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Crow north
Crow north
Crow north
By northeast
Crow falls
Crow-black
From the sky
Crow cries
To darkness
See you, friend,
How lonely
I must die?
Jeffrey Schultz’s artist statement:
Title of series: Fifteen Variations on Themes from Levis.
In a series of fifteen brief variations, Schultz will meditate on a number of themes–some of them poorly recalled from memory, some of them badly obscured or poorly understood–from Levis’s work.
we are seated at the the table
we draw a line around the river but we left the river out
we cloud the common tongue
we articulate the dark matter into itself
a purple cotton candy
a set of bangs on brown skin
a float of clouds on freckled skin
crystalline cobbled street
cobwebs in the open spaces
spiders under the ferns in the yard
we look into the round mirror
but we ignore the shadows in the reflection
we have conversations about getting to the party
we look at flat photos of deepest space
as if it is outside of us
as if we forget that when we inhale
we are splashing our hearts with antigravity
slick, stoney, aerial root, anther, bract, villius
a river stone so round and perfect that I need to put it in my mouth
a cloud that falls behind the rest
the moon that is a face and a paper plate
We have to have the attic like we have to have the moon
suspended in the upper consciousness
Marisol Baca’s artist statement:
Over the past 15 days, I have been writing a poem a day. This concentrated workload allowed me to sit face-to-face with poems that I have been wanting to write for a long time— stories that I have wanted to investigate for a long time. It was a difficult thing to do, but the right time to do it. These poems are about exploring the work of a favorite artist of mine and finding out more about my family history. The first eight poems are interrelated and are about the surrealist painter, Remedios Varo. Her paintings evoke wonder and curiosity in me, and I love them. The second set of poems deal with stories about my great grandmother and her sisters. There are some stories in these poems that I have been thinking about for a long time, maybe even years, and have not been able to write until now. Last week I had a dream about my great grandmother standing at the entrance of a doorway telling me to go ahead and get it done. So I did.
“Personaje”
Personaje, 1961.
Oil and Silver / Cardboard Sheet.
© All Rights Reserved 2015, Remedios Varo.
For any use or reproduction of the work, please contact vegap.
Cat.315-Character-1961
“in eights // octaves”
El Flautista, 1955.
Oil and Nacre Embedded / Masonite.
© Copyright 2019.
For any use or reproduction of work, please contact vegap.
Cat. 127-El-Flutista-1955.
Metonymy describes the figural structure
Of contiguity, nearness. The metaphysics
Of the figure begin the chant of their murmuring spell
When contiguity, nearness, is engaged
Complexly in all of its conceptual suggestiveness.
Under such circumstances, the greatest distances
Collapse instantaneously. And yet,
One would never think of Odysseus,
Driving back home around dusk, up 99 into the city
That isn’t a city but rather a town
Untended, overgrown as the orchards
And unkempt vineyards surrounding,
Those hard fields even as they collapse
Into the housing tracts their sprawl
Had already suggested. Everything looks the same
And like nothing at all. I can’t tell you
The last time I even saw any of it,
Though my early work in object permanence
Suggests it must still be right in front of me
And not only this layer of dust, this grudge
Held by the heat. One wouldn’t think
Of Odysseus because what could that help?
Who the hell’s he supposed to be anyway?
What story could have any say here, where water
Detests the earth and yet everything will be made grow?
People are still trying to talk about themselves
And sometimes even others as if there were human beings.
A car I once owned turned up after I sold it
Torched in an orange orchard with a body in the trunk.
The detective seemed satisfied I hadn’t done it,
And after he hung up I never heard another word about it.
We used to skip school in it, listening to music
On a battery powered boombox between us
Because I only had an AM radio in the thing,
Used to drive out into the blossom’d valley distance.
In music, I think what we’re talking about might have to do
With a patterning of the interval, but I don’t pretend
To understand music all that well. The names
Of things are uncountable this evening. Are and is.
Is and are. When will the garbage mountain
South of Jensen alight? When will the image
Stop stalling and fulfill its potential?
O to be near to you tonight, so near that, even here,
Where nothing at all can any longer be imagined,
Even here, when I open the door of you you appear.
Jeffrey Schultz’s artist statement:
Title of series: Fifteen Variations on Themes from Levis.
In a series of fifteen brief variations, Schultz will meditate on a number of themes–some of them poorly recalled from memory, some of them badly obscured or poorly understood–from Levis’s work.
{After the painting by Remedios Varo}
Remedios, when I look
at your torn garment of canvas
when I read your painted ribbon
stretched across the cosmos
am I making a real friend?
Or am I making a fool
of myself?
I see you are like me
So often I am alone
You never found the place to belong
in-between the forest and the town
in-between the river and the road
There was a cloth apron
my mother hung around her neck and shoulder
I would like to use that apron
como un velo
behind a curtain so thick
no words can hurt me
nothing can penetrate
obscurity
How does a child learn
to believe that things will change for her?
Remedios, if I found a vehicle in the fog of the Central Valley
If I float down the San Joaquin river,
Will the river make me sick?
Will I find the mechanical abstraction that is your boat?
Is the fog hiding a town swept away beneath a wave?
This river recedes before a jealous forest.
This river opens like a throat and tongue.
This river ends
detrás de las cortinas.
You swallowed that town and all of its people
all of its quaint buildings and private parks
They reside inside you
—are parts of you.
Remedios, when the river ends,
will I catch you riding
on a path beside the ash trees and the river?
You will be riding the sixteen of wheels
lejos del bote de maravillas mecanicas.
Marisol Baca’s artist statement:
Over the past 15 days, I have been writing a poem a day. This concentrated workload allowed me to sit face-to-face with poems that I have been wanting to write for a long time— stories that I have wanted to investigate for a long time. It was a difficult thing to do, but the right time to do it. These poems are about exploring the work of a favorite artist of mine and finding out more about my family history. The first eight poems are interrelated and are about the surrealist painter, Remedios Varo. Her paintings evoke wonder and curiosity in me, and I love them. The second set of poems deal with stories about my great grandmother and her sisters. There are some stories in these poems that I have been thinking about for a long time, maybe even years, and have not been able to write until now. Last week I had a dream about my great grandmother standing at the entrance of a doorway telling me to go ahead and get it done. So I did.
“Personaje”
Personaje, 1961.
Oil and Silver / Cardboard Sheet.
© All Rights Reserved 2015, Remedios Varo.
For any use or reproduction of the work, please contact vegap.
Cat.315-Character-1961
“in eights // octaves”
El Flautista, 1955.
Oil and Nacre Embedded / Masonite.
© Copyright 2019.
For any use or reproduction of work, please contact vegap.
Cat. 127-El-Flutista-1955.
The poem leaves the room hungry
And commends to your care
These following facts:
The Pan-Arctic Ice-Ocean
Modelling and Assimilation System
(PIOMAS) data for 20 Sept. 2019
Shows an average ice thickness
In the Central Arctic Basin (CAB)
Of 1.2 meters, thinnest in the record.
The ice itself is in terrible shape:
The peripheral seas have melted out
And the remaining ice in the core,
Shattered early in the season by heat,
Both atmospheric and in terms
Of spiked Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs)
Was first broken to rubble and dispersed
By a series late-season cyclones
Fueled by incursions of tropical heat
Before winds off the East Siberian Sea
(ESS) and Canadian Archipelago Area (CAA) later
Forced it back together into a single mass,
So that as it floats there now in the warmly cold dark
It’s a jagged, compacted mess.
No significant multi-year ice (MYI) remains.
Observed melt is decades ahead of projections.
This morning early, 22 Sept. 2019,
In Cayucos, on California’s
Central Coast, the buoy’s bell
Rolls in the surge,
Rolls me half-awake
And sleep-dazed onto the beach
For the dog’s morning shit.
Her shit’s not in the worst shape,
Though it is somewhat loose on one end,
Likely an effect of having been fed fries
From the table yesterday at Duckie’s Chowder House (Duckie’s)
So as to distract her from growling at others’ passing dogs.
She’s a mix of widely-feared breeds
And it’s tough to get around people’s preconceptions.
When we had a Golden, people were like whatever.
The crisp onshore mostly dissipates
The scent as I use a plastic baggy to pick it up.
It has a decent heft and through the baggy
Feels precisely like warm sand-coated shit in a baggy.
The early light on the early water
Blues the beach, which is empty
And windswept. When Phil
Used to say that a poet
Could only use the word
Beautiful twice in a career
It was because beauty
Was at that point still something
A reasonable human being
Might place some faith in.
One is not meant to take the name in vain.
But all the saviors keep turning up
Victim. Everything feels
Like such a personal tragedy.
PIOMAS updates twice a month.
The dog shits twice a day.
Everyone wonders what’s coming.
The goddess of history (Κλειω) lies concussed
At the waterline. Amidst the great heap
Of concussed goddesses,
She’s a little hard to pick out,
But she’s in there, all of them
Overtaken in the surge.
Supposedly, some of them
Were quite pretty, though certainly
This seems like the wrong place to mention it.
Many things can still be expected of the future,
But salvation of either Κλειω
Or any of the others isn’t among them.
The CAA, the ESS, and the Kara lie bare.
The Laptev bite advances poleward,
Devouring everything solid in its path.
The poem doesn’t want
Anyone to feel anything. It is hungry
And has no interest in what anyone
Might have to say.
What’s left for this appetite
Is what comes after all that
And will not be referred to again.
Jeffrey Schultz’s artist statement:
Title of series: Fifteen Variations on Themes from Levis.
In a series of fifteen brief variations, Schultz will meditate on a number of themes–some of them poorly recalled from memory, some of them badly obscured or poorly understood–from Levis’s work.
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