Author Archives: dbv

night fishing in antibes

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night fishing in antibes
“—Was it you I saw this afternoon? a little while ago?

—Me? Why? Where?

—Were you there, where they’re showing Picasso’s new . . .

—Night Fishing in Antibes, yes, yes . . .

—Why didn’t you speak to us?

—Speak to who? You? Were you there?

—I was there, with a friend. You could have spoken to us, Wyatt, you didn’t have to pretend that . . . I was out with someone who . . .

—Who? I didn’t see them, I didn’t see you, I mean.

—You looked right at us. I’d already said, There’s my husband, we were near the door and you were bobbing . . .

—Listen . . .

—You went right past us going out.

—Look, I didn’t see you. Listen, that painting, I was looking at the painting. Do you see what this was like, Esther? seeing it?

—I saw it.

—Yes but, when I saw it, it was one of those moments of reality, of near-recognition of reality. I’d been . . . I’ve been worn out in this piece of work, and when I finished it I was free, free all of a sudden out in the world. In the street everything was unfamiliar, everything and everyone I saw was unreal, I felt like I was going to lose my balance out there, this feeling was getting all knotted up inside me and I went in there just to stop for a minute. And then I saw this thing. When I saw it all of a sudden everything was freed into one recognition, really freed into reality that we never see, you never see it. You don’t see it in paintings because most of the time you can’t see beyond a painting. Most paintings, the instant you see them they become familiar, and then it’s too late. Listen, do you see what I mean?

—As Don said about Picasso . . . she commenced.

—That’s why people can’t keep looking at Picasso and expect to get anything out of his paintings, and people, no wonder so many people laugh at him. You can’t see them any time, just any time, because you can’t see freely very often, hardly ever, maybe seven times in a life.

—I wish, she said, —I wish . . .”

(Gaddis, The Recognitions, pp. 91–92.)

curated poetry systems

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Ubu has posted the Giorno Poetry System recordings. A capricious selection – all links are to MP3s:

William Carlos Williams:

  • “The Yellow Flower” (1954)

    • Edwin Denby:

  • “The Shoulder”/”The Subway”/”Over Manhattan Island”/”Disorder, mental, strikes me”/”Suppose there’s a cranky woman inside me” (1974)

    • Frank O’Hara:

  • “To the Film Industry in Crisis” (with Jane Freilicher & John Gruen, 1959)
  • “Ode to Joy”/”To Hell with It” (1963)
  • “Poem”/”Poem” (1963)
  • “Adieu Norman, Bonjour to Joan and Jean Paul” (1964)
  • “Having a Coke with You” (1965)

    • John Ashbery

  • “A Blessing in Disguise” (1966)
  • from “Litany” (1980?)

    • Kenneth Koch:

  • “Spring” (1966)

    • Joe Brainard:

  • from I Remember (1970)
  • from More I Remember More (1974)

    • Ron Padgett:

  • “June 17, 1942” (1974)
  • “No Title” (1978)
  • “Zzzzzz” (1980?)

    • Ted Berrigan:

  • from “Memorial Day” (1974)
  • “Today in Ann Arbor” (1970)

    • Charles Olson:

  • “Maximus of Gloucester (‘Only My Written Word’)” (1967)
  • “The Ridge” (1967)
  • “Letter 27: Maximus to Gloucester” (1967)

    • Ishmael Reed:

  • “Sky Diving” (1977)

    • John Cage:

  • “Mushroom Haiku” (1969)
  • excerpt from Silence (1969)
  • Mureau” (1975)
  • “Writing for the Second Time through Finnegans Wake“ (1976?)
  • “Song, Derived from the Journal of Henry David Thoreau” (1976)
  • “Five Stories in the Style of Indeterminacy“ (1979)

    • Claes Oldenburg:

  • “June Was”/”Panodramdra” (1976)

    • Emmett Williams:

  • “Duet” (1968)

    • Jackson Mac Low:

  • “Guru, Guru, Gate” (1976)

    • economics of art

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    “It was in the early 1950s that Picasso’s earning power and wealth became fabulous to this degree. The decisions which so radically affected his status were taken by men who had nothing to do with Picasso. The American government passed a law which allowed income tax relief to any citizen giving a work of art to an American museum: the relief was immediate, but the work of art did not have to go to the museum until the owner’s death. The purpose of this measure was to encourage the import of European works of art. (There is still the residue of the magical belief that to own art confirms power.) In England the law was changed – in order to discourage the export of art – so that it became possible to pay death duties with works of art instead of money. Both pieces of legislation increased prices in salerooms throughout the art work.”

    (John Berger, The Success and Failure of Picasso (1965), p. 4)

    the passion of duchamp

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    Marcel Duchamp retirant

    Marcel Duchamp retirant, à la requête des cubistes, son Nu descendant un Escalier du Salon des Indépendants.

    Marcel Duchamp, Gabrielle et Francis Picabia

    Marcel Duchamp, Gabrielle et Francis Picabia, Guillaume Apollinaire assistant au théâtre Antoine à une représentation d’Impressions d’Afrique de Raymond Roussel.

    (both images from La vie illustrée de Marcel Duchamp, avec 12 dessins d’André Raffray, written by Jennifer Gough-Cooper & Jacques Caumont, published by the Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou in 1977.)

    the state of things, 1955

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    “—No I, it’s just, listen, criticism? It’s the most important art now, it’s the one we need most now. Criticism is the art we need most today. But not, don’t you see? not the ‘if I’d done it myself . . .’ Yes, a, a disciplined nostalgia, disciplined recognitions but not, no, listen, what is the favor? Why did you come here?”

    (Gaddis, The Recognitions, p. 335)

    marina

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    Quis hic locus, quae regio, quae mundi plaga? 

    What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands
    What water lapping the bow
    And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog
    What images return
    O my daughter.

         Those who sharpen the tooth of the dog, meaning
    Death
    Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird, meaning
    Death
    Those who sit in the sty of contentment, meaning
    Death
    Those who suffer the ecstasy of the animals, meaning
    Death

         Are become insubstantial, reduced by a wind,
    A breath of pine, and the woodsong fog
    By this grace dissolved in place
         What is this face, less clear and clearer
    The pulse in the arm, less strong and stronger—
    Given or lent? more distant than stars and nearer than the eye

         Whispers and small laughter between leaves and hurrying feet 
    Under sleep, where all the waters meet. 

         Bowsprit cracked with ice and paint cracked with heat.
    I made this, I have forgotten
    And remember.
    The rigging weak and the canvas rotten
    Between one June and another September.
    Made this unknowing, half conscious, unknown, my own.
    The garboard strake leaks, the seams need caulking.
    This form, this face, this life
    Living to live in a world of time beyond me; let me
    Resign my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken,
    The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships.

         What seas what shores what granite islands towards my timbers
    And woodthrush calling through the fog
    My daughter.

    (T. S. Eliot, 1930)