Andy Gricevich wonders “what Curtis, Joe, Arlee, Ian look like”…
“(Michaux) sat with his back to the light so that it was difficult to see him; he shielded his face with hand and contemplated me warily out of the corner of his eye. Michaux will not be photographed, and refuses to allow even a drawing of himself to be reproduced. Faces have a horrible fascination for him. He has written: “a man and his face, it’s a little as if they were constantly devouring each other.” To an editor who once wrote asking him for a photograph to publish in a catalogue with others, he replied: “I write in order to reveal a person whose existence no one would ever have suspected from looking at me” -- this statement was published in the space that had been intended for his portrait.” (Ashbery, Reported Sightings, 397)
6 comments:
I have been duly chastised by the avant-garde for my presumptuous curiosity.
I remember seeing Michael Palmer's author photo on the back of Sun and remaining utterly unconvinced that an actual human wrote those poems (he looks like a suave soap opera actor in that picture). I've seen him, or one of his stand-ins, read since then, and it hasn't made the poems any less weird, really.
And there's still the often stark difference between a person's poetry and their "blog personality;" the latter might be just as false to the poetry as a photo would.
The Palmer/Sun pic is funny. It's all about the chest hair.
I think I saw Palmer live before I saw his books. Well no: I heard his voice before I saw the written texts. This is because in San Francisco, I learned of him via his collaborations with choreographer Margie Jenkins. But that was prior to publication of SUN. Even though I have had the latter book, I don't recall the photo. But photos in the 2 earlier North Point books looked just like the guy, and I think he even sports a hint of a smile (this from long memory).
If you've owned Sun and you don't recall the photo, then perhaps your mind is performing a necessary function. But it's always worth looking out for a new copy.
btw the Michael Palmer pic in question is on his poets.org page..
www.poets.org/viewmedia. php/prmMID/15949
oh okay; duly noted. The title of his book Notes from Echo Lake returns to mind -- that was probably the first work of Palmer's I saw interpreted by Margaret Jenkins (or anyway incorporated into her dance company's performance), something like 21 years ago. Which seems a nice swatch of time. I read Palmer and Scalapino's North Point books, and later learned there was something known as a language poetry movement. I think it found mention in a footnote in Palmer's book in fact -- where he hat-tips it and claims not to be part of it. But the detail, and phrasing, are vague in memory.
Ah but no, it was a passage (some passages) from his book First Figure, that figured in the (rather apocolyptic) dance work. "These are the first figures" is a sentence that lingers in mind.
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