
How they do everything better but three hours earlier in L.A.,
Better that the sun is like a wife, and the shade is its husband.
Durango, deep in Mexico.
The appointment rushing near,
The gin and tonics after,
The ache for certain ones never to be known,
Then bed but now the dark to the left the bright to the right.

–Arthur Vogelsang

~~

3 Responses to “Two From CITIES AND TOWNS”

Arrivederci, Tenore Matrice

“I don’t classify myself–I let other do that. If you sing all the roles put in front of you, you are a tenor [as compared to a lyrice tenor or a light lyric tenor]. Punto [period.] If you are also an actor, or a good driver of your voice, if you have personality and a stage presence, personality in life, you become something more than a tenor, more than just a voice.” –Luciano Pavarotti

“People think I m disciplined. It is not discipline. It is devotion. There is a great difference.” –Luciano Pavarotti

“I’ve been buying the same lambrusco from Correggio [a town between Reggio-Emilia and Modena] since 1965.” –Luciano Pavarotti

Luciano Pavarotti (October 12, 1935 – September 6, 2007)

5 Responses to “Arrivederci, Tenore Matrice”

Marie Osmond Does Hugo Ball?

How strange would it be if our Mormon pop icon started reciting, by heart, a German Dadaist’s ‘nonsense’ verse?

“Marie Osmond became co-host with Jack Palance. In the format of the show, little topic clusters (like ‘weird language’) were introduced by one of the hosts. In this case, the frame was Cabaret Voltaire. Marie was required to read Hugo Ball’s sound poem ‘Karawane’ and a few script lines. Much to everybody’s astonishment, when they started filming she abruptly looked away from the cue cards directly into the camera and recited, by memory, ‘Karawane.’ It blew everybody away …” (con’t at UBU Web).

Listen to the actual recitation, done with feeling, here. (Thanks to Lara Glenum for the heads up.)

~~

“Hugo Ball was born in Pirmasens, Germany and was raised in a Catholic family. He studied sociology and philosophy at the universities of Munich and Heidelberg (1906–1907). In 1910, he moved to Berlin in order to become an actor and collaborated with Max Reinhardt. He was one of the leading Dada artists. He created the Dada Manifesto in 1916, making a political statement about his views on the terrible state of society and acknowledging his dislike for philosophies in the past claiming to possess the ultimate Truth. The same year as the Manifesto, in 1916, Ball wrote his poem ‘Karawane,’ which is a German poem consisting of nonsensical words. The meaning however resides in its meaninglessness, reflecting the chief principle behind Dadaism.” — from Wikipedia

~~

“[Marie Osmond] has launched a personal crusade to clean up the Internet after learning her two teenage daughters have been posting explicit correspondence on their MySpace.com websites. She felt compelled to give a statement to US tabloid National Enquirer after the publication uncovered outrageous content on her daughters blogs. In her statement, shocked Marie, a devout Mormon, says, ‘I am saddened by some of the choices that two of our children have made. The insidious potential for harm from adolescent Internet sites like MySpace.com only exacerbates these kinds of problems.’” –from Wikipedia

The stuff of a surprise Hugo Ball aficionado?

~~~

One Response to “Marie Osmond Does Hugo Ball?”

Quick Learn

At dinner last night with a brilliant poet, we shuffled through the encyclopedia of poets between us. I noted the brilliance of Anne Boyer; she noted the recent “Good Apocalypse”; I revisited today. Yes, for you, two below from Anne Boyer’s “Good Apocalypse” and vital parting advice: if you don’t know, you don’t know. So go. Yo.

~~

~~

I LOVE LITERATURE

I was attacking Culture.
I have seen her and she is so big and so beautiful.

Pulling a thirty-six-inch strip out of Language
and eating it,
she has given me an opportunity

to pattern gothic specialties, small farmers, and starfish
out of the reddish-brown essence that implies a native land.

Outlines of legacy are a minimal-production glass creature.
I worry it’s too much like voice and structure.

What’s better is when we can eat our fermented hurt

and someone gives a seminar on Kathy Acker’s
regional, agricultural, and mining sectors.

I am not free to be mad.

When I smell Archer Daniels Midland
it is as if an oligarchy has dived into the wreck.

Yes, I love Literature
but what I love about it is
the reproductive organs of Capital.

~~

TRAVAIL MECHANIQUE

Bunnies occupy the same
semantic field as question-begging.

KEEP MOUTH SHUT.

Ours is no vigorous religion–
packages from Acme piled up under the stairs.

The problem of distribution:
How do you want to die?

Not in the course of self-examination,
but in the loop

of the public discourse:

shaking the razor,
shaking the shipping container:

serving the cause
of the common error.

–Anne Boyer’s Good Apocalypse

~~

9 Responses to “Quick Learn”

Hodge-podge

Going back to Barcelona, I will one day. Soon. For the moment, this window of pop fun will make me do.

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I thought Nico Case sent this link my way, but it was Nico Vassilakis for all you Vispo people out there.

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Visit the new Asian-Amerian issue of MiPO guest edited by Nick Carbo yet?

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My first day out, yesterday, after yet another visit to the doc’s, Sara and I went to see the Kiki Smith show at the Whitney (one and a half thumbs up), along with the Picasso side-by-side show, including work by Jasper Johns, Pollock, de Kooning, Lichtenstein, etc — not sure who came up with this comparative-influence theme, but it was fun to play along — and ran into Lee Ranaldo, who was there early to set up for a show he was doing. He’s quite the accessible and friendly guy – except when he heard I am midway through my antibiotics regimen, he took two steps back. All in all, a good first day back on my feet.

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Looking for “Self Portrait” poem recommendations (please provide actual copy or a link) — putting together lesson plans for courses. Gah.

HISTORY

Tomaz Salamun is a monster.
Tomaz Salamun is a sphere
rushing through the air.
He lies down in twilight, he swims in twilight.
People and I, we both look at him amazed,
we wish him well, maybe he is a comet.
Maybe he is punishment from the gods,
the boundary stone of the world.
Maybe he is such a speck in the universe
that he will give energy to the planet
when oil, steel, and food run short.
He might only be a hump, his head
should be taken off like a spider’s.
But something would then suck up
Tomaz Salamun, possibly the head.
Possibly he should be pressed between
glass, his photo should be taken.
He should be put in formaldehyde, so children
would look at him as they do at fetuses,
protei, and mermaids.
Next year, he’ll probably be in Hawaii
or in Ljubljana. Doorkeepers will scalp
tickets. People walk barefoot
to the university there. The waves can be
a hundred feet high. The city is fantastic,
shot through with people on the make,
the wind is mild.
But in Ljubljana people say: look!
This is Tomaz Salamun, he went to the store
with his wife Marushka to buy some milk.
He will drink it and this is history.

Tomaz Salamun
[Translated by Bob Perelman and Tomaz Salamun]

______________

From a fun collection of interviews, How To Make A Life As A Poet (Soft Skull Press) by Gary Mex Glazner, a metaphor by Kim Addonizio:

I think of it as the difference between an infatuation or a romance and a love affair. The people that are having a romance with writing just want to think of themselves as writers. Their romance is, “Whatever I write is my expression and it is perfect and no one may tread on it.”

But the real interest of writing is the love affair, just like with people. It’s great to have a fling with somebody, but the real interesting thing is when you start to go deeply into love and discover who the other person is. When you hit your own walls and limitations.

That is the same thing with writing, ultimately you come up against so much in yourself when you go deeply into your writing. You are trying to articulate something in your writing. You are trying to articulate something in your writing, year after year, and that is where I think the rewards are as a writer.

The process is endless, this process of psychic excavation. At the same time you are learning about language, learning what other people have done, discovering what you can and can’t do, getting past your own limits as a writer. That for me is the interesing aspect, the real love affair that engages you on every level. That makes you deal with your shit. Writing makes you deal with your shit if you are serious about it. That is where writing gets interesting for me.

–from How To Make A Life As A Poet

______________

Am reading excerpts from a recent gift (thank you, Michael!) of Joseph Cornell’s Theater of the Mind: Selected Diaries, Letters, and Files. Some little blips for you:

HYACINTH – its pungency that once filled the whole lower floor this year the kitchen mainly, & now towards the end of its tenure gratitude to Mother for such a tradition of beauty as she gave us especially now “of flowers” — quince & forsythia about to bloom after a “day” getting out early before this special feeling passes — and the phenomenon of its never heavy but put down in spite of collage (Vale of Hyacinths), Proust, etc.

—

however, that swing again to opposites–almost two hours up and zest to carry on after stalemate of sleep, gloomy prognostication in phantasmagoria again but not aggressive–prior nights water dreams children generally was the real inspiration first Saturday morning–three pieces in communion with the young helpers

—

down the cellar starts again the nebulous nature of the influence of Surrealism the nature of it so that someone like Jacques Maritain can come to grips with it, react to it logically affirmatively–

exposure to Surrealism’s philosophy relative to, concern with, the “objet”–a kind of happy marriage with my life-long preoccupation with things. Especially with regard to the past, a futile reminiscence of the Mill notion that everything old is good & valuable –mystical sense of the past –empathy for antiques –nostalgia for old books, period documents, prints, photographs, etc.

–from Joseph Cornell’s Theater of the Mind: Selected Diaries, Letters, and Files

8 Responses to “Hodge-podge”

Dear DADA

Excerpt from Logically Consistent Poetry by Kurt Schwitters, 1924:

Classical poetry depended on the similarity of human beings. It regarded the association of ideas as unequivocal. It was wrong. In any case, it was based on associations of ideas: ‘Uber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh’ (On the hill-tops all is tranquil.’). Here Goethe is not simply trying to tell us that it is quiet on the hill-tops. The reader is expected to experience this ‘tranquillity’ in the same way as the poet, tired by his official duties, escaping from the urban social round. How little such associations of ideas are universal becomes clear if one imagines a native of the Hedjaz (average population-density, two people per square kilometer) reading such a line. He would certainly be noticeably more impressed by ‘Lightning darts zag the Underground runs over the skyscraper’. In any case, the statement ‘all is tranquil’ produces no poetic feeling in him, because to him tranquillity is normal. Poetic feeling is what the poet counts on. And what is a poetic feeling? All the poetry of ‘tranquillity’ stands and falls by the capacity of the reader to feel. Words in themselves have no value here. Apart from a quite insignificant rhythm in the cadence, there is only the rhyme linking ‘Ruh’ with ‘du’ in the next line. The only unifying link between the constituent parts of a classical poem is the association of ideas — in other words, poetic feeling. Classical poetry as a whole appears to us today in the guise of Dadaist philosophy, and the less Dadaist the original intention, the crazier the result. Classical poetic form is nowadays only used by variety singers.

____________________

ANNA BLUME

O beloved of my twenty-seven senses, I
love your! – you ye you your, I your, you my.
–We?
This belongs (by the way) elsewhere.
Who are you, uncounted female? You are
–are you? People say you are, –let
them say on, they don’t know a hawk from a handsaw.
You wear your hat uon your feet and walk round
on your hands, upon your hands you walk.
Halloo, your red dress, sawn up in white pleats.
Red I love Anna Blume, red I love your! — You
ye you your, I your, you my. –We?
This belongs (by the way) in icy fire.
Red bloom, red Anna Blume, what do people say?
Prize question: 1.) Anna Blume has a bird.
2.) Anna Blume is red.
3.) What colour is the bird?
Blue is the color of your yellow hair.
Red is the cooing of your green bird.
You simple girl in a simple dress, you dear
green beast, I love your! You ye you your,
I your, you my. — We?
This belongs (by the way) in the chest of fires.
Anna Blume! Anna, a-n-n-a, I trickle your
name. Your name drips like softest tallow.
Do you know, Anna, do you know already?
You can also be read from behind, and you, you
the loveliest of all, are from behind, as you are from
before: “a-n-n-a”.
Tallow trickles caressingly down my back.
Anna Blume, you trickle beast, I love your!

–Kurt Schwitters

8 Responses to “Dear DADA”

Evolutions

“The female is as it were a deformed male.” –Aristotle

“Distinguished women . . . are as exceptional as any monstrosity . . . for example a gorilla with two heads.” –Le Bon (1879)

“It was certainly an odd monster that one made up by reading the historians first and the poets afterwards–[woman as] a worm winged like an eagle; the spirit of life and beauty in a kitchen chopping up suet.” –Virginia Woolf (1929)

“Wouldn’t the worst be, isn’t the worst, in truth, that women aren’t castrated, that they have only to stop listening to the Sirens (for the Sirens were men) for history to change its meaning? You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she’s not deadly. She’s beautiful and she’s laughing.” –Hélène Cixous (1976)

“Being called a poetess brings out the terroristress in me.” — Audre Lorde

“Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine.” — Patti Smith
____________________

Leoff: You have referred to the heaviness of transparency in the United States.

Annette Messager: As I have said, everything must be exposed, everything must be said. This is not the case in France, although it is becoming more that way. In France artists still have a private life. In the States I feel a distinct form of exhibitionism …

…

Leoff: You are often referred to as the hysteric, the femme fatale, the witch or sorceress, the “cruel Annette” who is shameless and goes beyond the limits of decency …

Messager: I remember the reaction I got when I said “Je pense donc je suce” (I think therefore I give head). People said, “Annette Messager has gone mad.” It is outrageous that the very same people who criticized this wordplay are those who turn on the television and are not shocked by the amount of violence there is in the world or the fact that teenagers are spray-painting “Fuck my mother” all over the place.

I think it is very different to exist as a woman artist than as a male artist in France. Things are automatically stuck, grafted onto the woman because it is still not completely accepted to be a woman artist. We are always looking at her life, linking her work to her life. In late-nineteenth-century medical photography there was an expression, “women-clichés,” referring to hysterics whose skin was so sensitive that it was possible to inscribe words or drawings on it. Often the nurses would brand the patient’s back with the name of the doctor. These women found themselves doubly marked: by the illness and by the institution.

A woman artist’s work is looked at through her cultural position and everything becomes mixed up. This is why I am particularly touched by Eva Hesse’s biography. I identify with her completely. She is the best example of this link between Minimalism and Surrealism. She exposes her intimate life, her difficulty with living and her work and her body. All this is interwoven, formally and personally.

…

Messager: I was not used to having my studio separate from my living quarters. As a result I retained nothing from that experience except the visual effects of the city itself. I find the light in New York very beautiful. New York is a nightmare and a paradise, the absolute image of what a city should be, magical. Everything is broken and modern at the same time, as if it were two cities in one.

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Regarding what impedes my art work, I feel that because there are more and more wars, diseases, broken homes, that everything in the world today is totally pathetic and vulnerable, I am no longer able to make a series of works. I have always worked in bits and pieces, ripping, cutting, and pasting, but today I can no longer consider working in series and this is a dramatic change for me.

Vulnerability is so much greater in the world than in any art work that it is impossible today to create anything that is more obscene than reality. Bosnia, Algeria … Algeria is our culture, there is not the same Islamic presence in the States as in Europe. It is the new ideology.

Leoff: Violence?

Messager: Violence is more direct in the US, linked to madness or acting out. Here there is another form of violence, more covert, linked to religion.

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Leoff: Love?

Messager: It is still one of the most essential things in life. It can be found in making little dresses for stuffed birds, or in a garden of tenderness like I have done (”Le jardin du tendre,” 1988), mixing writing, photography and real spaces. There are all kinds of acts of love.

–from an interview with Annette Messager, Journal of Contemporary Art, Inc. (1995)

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More on Messager’s “making up stories” found here. The photographed piece above is by Messager.

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“Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.” — Stella Adler

“If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.” — Isadora Duncan

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Old Hat Basquiat?

Is it cliché to be a Basquiat fan these days? I don’t hear or see many younger writers noting his work or citing him as an artist they admire. Was he too hip? More legend than artist? Or merely a “graffiti maker” (which he denied vehemently)? Was his style too uneven or messy? Correct me, please. I’d love to know his fan base …

This morning, I’m digging the book I bought myself for Christmas, though it has received mixed reviews as being too similar to the catalog preceding it. I haven’t seen the earlier one, so I couldn’t care less. The essays within are worthwhile, and I’m happy not to have to trek out in this cold & wind to the Brooklyn Museum to re-visit many of his paintings and drawings.

Basquiat led a life of highs and lows; here’s a brief bio & an elaborate one with excellent assorted video clips of the man himself. And hmmm…

For your winter day amusement, an excerpt on the artist’s mechanics from Marc Mayer’s essay, “Basquiat in History”:

…When Basquiat provides his paintings with his inescapable, chattering ground of drawing, as he does in a great number of works, he promotes the traditional role of the preparatory sketch from a preliminary exercise of ratiocination to the ultimate manifestation. His increasing practice of gluing large, single drawings to canvas, moreover, as opposed to building up a ground from smaller drawings, emphasizes his position in this regard.

If we remember how Synthetic Cubist collage attempted to blur the boundaries between art and the world, by reframing actual tokens of modern life into wistful, abstract compositions, we see Basquiat instead preferring to create a hermetically closed system with his analogous procedure. He papers over all other voices but his own, hallucinating total control of his proprietary information as if he were the author of all he transcribed, every diagram, every formula, every cartoon character–even affixing the copyright symbol to countless artifacts of nature and civilization to stress the point–without making any allowances for the real-life look of the world outside his authorized universe. In “correcting” Cubist collage, Basquiat appears to have found the fly in the ointment of modern art, which had set it on its ineluctable death trip: art means never giving reality a chance to speak for itself.

–from Basquiat (Merrill Publishers: 2005)

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Revisiting Chan (Shôn)

Either this video for “Living Proof” is a transparent attempt to garner attention or it’s one slick & clever commentary on the order of the day via “cross country” play. Chan Marshall runs in latex red carrying a Jesus ornament, against her opponents, who appear to be spin-offs of Muslim women. Who will win? Choose your own speed, and watch here.

Last night in my poetry class, a student read the first four or five pages of “Objects” from Tender Buttons aloud, which was, for many of them, their first encounter with Ms. Gertrude Stein. Another woman started crying & giggling in the middle of the reading and remarked many times over, “I don’t know why this is making me cry!” She was confused by her own reception of the work, but not averse to it. I’ve never seen a student react so strongly & openly to poetry before. Something akin to the Stendhal Syndrome anyone? Though not so haunting…

I Have Stolen

this collage painting from Jane Hammond, who created it for a series she completed called, “The John Ashbery Collaboration.” He supplied her with titles; she painted. In fact, I just ordered the book of reproductions from Amazon for the amazingly low price of 2.99. I’ll believe it when it actually arrives in my mailbox.

Anyway, I bring Ashbery into the equation today because I am the recent benefactor of the latest New Yorker, which contains a lengthy profile of John Ashbery. I will post a note on my reading experience with said article in a day or two. I am looking forward to reading it. You should know: I am a ten-year-plus Ashbery fan-o-rama. More on that profile soon.

In the meantime, please enjoy “Something Like Sex a Week Ago Lingers.”