20 posts from April 2007

“I didn’t start off with a musical rule,” Bjork said of her new album Volta. “It was more emotion.” She said she asked herself: “Are you playing it safe here? Are you actually being impulsive or are you totally subconsciously planning every moment? Are you really allowing enough space for accidents to happen?”--www.nytimes.com

 

IV.  THE DREAM

 

Standing by, London, waiting to connect

Her tin ear, he grimaced, a full-grown man

Exhale through nostrils, the angry swan

She made a form in her mind

As far as you’ve come cannot be undone

Terrified, sacredly, taste of paper, clementines, egg

Would I prefer the straight shot?

I cradle bell-notes in the shining twilight

Casually defying wind, rain

Tumbling on snow banks, a moist confusion

The buffalo of philosophy, silent expletive

Silver jackets of fish in their element

Above this level who, lifting off, red-winged?

I am essaying—error is my aid.

 

*Last line from Christine Hume's Musca Domestica

**Flickr photo by Serni

I dreamt last night that Renee Zellweger, my namesake, was lecturing

a group of us on Richard the Third on a grassy lawn in the suburbs

of Michigan--Ann Arbor to be precise.  I was mad at her for being so famous

and knowing that I was a struggling writer and not doing anything to help me

so I gave her the middle finger and turned my back on her.  But when I turned away

(so rudely, I can't imagine ever doing that in real life), I saw across the street

a house and inside the house a woman whose giant head and eyes I could see

peering through the windows back at me--a voyeur?  a spy?  a guardian angel?

When I turned back to Renee Zellweger I could see that she was hurt by my actions

and trying to understand why I would do such a thing.  I know that I did it to get her attention

because I'm in the midst of publishing my first book of poetry:  The Birthday Sonnets.

New York, NY April 5, 2007: Forum Gallery presents a group exhibition featuring 22 works by contemporary women artists. In conjunction with The Feminist Art Project, a nationwide initiative celebrating the aesthetic, intellectual, and political impact of women on the visual arts, the artists in The Feminist Figure use the
vocabulary of figuration to explore contemporary concerns.

                 
Kiki Smith
Untitled
1999
ink on paper
78 x 30 1/2 inches

http://www.forumgallery.com/current_on1.php?id=190&imagenum=2

		Deb King Venus Construct 2007 interactive media 1440 x 900 pixels

    Xenia Hausner

Veronica Riedel Coli 2005 mixed media embroidered with silver, pearls, stones, beads, and shells 33 x 27 inches

In this dream, the boy I wanted

was making me shell necklaces, shell

bracelets; one bracelet was heavy with cement

blocks in case I had to walk alone in New York at night--

he said I could use the bracelet for protection and laughed.

There was sand in his hair and at the crinkles of his eyes.

He wore beach clothes, a t'shirt and shorts and so jovial

picking up pieces of shells--fuschia, cotton-candy-pink--off the floor.

I wanted him and told him so, "But what about 'so and so'?  He asked,

partly joking.  "I will always love 'so and so,'" I replied.  And we kissed

a big wet sloppy kiss and I could tell that he was a little clumsy, but

I loved his energy, his spontaneous, wild, healthy energy, and I could tell

that he loved me.