Monday, July 20, 2015

John Ashbury, "And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name"

You can’t say it that way any more.   
Bothered about beauty you have to   
Come out into the open, into a clearing,
And rest. Certainly whatever funny happens to you
Is OK. To demand more than this would be strange
Of you, you who have so many lovers,   
People who look up to you and are willing   
To do things for you, but you think
It’s not right, that if they really knew you . . .
So much for self-analysis. Now,
About what to put in your poem-painting:   
Flowers are always nice, particularly delphinium.   
Names of boys you once knew and their sleds,   
Skyrockets are good—do they still exist?
There are a lot of other things of the same quality   
As those I’ve mentioned. Now one must
Find a few important words, and a lot of low-keyed,
Dull-sounding ones. She approached me
About buying her desk. Suddenly the street was   
Bananas and the clangor of Japanese instruments.   
Humdrum testaments were scattered around. His head
Locked into mine. We were a seesaw. Something   
Ought to be written about how this affects   
You when you write poetry:
The extreme austerity of an almost empty mind
Colliding with the lush, Rousseau-like foliage of its desire to communicate   
Something between breaths, if only for the sake   
Of others and their desire to understand you and desert you
For other centers of communication, so that understanding
May begin, and in doing so be undone.



(I haven't posted a poem here in a long time)

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Theodor Adorno, "Bibliographical Musings"

"Altogether, we are forced to acknowledge that books are ashamed of still being books and not cartoons or neon-lighted display windows, that they want to erase the traces of craftsmanship in their production in the hope of not looking anachronistic, of keeping up with an age which they secretly fear no longer has time for them."

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Shots: a series


Shirley Jaffe

The Door (2002)

Untitled (1985)

Untitled

Untitled (1993)

Untitled #17


Horizontal Black (2015)

Monday, July 13, 2015

Looks


Sunday, July 12, 2015

Bitch it might be


Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Everyone is polite, but I'm always suspicious.



A confession: for years I avoided and even derided Keith Haring's work because of, I don't know, a Swatch collaboration? Because of a photo of him hanging out with Andy Warhol? It was foolish, to say the least, but what are young people if not foolish? Anyway, the Keith Haring Foundation has scanned all of his journals from 1971-1989 and have been steadily making them public. I have a soft spot for journals - Susan Sontag's and Leonard Michaels' are among some of my favorites. As someone who has had a journal since the age of six and is at times embarrassed by this, I have always felt comforted learning that someone else has kept one.

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Albums and album covers I've been thinking about lately


(my essence)






© CLUB SANDWICH
Maira Gall