Sorry Nature

2011-11-20T16:04:00.000-08:00

13" x 10," gouache, pen and glitter on paper.

2011-10-06T15:29:00.000-07:00

9" x12, ink, gouache and glitter on paper.

2011-08-30T21:32:00.001-07:00

>

Come hear

As The Crow Flies

6 pm Friday Sept. 2
at Studio One Art Center
as part of "Bites Off Broadway."
365 45th St., Oakland

2011-07-11T17:14:00.000-07:00

16" x 20" gouache and pen on wood.

2011-03-05T17:30:00.000-08:00

20" x 16," gouache and pen on canvas.

2011-02-01T13:45:00.000-08:00

14" x 11" gouache and pen on paper.

2010-12-21T17:26:00.000-08:00

For the Winter Solstice. Pen and pencil on paper. 8.5 x 11." The palindromic text reads: "in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni."

Also check out new poems at the newly-reborn Caliban:

www.calibanonline.com.

My poems are on pp. 40 and 41 but there is a lot of other good work in the issue. Also, check my comments in the notes at the end of the magazine regarding nature.

2010-07-15T17:54:00.000-07:00

detail:

16" x 20" gouache and pen on wood. "everything is nothing is everything"

2010-05-28T19:26:00.000-07:00

8" x 10," gouache and pen on paper.

2010-04-19T16:58:00.000-07:00

20" x 16" gouache, pen and pencil on canvas. Photo is not wonderful, but you get the idea.

2010-01-29T13:30:00.000-08:00

8" x10" pen and gouache on paper.

2010-01-07T14:13:00.000-08:00

20" x 20" gouache and pen on canvas.

2010-01-04T14:23:00.000-08:00

20" x 20" gouache and pen on canvas. Goodbye to the last decade. Best wishes for a happy new year.

2009-11-22T18:22:00.000-08:00

Gouache and Pen on Paper. 9" x 12."

2009-09-15T17:06:00.000-07:00

20" x 20" gouache and pen on canvas.

2009-08-14T15:58:00.000-07:00

14" x 18" Gouache and pen on canvas.

2009-08-06T16:19:00.000-07:00

12" x 12" gouache and ink on canvas.

And check out my poem at

Alice Blue

2009-06-17T16:52:00.000-07:00

Plastic Age diptych. Gouache and pen on wood. 20" x16," 20" x 16."

detail

detail

2009-06-08T13:44:00.000-07:00

12" x 15" gouache and pen on paper.

2009-06-03T12:42:00.000-07:00

"A self, every moment it exists, is in a process of becoming."
Søren Kierkegaard

11" x 14" Pen and gouache on paper.

11" x 14" Pen and gouache on paper.

2009-04-12T11:22:00.000-07:00

14" x 11" Gouache and ink on paper.

2009-04-07T16:23:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who came to the opening at Lanesplitter.

After Magritte. 11" x 14," gouache and pen on paper.

2009-03-07T11:47:00.000-08:00

17 PAINTINGS, some old some new, up now at

LANESPLITTER
4799 Telegraph Ave., Oakland, CA

RECEPTION MARCH 23RD, 7-10 PM

Statement for the show:

Brian Strang lives in East Oakland and teaches English composition at San Francisco State University and Merritt College. He is the author of INCRETION (Sputyen Duyvil) and MACHINATIONS (a free Duration ebook) and several chapbooks. His poems, reviews, essays and translations have appeared in many journals including New American Writing, Five Fingers Review, The Denver Quarterly and Ur-Vox. Recently, his poetry appeared in translation in the Portuguese journal DiVersos.

His paintings represent “an attempt to be guided visually and artistically by the imagination’s interaction with natural forms and nature itself: the perilous context, the most permeating materiality, the system of interrelated forces so complex, so enormous and so minute, so internal and external, that it extends far beyond the limitations of imagination and is, therefore, marvelous. Poetry is encoded within the forms of the world, within Whitman’s “spear of summer grass”—one only has to look closely to see it.”

This is his third solo show.

“Strang’s work... suggests a more romantic pleasure in and response to visual phenomena. [It] betrays a rhythmic sensibility not unlike that found in a sketch by Matisse.”
Garrett Caples
SF Bay Guardian 6/13/07

2009-02-16T15:42:00.000-08:00

NEW SHOW UP AT LANESPLITTER BEGINNING NEXT WEEK!

Lanesplitter is a wonderful and hip pizza place (with good beer) at 4799 Telegraph in Oakland. This is actually the March show, but will be up beginning Feb 21st, and there will be a reception on March 23rd.

2009-02-05T19:29:00.000-08:00

(detail)

(detail)

Sierra Triptych, Gouache and pen on paper, 11" x 14".

2009-01-23T11:20:00.000-08:00

Less than a week left to see the show at Canessa. It ends on the 29th. Check it out if you haven't already:

Canessa Gallery
708 Montgomery (@Columbus)
SF, CA

M-F, 10-4

B.

2009-01-05T11:43:00.000-08:00

A warm thank you to all who attended the opening! And to the musicians for filling the space with mysterious sounds!

The exhibit runs through 1/29. Stop by and check it out if you haven't yet.

Canessa Gallery
M-F, 10-4
708 Montgomery (at Columbus)

2008-12-18T14:08:00.000-08:00

Gouache and pen on canvas (detail).

Sorry Nature
Current Poem/Paintings by Brian Strang

Jan. 4th through 29th

OPENING RECEPTION
Sunday January 4th
3pm-6pm

Canessa Gallery
708 Montgomery (@ Columbus)
San Francisco, CA 94111

2008-12-02T15:41:00.000-08:00

Sorry Nature
Current Poem/Paintings by Brian Strang

Jan. 4th through 29th

OPENING RECEPTION
Sunday January 4th
3pm-6pm

Canessa Park Gallery
708 Montgomery (@ Columbus)
San Francisco, CA 94111

2008-11-21T16:58:00.000-08:00

Tune in to the CANESSA READING 11/16/08:

CLICK HERE TO VISIT ARCHIVE AND LISTEN

Also, check out new poems from WORK magazine. Click

HERE

2008-11-08T11:17:00.000-08:00

11" x 14" gouache and ink on paper.

READING ANNOUNCEMENT:

Dear Fellow Poets & Followers of Poetry:

On Sunday, November 16th at 3PM we will have a
gathering poets--two of whom are also wonderful painters.

Come join us at Canessa Gallery at 708 Montgomery Street
X street Columbus to hear:

Brian Strang
Valerie Witte
&
Brian Lucas

Seasonal fruit and snacky type things will be provided. Beverages too.
A modest $2-3 donation generously accepted.
Questions: write Tiff at: tiff_dressen@yahoo

BRIAN STRANG lives in Oakland and teaches English composition at San Francisco State University and Merritt College. He is the author of Incretion (Spuyten Duyvil) and machinations (a free Duration ebook) and several chapbooks, including recently Human-Sized and Inhabitants, a chapbook of poem/drawings. Both are from Peter Ganick's small-chapbook-project. Recent poem/paintings can be seen at his website, Sorry Nature and at Deep Oakland. His poems, reviews, essays and translations have appeared in many journals including New American Writing, The Denver Quarterly and Ur-Vox. Recently, his work appeared in translation in the Portuguese journal DiVersos.
In January, Canessa will feature the second solo show of his poem paintings.

VALERIE WITTE received her MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco. Her work has appeared in Faultline, Switchback, the Southwestern Review, and elsewhere. She spends her daytime hours editing computer books in Berkeley.

BRIAN LUCAS, back from six years in Bangkok, Thailand now lives on the island of Alameda. He is the author of Light House (2006 from Meeting Eyes Bindery/Spuyten Duyvil, 2006), and has recently completed a manuscript called Circles Matter. He has been collaborating with Andrew Joron, and together they have created a chapbook entitled Force Fields (forthcoming from Hooke Press) which features a poem from Joron and drawings from Lucas. His work has been published in such magazines as Sulfur, Conjunctions, Hambone, Talisman, Beard of Bees, Gut Cult, and Galatea Resurrects. He paints more often than he writes, and co-edits 2ND MYND with Brian Strang!

2008-10-09T19:48:00.000-07:00

Pen and gouache on paper, 14" x 11."

Another show coming in January at Canessa Park. Stay tuned for details.

2008-10-02T09:52:00.001-07:00

Click HERE to read DISRUPTION by Jorge Melícias (traslated from Portuguese by Brian Strang and Elisa Brasil).

A beautiful and disturbingly vivid work up now at Duration Press.

Jorge Melícias was born in 1970. He is the author of the following books: THOSE WHO LIGHT THE ROOFS (1996-1998), forthcoming; INITIATION TO REMORSE (2004, Cosmorama); THE LIGHT IN THE LUNGS (2000, Quasi); THE CIRCUMSCRIBED KING (2003, Quasi); INCUBUS (2004, Quasi); THE LONG BLASPHEMY (2006, Objecto Cardiaco). He has translated, among others, Baudelaire, Lautrémont, Saint-John Perse, António Gamoneda and Leopoldo Maria Panero. His poems have been translated into various languages, Spanish, English and Serbo-Croatian, and have been published in various reviews. He is a co-editor of Cosmorama.

I used Wordle to create the collage above from my preface.

2008-09-11T17:32:00.000-07:00

Gouache and pen on canvas, 16" x 20."

2008-08-15T17:31:00.000-07:00

20" x 20," Gouache and pen on canvas.

20" x 20," Gouache and pen on canvas.

2008-08-12T15:34:00.000-07:00

I'm now on Deep Oakland:

Deep Oakland

2008-08-03T11:20:00.000-07:00

Gouache and ink on paper, 11 x 14.

2008-07-31T15:57:00.000-07:00

INCRETION, 71 pp. of poetry and prose, is now available at Small Press Distribution!

Click HERE to purchase from SPD.

"Brian Strang's INCRETION is a probe into the genuine state of things, seeking definition and measure amidst the blood-and-circus reversals of regime, market, vestigial culture. Where the first world hits the last wish--this is the challenged territory he would have us know, and face."

--George Albon

2008-07-01T13:38:00.000-07:00

14" x 11," gouache and ink on paper.

2008-06-20T17:54:00.000-07:00

Three new ones for summer. All are 8" x 11," gouache and pen on paper.

2008-06-17T11:23:00.000-07:00

Summer offering to Ra. Gouache and pen on canvas, 12" x 36."

2008-05-30T12:47:00.000-07:00

Gouache and pen on paper. 9 x 11".

2008-05-30T11:19:00.000-07:00

Another image from INHABITANTS, a 38-page fine art chapbook of black and white drawings, available now for $12 from small chapbook project-2, a series devoted to fine art c-books. Order from small chapbook project-2, 45 Ravenwood Road, CT 06107-1539. Email Peter Ganick (pganickz AT gmail.com ) to receive the backlist [$8 each] or other new scp-2 cbooks.

2008-05-30T11:13:00.000-07:00

Gouache and pen on paper, 11 x 14".

2008-05-20T15:00:00.000-07:00

More images from INHABITANTS, a 38-page fine art chapbook of black and white drawings, available now for $12 from small chapbook project-2, a series devoted to fine art c-books. Order from small chapbook project-2, 45 Ravenwood Road, CT 06107-1539. Email Peter Ganick (pganickz AT gmail.com ) to receive the backlist [$8 each] or other new scp-2 cbooks.

2008-05-16T21:25:00.000-07:00

INHABITANTS, a 38-page fine art chapbook of black and white drawings, available now for $12 from small chapbook project-2, a series devoted to fine art c-books. Order from small chapbook project-2, 45 Ravenwood Road, CT 06107-1539. Email Peter Ganick (pganickz AT gmail.com ) to receive the backlist [$8 each] or other new scp-2 cbooks.

2008-05-05T10:46:00.000-07:00

I started this blog with the words of noted scientist Albert Hoffman:

"It's very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature. In the big cities, there are people who have never seen living nature, all things are products of humans," he said. "The bigger the town, the less they see and understand nature."

He died April 29th at the age of 102.

2008-05-01T17:51:00.000-07:00

ADMITTANCE 18" x 24" gouache on canvas

2008-04-10T08:39:00.000-07:00

New poem up at

Left Facing Bird

2008-03-04T09:23:00.001-08:00

GHOSTGIRLFLOWER SERIES

Pen, gouache and pencil on paper. 14" x 11."

2008-02-12T19:38:00.000-08:00

A new chapbook, Human-Sized, from Peter Ganick's small-chapbook-project:

"human-sized holes hover
in the heat"

2008-02-11T15:37:00.000-08:00

A Portuguese translation of my poem "number eight" (from Incretion) is now up at Estrada do Alicerce, Ruy Ventura's popular site in Portugal:

Estrada do Alicerce (Ruy Ventura)

2008-01-20T10:38:00.000-08:00

18" x 24" Latex, gouache and pen on canvas.

2008-01-20T10:32:00.000-08:00

2 x 18" squares. Latex, gouache and pen on wood.

2007-12-19T16:04:00.000-08:00

For the solstice.

2007-12-03T16:33:00.000-08:00

2007-11-19T10:21:00.000-08:00

2007-11-18T18:31:00.000-08:00

2007-10-14T19:34:00.000-07:00

2007-09-17T16:50:00.001-07:00

Several items up now at the new Word For/Word, three poem/paintings and several translations of poems by Ruy Ventura:

Cover of WORD FOR/WORD #12

Poem/ Paintings in WORD FOR/WORD #12

Translations of Ruy Ventura's Work at WORD FOR/WORD #12

2007-09-04T16:26:00.000-07:00

New Chapbook.

2007-08-27T16:51:00.000-07:00

2007-08-03T11:12:00.000-07:00

2007-07-31T11:49:00.000-07:00

SPIDER (Detail is the truer color).

2007-07-28T10:36:00.000-07:00

CITY CROW (Top image is the truer color).

Canessa show ended today. Thanks everyone.

B.

2007-07-02T14:19:00.000-07:00

The exhibit at Canessa Park has been extended by three weeks. About half of the paintings are still up, including some of my personal favorites.

B.

2007-06-13T12:12:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who came to the opening!

Review in THE BAY GUARDIAN:

VISUAL ART

Brian Strang: Recent Poem/Paintings

REVIEW The author of several books, most notably 2004's Incretion (Spuyten Duyvil), Brian Strang is a well-known Bay Area avant-garde poet and a composition instructor at San Francisco State University. As such, he has a sophisticated knowledge of aesthetics. Yet, as a painter, Strang must be classed as an outsider — outside the educational and curatorial art network — or, more accurately, as an artist whose inspiration is fundamentally poetic. His statement, for example, on sorrynature.blogspot.com includes more poets than painters, and in conversation he's more likely to cite the influence of cartoons than high modernism. Strang's work bears little trace of a conception of painting as a developing series of technical problems and solutions and instead suggests a more romantic pleasure in and response to visual phenomena.

His two-year retrospective at Canessa Park Gallery, "Brian Strang: Recent Poem/Paintings," is composed entirely of gouaches on paper or canvas, with a repertoire of imagery largely drawn from the natural world — birds, bones, flowers, foliage — yet not excluding intrusions of human-made cityscapes. Colors range from the palest tints of yellow and gray to the most shocking deep electric blues. Like many self-taught artists, Strang might be faulted in terms of strict figuration, yet the nervous outline of his leaves, for example, betrays a rhythmic sensibility not unlike that found in a sketch by Matisse. These images are sometimes surrounded but more often permeated by lines taken from Strang's poetry, which is transformed by the new context. A leaf with the line "they shadow the ancient groves" intersects another leaf reading "with their own milky cheeks" — does the syntax branch off here, or do we move from the first line to a second line, "destructors every one," inscribed in the same leaf? This creation of a nonhierarchical textual space that can be picked up anywhere and followed in any direction is, in itself, an impressive achievement. (Garrett Caples)

Mon.–Fri., 10 a.m.–4 p.m.; by appt.; and during events; through June 28

Canessa Park Gallery

708 Montgomery, SF

(415) 705-7107

www.canessa.org

2007-05-29T10:18:00.000-07:00

BRIAN STRANG AT CANESSA PARK GALLERY (708 Montgomery, SF), OPENING JUNE 3RD 3-6 PM

Statement for the show:

I hadn’t painted in fifteen years when, in 2005, I saw The Poetry Center’s "Poetry and its Arts: Bay Area interactions 1954 – 2004.” Not only is it located just two flights upstairs from my office in the Humanities building at SFSU, but also it has been the touchstone of a poetics from which my own derive, a kind of Neo-Projectivist/Surrealist idea of the imagination. The Poetry Center is home to me and the show featured visual works of many poets I admire. I had already had the notion that I wanted to begin some sort of visual work but the show was the final straw and I began to paint, with a somewhat-obsessive drive, about two summers ago.

I’ve always been interested in art that is guided by forces larger than itself, art that follows more than hammers the contours of thought, whether linguistic, visual or otherwise. And “nature” is the word we give to the largest context, the most permeating materiality, the system of interrelated forces so complex, so enormous and so minute, so internal and external, that it extends far beyond the limitations of imagination and is, therefore, marvelous. This is Whitman’s “spear of summer grass.” But in an ecosystem poised at the brink of collapse, a world of drowning polar bears, disappearing bees, dying coral reefs and increasingly-intense weather events that kill tens of thousands of human beings at a time, our understanding of this system of systems is tinged with peril and fragility. As Robert Duncan says,

So does she arouse in us apocalypse
and in Nature the Furies stir.

“She” in this poem “Where the Fox of This Stench Sulks” is “my beloved Nation” gone missing, a nation that has lost its way. We all understand that the interaction of the political/social and the natural world is at the root of most environmental problems today; humanity’s impact alone, primarily that of industrialized societies, has put the earth’s environment in a dangerous state. And the relationship between the human and natural has been ingrained in our psyches for centuries as an adversarial one. But while each of us leaves footprints on the ecosystem, we always exist WITHIN it. After all, who is not a part of nature? We are all part of what Gary Snyder has called “one vast breathing body.”

There can be no doubt that nature, the context for our existence--as, for example, symbolized by the birds in Alfred Hitchcock’s film--not only cannot be controlled, but (if anthropomorphized) is pissed off. And there can be no doubt that it will have its way with our desires. But I find comfort in Duncan’s belief that

Phases of meaning in the soul may be like phases of the moon, and, though rationalists may contend against the imagination, all men [sic] may be one, for they have their source out of the same earth, mothered in one ocean and fathered in the light and heat of one sun that is not tranquil but rages between its energy that is a disorder seeking higher intensities and its fate or dream of perfection that is an order where all light, heat, being, movement, meaning and form, are consumed toward the cold.

Imagination is a deep connection with commonality, with the “one ocean” and “one sun.” We must learn to read natural systems more accurately, to listen with imagination to their direction.

❖

These paintings represent an attempt to be guided visually and artistically by the imagination’s interaction with natural forms. Poetry is encoded within the forms of the world—one only has to look closely to see it. I have found that, once embedded in the paintings, the words to my own poems become something other than what I intended, as they are fragmented and redistributed. And the reader of the paintings has a much different experience than what I may have intended. The image guides.

I’ve also been guided artistically by a number of other forces—first and foremost, the flora and fauna of East Oakland (There’s more “there there” than you might think), the landscape paintings of Egon Schiele, the flora of the McIntyre Creek area of the Sequoia National Monument and the recent exhibit of Tonalist painters Arthur and Lucia Mathews at The Oakland Museum of California. Also, Basil King’s kind words of guidance have been very helpful.

Words of encouragement from friends have been incredibly important as well, especially (but not limited to) Steve Dickison who used images of my paintings on the Poetry Center calendar and website; my co-editors of 26, especially Elizabeth Robinson who suggested the use of my artwork for the cover of issue E; Susanne Dyckman who encouraged me to show my work at a backyard reading at her house last summer; Avery Burns (also co-editor of 26) who invited me to do this show and Andrew Joron and Rose Vekony who encouraged me to pursue my initial tenuous ideas. Finally I reserve special thanks for meu amor, Elisa, who is both my harshest critic and staunchest supporter.

Everything is nothing is everything,

Brian

2007-05-12T11:48:00.000-07:00

2007-04-19T08:50:00.000-07:00

This is one in a series of three. To see the other two--and other work not published here at Sorry Nature--come see my show at Canessa Park (708 Montgomery, SF) June 3-28.

2007-04-16T18:30:00.000-07:00

A feast of poets from the literary journals Parthenon West Review and
Poetry International.

Readers include the contributors Denise Newman, Barbara Tomash, BRIAN STRANG,
Patrick Duggan, Chad Sweeney, David Holler, Ilya Kaminsky,
Bruce Boston, and Martin Woodside.
APRIL IS NATIONAL POETRY MONTH. HUZZAH.

DATE & TIME: Saturday, April 28 @ 7:30 PM

Admission: FREE

WHERE:
PEGASUS BOOKS DOWNTOWN
2349 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94704

CONTACT: Clay, (510) 649-1320, pegdowntown@sbcglobal.net

2007-04-03T18:16:00.000-07:00

2007-02-08T14:18:00.000-08:00

"So does she arouse in us apocalypse/
and in Nature the Furies stir."
-Robert Duncan

2007-01-22T14:54:00.000-08:00

2 FROM "ENDNOTE"

2006-12-27T15:15:00.000-08:00

2006-12-27T13:56:00.000-08:00

Winter glow.

2006-12-12T18:41:00.000-08:00

2006-10-03T20:28:00.000-07:00

2006-10-03T20:07:00.000-07:00

2006-08-09T12:29:00.000-07:00

NEW PAINTINGS. These will be on display at my reading on August 20th--email me if you want directions to or details about the event.

2006-06-22T10:01:00.000-07:00

IN THE MIDST OF SOMETHING HOLLOW

Text from "the confines":

"In a public toilet, a man with marks on his temples stands naked from the waist down. He scrapes at his legs with a razor, shaving away the insect hair and cutting himself badly. Inky rivulets run behind his knees.

Disposition is not a natural fact. You think that you are still in the midst of something hollow, associated with the grasping hand. Without end, you work in a field with nothing overhead."

"the confines" can be read at the ALICE BLUE website (link on right). Go to "archives" and see issue 2.

2006-06-14T17:30:00.000-07:00

DARK ADAPT

2006-06-14T17:28:00.000-07:00

THE METHOD

2006-05-16T09:12:00.000-07:00

from "swimming."

2006-05-16T09:07:00.000-07:00

"IT IS ALL THE SAME," 2nd half of the "blood motel" diptych. The poem "blood motel" can be read at ALICE BLUE (link on the right).

2006-05-04T09:46:00.000-07:00

"OF WHAT ARE YOU A COPY?" excerpt from "blood motel"

2006-04-25T19:42:00.000-07:00

NO NEW IMAGES TODAY, JUST AN ANNOUNCEMENT:

Two readings hosted by The Poetry Center.
Both are Thursday, April 27th.

*******************
Andrew Joron and Brian Strang
at The Poetry Center,
Humanities 512, San Francisco State University,
Thursday, April 27th, at 3:30pm,
free

Andrew Joron is author of several books of poetry, including Fathom (selected by the Village Voice as one of the "Top Books of 2003") and The Removes. Born and raised in Germany, he has translated a number of German poets and the Literary Essays of Utopian cultural critic Ernst Block (Stanford U. Press), and recently edited a festschrift for U.S. expatriate poet Gustav Sobin (for Talisman). He lives in Berkeley.

Brian Strang is the author of Incretion and i n v i s i b i l i t y (both Spuyten Duyvil), machinations (a free Duration ebook), normal school: hommage a beckett and A Draft of L Cavatinas: Letters to Ez (Potes and Poets). A coeditor of 26: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics, he lives in Oakland and teaches English composition at SFSU.

*******************************
26, a reading with editors Avery E.D. Burns, Rusty Morrison, Joseph Noble, Elizabeth Robinson and Brian Strang
at The Unitarian Center, 1187 Franklin, San Francisco,
Thursday, April 27th, at 7:30pm,
$5.

26: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics has been appearing out of the Bay Area over the past several years, a dense amalgam of poetry, essays in poetics and other writings, with its 5th issue ("E") due this April. Tonight we'll feature all of the magazine's poet/co-editors reading from their own writings, along with selections from the magazine that they've each found most generative and exceptional. This newest thick issue of 26 will feature a focus on poetry in translation and include a great deal of creative work ranging from contemporary Portuguese to Chinese poetry. On stage this evening will be Avery E.D. Burns, Joseph Noble, Elizabeth Robinson and Brian Strang.

2006-04-20T19:00:00.000-07:00

SLEEPING SICKNESS

(also on canvas)

2006-04-20T18:31:00.000-07:00

NOT ASKING DIPTYCH (on canvas)

2006-03-16T16:04:00.000-08:00

SPIDER WARS DIPTYCH

spider wars

You will not come to find things. You will come to scatter, to release crowns from a hollow royalty. Ambition falls into the bins provided. And you will leave by the back gate, off to find your place in the newest war.

Working through the recipe, you develop criminal habits: think through the various arguments, resist the fall into the cup. Austerity is your only law.

On the hilltops, rockets become a gleaming test of election principles. Examinations behind the orange sky. And the tyrant arrives in the guise of protector. An imperial weight.

But you arrive at Human Meat City and there is a hanging wolf at the gates, a message that all feet will fail. Curtained machines. Recycled blood of the wasted. Drink from the floating communal heart.

*

Shining legs tie the poisoned into knots and send them home to their families as a symbol and memento. To reanimate the war dead, the campaigners suck marrow clean and spin webs back into hollow bones. They are lighter and more porous, though rearranged and stupefied. They are open to suggestion.

The imperial widowmaker, the doomsday machine, sits up on his back four. He guides their migration by magnets in their heads. Buildings here are not. They are slight projections, encoded enclosures, and vanish at the merest sign.

Destructors sink their tails and pour out malice. A custard forms on the forest floor. Frantic mesh of hands, impersonal hacking, dark mulch of soil, rotten cells heaped onto one another. Every way out is the way back in.

*

Miniature fauna chew off their legs to escape. A wasted man in a hospital tent recites the hours. Geese sprinkle themselves across the greenest lawns.

Whatever is given away comes together. In a flock at the far edge of sight. Any way will be the way out. Figures gather and the city is sewn together by its inhabitants’ hands.

An oak spreads its branches for the hundreds gathered here. From a lemon sky, abstract ideas rain. Animals lift their noses as little as possible.

2006-02-23T16:12:00.000-08:00

The detail looks much lighter but it's from one of the two paintings here.

2006-02-07T16:05:00.000-08:00

2006-02-07T16:01:00.000-08:00

WEB triptych.

2006-01-18T11:56:00.000-08:00

Three details from GEOGRAPHY triptych.

2006-01-18T11:48:00.000-08:00

GEOGRAPHY triptych.

2006-01-18T11:43:00.000-08:00

PACK.

2006-01-13T14:20:00.000-08:00

Dream Sequence from SWIMMING.

2006-01-11T12:47:00.000-08:00

And another: THE CONFINES. The text, a prose poem of the same name, will be in Alice Blue magazine, www.alicebluereview.org/, next month.

2006-01-11T12:40:00.000-08:00

Painting featuring my own poem, SCENT, (with detail photo).

2006-01-08T09:42:00.000-08:00

These paintings incorporate text from Jorge Melícias' THE LIGHT IN THE LUNGS. The translation Elisa and I did of his book should be up soon at Projected Letters, www.projectedletters.com. And one of these images will be on the cover of 26: A JOURNAL OF POETRY AND POETICS, due April, 2006.