Bending Perception

Richard Serra, Blind Spot, Gagosian to December 23

I always enjoy interacting with Richard Serra's work. This latest is by far the most intense and startling. I didn't look at the photos above before confronting the work in the gallery, though the entire time I was wondering how I could get on the gallery roof and look down through the skylights... Let me say at the outset that these Serra pieces are exquisite. They force the viewer to enter into the world of the artist, literally bending one, with actual force, to the shape of the massive steel sculpture. I wondered if it was only me so I paused to observe and everyone--from the smallest to the tallest--leaned in the direction of the bend in the steel immediately upon entering. I felt quite certain that it was simply a shift in visual perception, but even with my eyes closed I felt a kind of force. I have no idea whether steel gives off a particular energy. Of course, so does going below deck on a sail boat, and the result was similar; I was nauseous for several hours after.
 
In fact it was quite by chance that I found the Serra at all, as the show in question is in the Gagosian on 21st, not the one on 24th, the one I make a point of stopping in at whenever I am in Manhattan. And because the way to approach Chelsea now is by walking on the El from 14th Street to 21st (it will go the entire length of the El eventually, but not yet) one encounters a whole other set of galleries there. In fact I had forgotten Gagosian had the gallery on 21st, and forgotten Serra had a show. Over drinks the night before friends had suggested that the current face of Chelsea (3 week shows making things incredibly fluid) was quite forgettable. It was with few expectations that I set off. Fortunately even the most finely tuned eyes can rarely catch all of Chelsea in one day--Serra fans, these two did not venture down to 21st street, but instead took in the Mike Kelley exhibit on 24th. More on Kelley another time, and more on some of the other shows, several of which were extremely memorable.

One final note on the Serra: It occurs to me that these sculptures, like many of his towering works, represent containers, most obviously the prow of ships cutting through all things permeable in a glorious appreciation of material communion...and this may be why I dreamed there was a massive Serra sculpture outside my bedroom window last night, threatening to upend my little patch of terra firma. Despite the obvious danger I was glued to the window with a great sense of delight.

In A Gadda Da Vida

A note from Gary Barwin
Thought you might these two amazing Tuvan appropriations of Western kitch-hits. "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Tuvan band Yat Kha and (see below)  "In a Gadda da Vida," replete with the haunting overtone singing typical of Tuvan throat singing.
Amazing how they have a totally different conception of vocalization. To my Western ears, this sounds like a manically depressed Russian early in the morning, after too much vodka and too little coffee, though I understand how it emerges from an adaption of traditional Tuvan throat singing.
Thanks Gary. 
Everyone is interpreting everything and it is enlarging not shrinking.

Malahat Review, September 2009

Three good things from the issue:

I am not that familiar with Ross Leckie's poems, but I really loved the ones here grouped as "Wetlands of Pure Reason." Very nice. These poems, with titles like "The Brain of a Cauliflower," "Addition and Subtraction and All the Gorgeous Functions" have real energy, directness. They are conversational but ponderous as much as assertive. They make space--literally forcing the reader to turn the journal on its side--and they zoom about the mind, not taxing, but taunting, tempting a little. I like a direct question. I don't need, more emphatically, I don't want everything answered in a poem. Ground me. Direct me. Delight me. I can read. Give me images: "The sunlight like flashcards," and language "coruscations of the liliaceous plants," and yes, those questions "Why are they so afraid of that Arabic zero when they know it so well by heart?" (69). I do understand the "implications of a breeze," and yes, "the cortex remembers." It does. I just found these poems inhabitable, and engaging. Taking me out of the small. 

Susan Gillis' "Spring Storm" surprised me. It starts out with burned toast, moves into a series of serrated snippets of nature "the eddy...frilled like a doily...seethed" a "twig...helpless to go anywhere" the river "lifted by windhooks" and then the speaker, having been herself turned and tossed in these jets and columns of air, realizes that "the gaps among things" have closed. She may be on the other side of things: "blips, leaf-loss." She concludes "When I leave, understand, I will not be gone." Lyric or not, this, to me, is more indicative of the kind of complicated relationship contemporary poetry has (and has to have) to nature (but I'll post more on that in a few days).

Sandra Pettman's "Derrida's Butter Dish" simply pleased me. I don't know the poet, never heard of her before, but thought the poem had terrific energy, and I have a weakness for a good prose poem. They are not, contrary to popular belief, easy to do. The poem isn't particularly flashy in terms of imagery, or language, it is more narratively driven than imagistic or lyrically driven, it isn't overly surreal as many prose poems are, but it does make use of those conventions. At the center of the poem is the butter dish, its opaque utilitarianism symbolizing the difficulty and necessity of the French thinker. Part critique, part desire to make shortbread of him, and sit down to tea. Lovely. Surprising.

Go, go, go!

Quote of the week

Karen Solie describes what an "Anansi Girl" is or has:
  "a certain undefinable quality. In fact, it is impossible to determine simultaneously both the position and velocity of one or another of us with any degree of accuracy or certainty. An Anansi Girl might be the basis for the initial realization of fundamental uncertainties in the ability to measure more than one quantum variable at a time."

Curmudgeons abound, and they do have their charms. "Why aren't we talking about Ondaatje or Milosz..." Maybe we are, Professor, but if you want to simply ignore a whole thread of contemporary poetry, I guess you'll never know that... What am I on about? I am referring to the responses to Flarf in the Toronto Star this week.

I don't think the arrival of one discourse displaces another. I don't see this as an either/or. I think new discourses, such as Flarf, enrich discourse, even if by making one more in love with what one was already in love with. Maybe in love in a more complicated way. Bring it on. Here's how the piece in the Star ends:

Toronto's poet laureate, Dionne Brand, says poets from every period have used the material of the day, from "cave walls to digital walls."

"Whether one mines daily life or physical texts or digital texts, one still has to choose," Brand wrote in an email. "The choices are interesting, or not, and whether they are interesting is what makes the poem."

Roni Horn encore

Roni Horn--I missed this while in NY, but I found this footage and feel a little less disappointed.

Here is part of what I missed...

Watch Roni Horn, Louise Bourgeois / Hauser & Wirth Zurich in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
Not quite the same, but...wanted to see the Blake exhibit at the Morgan and that was worth it. Absolutely. If only for the etching he did for Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which I don't think I have seen anywhere. It's gorgeous.

Oh lord.

A Gary Barwin find.

Part 2, Women of the Avant Garde

Is now up on Poetry Foundation. You heard it here. You have to get it there.

Thanks for the tip, Don.

The Malady of Modernism

It's true, you put stuff out there and you get lovely surprises. Some of them good. This from Kenny Goldsmith:

The Malady of Writing: Modernism You Can Dance To (MP3) In collaboration with MACBA in Barcelona, UbuWeb is pleased to present a podcast accompanying their new exhibition entitled The Malady of Writing, a project imagines a pleasurable, humorous and fun version of modernism. This podcast is based on Mark Klienberg's proposition: "Could there be someone capable of writing a science-fiction thriller based on the intention of presenting an alternative interpretation of modernist art that is readable and appreciated by the wider public?", which has actually been answered affirmatively in a certain undercurrent of artist's audio production over the past century; let's call it an unofficial unofficial history of modernism (doubly unofficial since artist's audio production has been viewed as secondary to the their plastic / marketable production). Artists featured include: Alfred Jarry and Charles Pourny, Erik Satie, George Antheil, Gertrude Stein, Salvador Dal', Allen Ginsberg, Karl Holmqvist, Jack Smith, Karlheinz Stockhausen, The Beatles, The Mothers of Invention, The Beach Boys, Sue Tompkins, Flanagan & Allen, Gilbert & George, Kipper Kids, Laurie Anderson, Karen Finley, Chris Burden, Joseph Beuys, Martin Kippenberger, Miranda July, Seth Price, and Sean Landers.

And you all can subscribe to Goldsmith's podcast via the Poetry Foundation. Amazing stuff. Check out the women of the avant garde. Among the women you will meet is Judy Dunaway who composes musical scores for the balloon. Yes, I mean rubber balloons. Check. It. Out. Surabaya is my fave.