To begin ...

As the twentieth century fades out
the nineteenth begins
.......................................again
it is as if nothing happened
though those who lived it thought
that everything was happening
enough to name a world for & a time
to hold it in your hand
unlimited.......the last delusion
like the perfect mask of death

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Ed Baker: Three excerpts from “Stone Girl E-Pic” with comment


[1]                                       

                                             to
                                             get
                                                            a
                                                            better

                                                                           view
                              dawn
                              arrives 

i say what
can be said
written
in a line 

exactly 

on
her
back 

see is
another 

angle 

                              she
                              asks 

                              gives
                              only 

                              what
                              is
                              yet 

                              to
                              give
 

                              g i v e n
 

stone
sees
mind
sees 

                                 face 
                                 wide 
                                 grins
                                                            short black hair
                                                            flick in frames 
                                                                nguyen 

[2] 

together 

new
strokes 

all 

same
time 

rhythm 

moving 

                              some
                              same 

                              rise 

                              into verbs
 

                                   circumference 

                                   centering
 

                                   surround 

 

hold s
flower
in a
perfect
cracked
vase
 

[3] 

so
close
that
mind 

can
touch
smell 

taste 
her 
clearly
contradicting 

briefly
confused 

his
look
is
to
get 

a
better
sense 

of 
her
in
heat 

rock
before
breath 

who
says
now 

and
what
to
whom
 

leisure
allows
creation
 

stone
girl 

image 

language 

inherent 

[NOTE.  Ed Baker’s Stone Girl  E-Pic, a massive gathering of drawings & writings, was published by Leafe Press (Nottingham, England, and Claremont, California) in 2011.  It is as such the celebration of a poet/artist/calligrapher whose work attests to its almost outsider status, in the quasi-rawness of the print & pages in the paper version, not visible as posted here, & in the play between visual images & minimal, often scroll-like versings.   The opening citation in Conrad DiDiodato’s foreword has something to say of this: “It is important to collect these writers because, as has been the case over and over in the history of literature, the best and most innovative writing, the writing that advances the art and that in the future becomes the classic and defining work of a period, is almost always the work of outsiders.”  (John M. Bennett, Curator of the Avant Writing Collection at Ohio State University).  Or Baker himself: “... the facts that provoke (or precipitate) a poem or a piece of art that is inside or outside or simultaneously inside/outside ... the poem/piece.”  The line between inside & outside is accordingly called into question, even into doubt. (J.R.)]

2 comments:

Ed Baker said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ed Baker said...
This comment has been removed by the author.