anapoetics

"reality withdrew"

Andre Durain, "Bridge Over the Riou" (1906) (detail)

"[A]s Michael Fried put it many years ago, sometime after the turn of the 20th century 'reality withdrew from the power of painting to represent it.'" (Kenneth Baker)

And bowing – with a Mighty look –

At me – The Sea withdrew –

(Emily Dickinson)

"never misses color"

From Kenneth Baker's "Galleries" column in the Chronicle Saturday:  "The rich, camera-fed drawings of Bay Area painter Richard Ambrose at Hespe remind us how little work an automatic medium - photography - may actually spare an artist who relies on it."

Richard Ambrose, "Fiesta" (2009)

Similarly, little work is spared the poet who draws on visual art, nor do we notice the absence of color in the poems that result.  The mind supplies it.

"postponing recognition of imagery"

In his column this week, San Francisco Chronicle art critic Kenneth Baker notes a growth in the work of visual artist Grace Munakata, one that has "manifested in a shift of weight from anecdotal content to formal intensity and surprise."  Her painting, "Sleeper," "snags the eye in a tangle of colored marks and shapes, postponing recognition of imagery":

Grace Munakata, "Sleeper" (2010) (detail)

The painting offers "a shakeout of images guided by a title, in place of her earlier work's more legible layering of pattern and anecdote.  What an improvement." 

This kind of praise echoes the present fashion in poetry, at least in some circles.

"a storied subject to mobilize his own expert craftsmanship"

In his "Galleries" column this week, Kenneth Baker says he admires this painting by David Fertig "for the near rhyming of its rough yet articulate formal touch and the blurred focus of its content and intent." David Fertig, "HMS Bounty," 2011 (Theibaud Gallery) (detail)

To me it's a spoonful of flowers about to drop over the edge of Niagara Falls.

"not as undercrafted but as overthought"

From art critic Kenneth Baker's latest gallery review in the Chronicle:

"There is really no single poem," [Jack] Spicer wrote to a fellow poet. "Poems should echo and re-echo against each other ... They cannot live alone any more than we can ... A poem is never to be judged by itself alone. A poem is never by itself alone."

On the evidence of her exhibition, Quaytman might gladly see "a painting" substituted for "a poem" in these statements.

"discerning the untranslatable"

The January 2011 issue of Poetry features a collection of essays by writers, artists and scientists "on their experience of poetry."  From the essay by Madeleine Avirov:

Anne Carson said that “the poet is someone who feasts at the same table as other people. But at a certain point he feels a lack. He is provoked by a perception of absence within what others regard as a full and satisfactory present.” I am a painter, but this same lack drives me out into the morning dark.

Avirov, “A Mind of Winter,” 2010, Oil on canvas; 48 x 48 in.

My copy of the January issue arrived in the mail last week while I was on vacation for the holidays. It was such a luxury, and indulgence, to be able to sit down with the issue for a whole morning instead of in bits and pieces between the rest of life which is how it normally goes.  I read all the poems and the six essays in one sitting, which I think is a first, and as a result engaged with the work on a deeper, less distracted level.  If only that were my usual experience.

The print issue included not only a color reproduction of Avirov's painting above, but also two full-color visual poems by Joel Lipman. This was a welcome surprise when turning those pages. Among the non-visual poems, I particularly liked "This Landscape Before Me" and "Galah's Skull" by Sarah Holland-Batt, who is an Australian poet. 

"camera movement to impressionistic effect"

Kenneth Baker had an article on Carmel galleries in Sunday's Chronicle.  It mentions photographer William Neill, whose work currently on display at the Weston Gallery "uses camera movement to impressionistic effect."  It's hard to believe this one is a photograph:

William Neill, "Aspen Impressions #2," June Lake Loop Inyo National Forest, California, 2008 (Weston Gallery)

Here's another beauty:

William Neill, "Poppy Blowing," Ahwahnee, California, 2006 (Weston Gallery)

"the cusp of description and abstraction"

This week in his Saturday "Galleries" column, San Francisco Chronicle art critic Kenneth Baker reviews a show by an artist named Alex Kanevsky at a gallery called Dolby Chadwick: "Only occasionally, as in the masterly 'Irish Cow' (2010), does Kanevsky keep marks [on the canvas] perfectly poised on the cusp of description and abstraction."  Baker's comments on visual art are often thought-provoking for students of poetry as well.   

"Irish Cow" (2010), oil on canvas by Alex Kanevsky, at Dolby Chadwick Gallery, San Francisco (detail)