her back

HOW SIMILE WORKS

The drizzle-slicked cobblestone alleys
of some city;
and the brickwork back
of the lumbering Galapagos tortoise
they'd set me astride, at the "petting zoo"....

The taste of our squabble still in my mouth
the next day;
and the brackish puddles sectioning
the street one morning after a storm....

So poetry configures its comparisons.

My wife and I have been arguing; now
I'm telling her a childhood remini- scence,
stroking her back, her naked back that was
the particles in the heart of a star and will be
again, and is hers, and is like nothing
else, and is like the components of everything.

Albert Goldbarth

from To Be Read in 500 Years by Albert Goldbarth.
Copyright © 2009 by Albert Goldbarth.
All rights reserved.

time travel

yesterday turned up additional serendipitous time-travel as well. another alert, this time for 'japonisme,' landed me here. there, i learned of an artist who was new to me: louis anquetin.

so what does one do in such a case? why, a google image search, of course. and that turned me up here. what a wondrous site. (for an even fuller experience, go here.) in addition to introducing me to many wonderful new artists, this site taught me two things: 1.) there really were quite a number of painters at the time who didn't seem to be at all caught into the japonisme frenzy, and 2.) that adding their work to one's knowledge really begins to give a more full feeling for what it was like to be there then. (the site even compares paintings with photographs.)

anquetin was profoundly influenced by the new japanese influx, specializing in what he called 'cloisonnisme,' just another word for 'it,' i think.

others of the new artists i met were ramon casas,

giuseppe de nittisouge,

and federico zandomeneghi.


and yes, i do see diagonals, and blocks of color, and screens.... but what i see beyond these things is that moment, that moment when all of this was taking place, so thrilling, decorative, and profound.






if you go through all the images on the lautrec site, you will see many faces that are decidedly not the sarah bernhardts, nor the jane avrils. they are not necessarily having any fun. their hairdos occasionally look rather odd, as though they were trying the fashion because it was the fashion, and not because it suited them.

in short, in a way, you will see yourself. ordinary people of another time.

(anquetin, anquetin, casas,casas, de nittisouge, zandomeneghi)