A Couple of Recents...

"I think I / pretend, mainly to understand my motives,"
            from "Interval," published in Colorado Review, and picked up by Verse Daily, here.

"I think the poem's trying to enter the storm spiral that is trying to think in a historical time period where thinking itself is hastening global crisis." From "The KR Conversations," in July, 2015, Kenyon Review online. Here.

"What is happening
seems mainly about to happen--
a fade into a possible other
sandbox strewn with trucks and full
of buried Superballs (TM)
somewhere deep in in-
or external space."
                               From "What is Happening," in Kenyon Review, July / Aug 2013. Online here.

"everything's quiet but I'm wired / with weirdly woven histories-- / waistcoats, lightning bolts, powdered wigs and IV bags."
                   from "Earl of Rochester," in the July / Aug print issue of Kenyon Review, available here.

"We hoped meaning would arrive. We figured we'd be happy when it came, like the one friend who makes your whole social circle work, when that friend is late for the barbecue and you're all staring at your phones."
                      from "Meaning," in Passages North 36. Available here.


                 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Beautiful Doom: Heizer's "City" and Scott's "Blade Runner"

Image
There’s a striking similarity between Douglas Trumbull and Ridley Scott’s pyramidal design for the “Tyrell Corporation” headquarters in Blade Runner (1982) and the photos I’ve seen of Michael Heizer’s monumental plaza, Complex City , which has been under construction in Garden Valley, Nevada since 1972.  I’ve not seen any evidence that Trumbull & Scott would’ve been influenced by Heizer. I think the resemblance is probably nothing more than some shared archaeological interests. Still, I love the fact of the resemblance, because it really opens up a web of thinking about art and architecture’s relationship to the future. Both works explicitly and implicitly imagine futures, and both works have monumental properties:  they commemorate the present for a viewer in distant time. I want to start by outlining the web of connections, here: Both City  and Tyrell Corporation are obviously pyramid st ructures, and the structures really are similar—it’s as if Heizer’s massive scul
Read more

Layli Long Soldier's "38"

I'm reading Whereas, by Layli Long Soldier, and in the poem "38," linked here , I learned some history about the Dakota 38 and the "Sioux Uprising" of 1862, also known as "The Dakota War of 1862" (as an aside, this is the same historical event involved in the controversy at the Walker Art Center over the sculpture, "Scaffold." Long Soldier's poem was published by Graywolf, out of Minneapolis. It wouldn't surprise me if the poem was part of what catalyzed the Walker's awareness of the issue, but... that's just me speculating). I learned many things in the poem: I learned about the 38 men who were executed. I learned about Lincoln's presidency and the historical record of his presidency. I learned about the commemorative horseback ride each winter, preserving the memory of the events and of the 38 who were executed. And I learned of Andrew Myrick, who was killed in that conflict. When asked about the condition of the
Read more

Michael Heizer Sightings

Image
I recently watched the documentary, Black White & Gray , about Sam Wagstaff, the New York curator, collector, and photographer who was Robert Mapplethorpe’s partner in a variety of ways.  It’s a really compelling study of a complex human being.  It's insightful, vivid and smart, and really honors Wagstaff's life and legacy without oversimplifying it.  It streams on Netflix.  In addition to all the ways that I really enjoyed the film and respect it as an excellent documentary profile, I was delighted and surprised to learn that Wagstaff had represented Michael Heizer during the (short?) phase of his life when he worked and made a splash on the east coast (later, Heizer would say, “I’d been to the east, and didn’t like what I saw.  It looked like it was degenerating.”).   Wagstaff put Heizer’s works in his shows, and set up a famous earthwork exhibition at the Detroit Art Institute, where Heizer was to drag a heavy mass across the lawn, causing the mass to s
Read more