The Poetry and Art Vaca

Martin Johnson Heade The Great Swamp

Richard Mayhew, Rhapsody

I met another old friend yesterday. We hit the de Young Museum where my head was blown to messy crumbs and back. SUCH a fabulous, eclectic collection. They have the traditional work that I expect to see in an art museum – Hudson River School folk, pottery and masks from pre-Columbian cultures and I think I breezed through a hall with stiff Victorian Era portraiture.

The dull stuff often shared space with similar, related but far more contemporary work. E.g., there was a room with grizzly 17th century hunting still lifes. In the middle of it all was Beth Lipman’s black wood and blown glass sculpture. The dead hares and pheasants, hanging in blunt contrast to Lipman’s stark, bleak, black hole-ish tableau gave me the stone willies. I felt like announcing to the gallery director “I’m already a vegetarian. HONEST!”

The thing I like most about the Hudson River gang is that their canvases glow – lit from within by an invisible halogen bulb and shit. Similar is Richard Mayhew’s Rhapsody only in a semi/demi abstracted way. It’s like looking at a luminescent landscape while more than a bit tipsy, with my glasses off. I think I got a happy contact high just standing near it.

The de Young’s got some very cool glass sculpture like William Morris’ visceral and sorta creepy Idolo, Chihuly’s hilarious Rover's Garden Grows and Karen LaMonte’s ghostly Dress.

There’s a deeply affecting installation – Anti Mass by Cornelia Parker. (image below) I didn’t need to read all about it to get the horror and tragedy vibe. Like all really good art, it spoke for itself. Then I read the description card – it’s made of charred wood from an arsonist destroyed church in Alabama. Wow, just mindbendingly WOW.

They’ve got one of Nick Cave’s Soundsuits which, even though silent and stationary, told a deep story. It was magnificent.

I got to see Thornton Dial’s Lost Cows and one of Ronald Lockett’s mesmerizing pieces.

I just can't rave enough about the museum's collection. As I wandered the halls and galleries I kept thinking Jen would LOVE this! I gotta bring Jen here! Yup, it's on the list.

Poetry as Insurgent Art [I am signaling you through the flames]

I am signaling you through the flames.

The North Pole is not where it used to be.

Manifest Destiny is no longer manifest.

Civilization self-destructs.

Nemesis is knocking at the door.

What are poets for, in such an age?
What is the use of poetry?

The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it.

If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic times, even if this meaning sounds apocalyptic.

You are Whitman, you are Poe, you are Mark Twain, you are Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay, you are Neruda and Mayakovsky and Pasolini, you are an American or a non-American, you can conquer the conquerors with words....
~ Ferlinghetti

Cornelia Parker

Ronald Lockett

Thornton Dial

Nick Cave