American Arts Quarterly has published my sonnet “Sculpture.” Please click on the link below the poem at the AAQ site to see a website on Judith Scott’s work. Click into the section labeled “Judith’s Artwork”, which includes two minutes from a documentary film about the artist. Below is another very interesting video. Thanks to Meredeth Bergmann for taking the poem.
on the painting by Soutine
Cerét rolls over on a bed of flame
exposing an inflamed intestine turning
in upon itself. The garden’s burning
and the mill sags fallow on its frame.
Upheaval. Earthquake. A volcanic flow.
The bleeding mansard roof beguiles the plaster.
Permanent mementos of disaster
crack the lacquered surface high and low.
And on the yellow hill a gangling devil
relishes the foliating sky.
Impasto gray and blue surmount the wall,
a broken window taken for an eye.
A wheel unwinds. The leaning block and bevel
slide to the consoling balm of fall.
Museum of Modern Art
New York City
Painting by Frank Auerbach
I think the people who would be the least interested in my work would be people who read lots of comic books.–Harvey Pekar
I recognize this guy
who went to your schools but flopped
at your cocktails. Nobody dropped
his name and you reply,
“He only learned to type”.
All right. But isn’t life
preponderantly rife
with typing? A guttersnipe
in your book, and a lout
in mine with angsty moves
on paper napkins and the grooves
of jazz establishing a route
to penscratch narratives
and all he has to show.
Respect. Because you never know.
All studies are comparative.
Be it Known that Broadside Four of The Flea, a journal compiled by Paul Stephens, formerly of Leeds and Harrogate, late of The Strand and presently engaged in sundry Enterprises in the Colonies, has been brought forthe. Therein, yours truly presenteth “Sticking Point.” But stop not until you Reade entries by Rose Kelleher, Timothy Murphy and other Actors exemplary of our Irish Problem.
John J. Trause reads from Lewis Carroll’s “You are Old, Father William” (Alice in Wonderland, Chapter V) for Poetry at Tasty Coco on Tuesday.
An epic poem on the life of Chaim Soutine, available from Dos Madres Press and Amazon.com.
My new collection , Coelacanth, is now available from Dos Madres Press and Amazon.
Waiting for Cassowary 