stalk

stalk

wind i see as vibrant—

shake               there

is that series from harrow

on down to bottom page

something that grasps—I

don’t know—

relaying—

rowing

Winter ivy

Ivy growing over a graffiti on the wall bordering the Segre in Lleida. Happy Holidays!

Old bridge, Besalú, Catalonia

This bridge in Besalú dates from the twelfth century.

Celebrating late

Celebrating late

But can one celebrate a missed

opportunity, chance, buy it drinks,

smile and say one day maybe,

one day? Yon side of the door’s

a knock, inevitably a teller, one

not always bringing news the listener

will reward with lunch and shout hooray at.

Walking

Walking

Then up the Passeig de Sant Joan recalling

summer trips up the coast, those great long

walks. Small wave words that can’t be really

surfed, decorative grasses in planters. You

can’t just wander around aimlessly. Don’t

you know their names? We walk in—there they are.

I’m going to tell you about Barcelona’s metro.

piece (surfing)

piece (surfing)

0

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i spun

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dragging the kelp the salt

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                                   across the sun              space trash the

day                  challenge the fish in the water               change

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                                                                       (w)here my spindle

5 or 6 questions for green

5 or 6 questions for green

Woodland. What faces or if not

where can surds enter the

picture. Eleven numbers scrub

clearly in childhood & adult.

Phrase or seal or cell homeward

though perhaps not to each in

the very same instant or question.

Drawing glass

Drawing glass

Is it my fault that the florist put

this broad leaf in the bouquet

foreshortened now in the rectangular

vase on the dining room table.

The faucet—a clock.

Strict contraband—

backscatter.

Viladrau--oak leaves, pine neeedles, moss, twigs

Viladrau, lichen and moss

Woolf Exhibition

            Woolf Exhibition again… Again because I already noted in September that “Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision,” the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London concludes on October 28, 2014.

If you can see it, I’d highly recommend it (as I did in September). Frances Spalding’s exhibition catalogue is well worth getting your hands on as well (not to mention your eyes). Everything about the show receives high marks. Remember also that the National Portrait Gallery website includes a recording of Frances Spalding talking through parts of the display.

            “Painting and writing have much to tell each other.” Worth repeating a number of times, I think. Happy viewing!

jalapeño

jalapeño

jalapeño start—justice joke jostle and joy on

the one hand hotel hoard hate on the other

hit don’t fit yet if everything is related how

can a single thing be out                       out

where?             jit doesn’t yet vit or fit in this

or fit or vit in that                     there’s sum

of it in these titles jalapeños

experimental july

experimental july

in our effluent life oh

the film           would we dance

she said all the money saved from not drinking

if it were ever like that

morse carpentry structures

time the flexed finger

diphthongs                 doodah

decision

decision

grain(y) dash

underline

lightout then

what nought thought

image

on such point

of connect

connacht there

might be orange

blue horse ~ say

there might not

collage

collage

leaf outlines                grids

“weeks in the nervy town”                yolk flown thread

unwashed plates—sing

gainst

gainst

upriver again the summer trees—

my clumsy saw slips

gainst the bark of the hollyhock tree

a certain wobble (far side, near,

veering farther)                      then

intricate green

Virginia Woolf exhibition, London

Woolf Exhibition

            And then there is “Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision,” the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London, curated by Frances Spalding. The exhibition catalogue had already been gifted us by a friend, but because of the dates for our London trip, we wouldn’t receive it till we returned home. So the show’s careful planning, the choices made for it, were discovered firsthand, except for some comments by previous viewers which we discovered beforehand, online and off.

            The conscientious organization of the material is welcome given the very full life it attempts to put on display. Then—more than life it is a question of lives, a question of visions plural. For Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell (both nées Stephen) were the prime movers of the Bloomsbury Group of artists, so that any reference to them quickly generates views of their extensive circles. Born in 1882, Woolf’s is one of those remarkable lives that link the Victorian age with the Modernist. Think postmodernist is also modernist—the Bloomsbury group of artists is also postmodernistic.

            In terms of poetry, in terms of vision, “Painting and writing have much to tell each other,” Virginia Woolf tells painting and writing. It isn’t exactly that such a connection was previously unknown. But I think the realist aspects of her fiction grow out of ideas like this. Art and science have much to tell each other, she might easily have said, given the highly allusive nature of her texts. Her references are like those I wrote about here in regard to Julio Cortázar’s “The lines of the hand” (5 March 2014). For that matter, Cortázar’s fellow Argentine Jorge Luis Borges translated Woolf’s Orlando into Spanish. The growing Woolfian palimpsest.

“Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision” shows the chronological development of Woolf’s art, her life, her vision, as they first touch those hazy lines between modernism/postmodernism. The National Portrait Gallery website includes a recording of Frances Spalding talking through parts of it—well worth the time, oh yes.

Summer notes

Brixton notes

            At the end of July, beginning of August, Montse and I took a week’s break in London, renting a small room in Brixton, wandering around by bus, by tube, on foot, together in the excitement of the August crowds—new impressions of London after the Olympics—a London filling up with new architectural wonders.

            Brixton’s high degree of multi-ethnicity brings with it a rhythm, a kind of rocking beat that’s passed along, a feeling you can’t miss, I’d say. Browsing in an old Everyman’s Library edition of John Stow’s The Survey of London told me that Lambeth, the borough where Brixton is located, was previously known as Lambhithe, or Lambith. Hythe, hyth and other variations are Old English words for haven or landing place.

Brixton isn’t indexed in Stow’s Survey, although the earlier name Brixtane has existed since as early as the eleventh century. Elizabethan Stow may have omitted it because the oldest building in Brixton dates to 1812 (info in the Urban 75 Guide, online at http://www.urban75.org/brixton/history/history.html). The district’s recently opened Black Cultural Archives, re-exploring Black British history, is an attractive new democratic space on Windrush Square, a couple of minutes’ walk from Brixton underground station (architectural info online at http://www.gum.uk.com/portfolio/history-centres/black-cultural-archives-brixton).

So that is one particular hyth we found, helped along by the fair weather—sunny days and cool nights, with lots of culinary delights. “Wherof,” if I may be so bold as to copy Stow, “in another place shall be spoken.”

             

Drawing, plant leaves

work in progress.

Porch railings

Porch railings

            The cool weather has made it an ideal time for scraping and sanding the pinewood railings that frame two sides of the porch in Torrefarrera. I’d stripped and re-varnished these close to ten years ago. Now, working the wood again is like meeting up with an old friend. The interior faces were in good shape the first time and still are, except for the occasional blister. Longleaf pine (called melis in these parts) is very resinous, with straight grains. As you work the rails the tarry odor of the pine has its effect. You lose yourself in the feel of the wood under the blade of the scraper, then under the sandpaper, and again under the dustcloth. I wear a wet tea towel folded like a bandana over my nose and mouth to keep from breathing in the dust.

            If the weather had been hotter I might have hesitated to start this job. I don’t know. Why do we choose given moments for anything? What is the context that chooses us or causes us to choose? In any case there really is a wu mind state involved in hand scraping and sanding old wood. I think you become methodical and see your task in sections, in portions.

            Now my next portion is to apply the varnish—when the weather forecast gives us two or three days without rain.

ñ

Mobile (2)

Mobile

o

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no-word

                           

                                                                                     sun glitter

                                                                 

flat blue sea

                                                                                             

orange light

                   white                    sea    

mobile

o

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hill

                           

blood

                                                                                     sweet

                                                                           late

                                                                                              dealt

                            orange

                   iron            

Cézanne and Mont Blanc

Cézanne and Mont Blanc

Mont Blanc is a pyramid, cube, sphere....

each some form of paper, some kite—

a graphite fragment on pastel paper at noon,

hand moving before the word forms—

Paint has moved them out of fissured

rock—color bursts in the air,

freeing the statue, freeing the frame.

(revised from lines done in 2006)

Autumn lines

Autumn lines 

In the autumn pond, plane tree leaves

form a brown, green, molding quilt.

Quick skate bugs, instrumenting off

key the mean at some distance,

Keats’s quotation marks.

On the flat varnished surface

cats paws pull up, echoed off

the coast, wailing skyward--

means bug out, sure indented

water again, reflected sky.

(First versions 2 September 2006. Revised 6 May 20014, a rainy autumnal day)

Pale shore

Pale shore

Computer burning brightly

into drafting table avalanche.

Great clutter up! Tubes of paint, erasers, staplers!

Enter pens ink-pots sketches.

Outside, the street walks by,

roughing in vague cones and spheres,

straightening the screen as you’d straighten a slide show.

In block

In block

The orange block’s between

some stacked white blocks,

under the burgundy block on

some white blocks.

The burgundy block’s on

some white blocks,

above the orange block

between some stacked white blocks.

oceanic

oceanic

on the river i felt free & easy

songbird calls             i stood listening for some time

now                            today i watch gulls circling plaça

onward summer trips to platja

she got that pineapple

streetcorner flute in shirtsleeves of ragged wrist

no no es muy cómodo para trabajar y es muy bonito

Tunnelfish turndoor

Whew lookin tunnelfish turndoor

trace myeye long snapshot

does the while angle

grow allay and

then whoa

hearin

tastes

tou

ch

white on white

white on white

mostly small divisions

tusk then snow exit to clarinet

stillness egret in shallows

sliced green onion’s lightly pungent

the moon’s lithograph

paper split-ended thread against silver

the loud noise ice rain

device hatchet cloud sun delight

hopscotch chalk furs down cod

deep white shore froth to exit

green array incised like

bright cut silver light

off white dray tun

(various drafts since 2009; here as 13-line sonnet)

eyeball spring

eyeball spring

Shakespeare’s coinage           the ball that holds

a bright moon                         I in ego quip

bright flood                            flight brood

the season’s martins               scour

the courtyard’s chilly air        sclera

cornea                                     vein