Poetics and Ruminations

Three Ekphrastic Terzanelles

Spiders, Long Island, Maine. by
 Elizabeth Burke

 

A PAGE OF SPIDERS

 

The spiders seem to want to crawl away,

Out of the drawing with its printed notes

Onto my desk top where, perhaps, there’s prey

 

For them to draw into a net that floats.

But I am building this fleeting cage of letters

Out of the drawing with its printed notes --

 

I have no wish to be the prey in fetters,

Although I have no other choice, of course,

Except to build this floating cage of letters

 

To fend the spiders off until remorse

For the misprisions of my days is lost

In spinning filaments without recourse.

 

The price for living – an atrocious cost,

A page of debts that cannot be repaid,

For the misprisions of our days are lost

 

In filaments of time gone retrograde.

The spiders seem to want to crawl away --

A page of debts that cannot be repaid --

Onto my desk top where, of course, they’ll prey.

  

PAST SOUNDS OF SINGING

“…his poems are like singing from the cemetery.” – Rhina Espaillat

 

When we stroll out by evening we are wary

Of our route. We would not like to hear

The sounds of singing from the cemetery.

 

Although we know there is not much to fear,

We whistle past the churchyard lying there

On our route. We would not like to hear

 

The sounds of singing burdening the air,

Emerging from the boneyard on our course.

We whistle past the churchyard lying there --

 

We wish to hear no aria; even worse,

A chorus of old voices made of stones

Emerging from the boneyard on our course.

 

We care no whit for what the wind intones

As we go strolling through the evening shades,

No chorus of old voices made of stones

 

Should shadow us through streets or country glades

When we walk out at dark. We should be wary

As we go strolling through the evening shades

Past sounds of singing from the cemetery.

EVENSONG

On lines from Dylan Thomas’ “The Hunchback

in the Park.”

 

Until the Sunday somber bell at dark

Made dozing tigers jump out of their eyes

By casting its summer song over the park,

 

Drenching us daylight creatures with surprise,

Startling the nurses near the willow grove --

Until the tigers jumped out of their eyes

 

We had no notion it was time to leave.

But evening calls and it is time to go.

Until next weekend there is no reprieve,

 

For we must work or study and the zoo

Must bide its time among its ponds and fountains.

Evening summons us. It is time to go;

 

Shades lengthen, shadows fall out of the mountains

Onto the streets where we must travel home.

We may not spend more time with ponds and fountains

 

But travel the ways and byways we have come.

We must arise, begin to travel home

Because the Sunday somber bell at dark

Casts its evensong across the park.

 

 

 

Thom. Seawell, Printmaker, In Memoriam.

 

          SUNY Oswego over the course of thirty-one years I collaborated with two printmakers; the second, George O’Connell, died this past spring, and I celebrated his life with an entry on this blog.

          The first printmaker with whom I worked, however, was Thom. Seawell who died on Friday, August 28^th, just before midnight. He and I collaborated on three poem-prints, and on a book, The Inhabitant, which was built on his very large print, “The House.” It hangs in my living-room here in Dresden, Maine, and it is a fold-out in the original edition of The Inhabitant, Poems by Lewis Turco, Prints by Thom. Seawell, Northampton: Despa Press, 1970. It was published in two editions, cloth and paper, both long out-of-print, but all the poems are collected in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007. Here are two images by Seawell from the book, the cover and "Detail from 'The House: Kitchen,"

 

Listen to Lewis Turco read his poem "The Kitchen."

 

THE KITCHEN

 

In the  kitchen the dishwasher is eating the dishes.  The Inhabitant listens

          to the current of digestion — porcelain being ground, silver wearing

          thin, the hum and bite of the machine.

 

His wife does not hear it — she is humming, not listening.  But the

          Inhabitant is aware of movement in the cupboards, of the veriest

          motion — the cast-iron skillet undergoing metamorphosis, perhaps,

          becoming its name: the wives' spider spinning beneath the counter,

          weaving and managing, waiting for the doors to open.

 

Each cup has its voice, each saucer its ear, and the thin chant planes

          between the shelves, touching the timbres of glass and crystal as it

          passes.  The gentleman listens, is touched to the bone by this

          plainsong — he feels his response in the marrow's keening.

 

But the women do not — neither the elder nor the child — sense the music

          their things make.  Their lips move, a column of air rises like steam,

          and there is something in a minor key sliding along the wall,

          touching the face of a plastic clock, disturbing the linen calendar

          beside the condiments.

 

It is as though, the Inhabitant reflects, the women are spinning.  It is as

          though, while he waits, they weave bindings among the rooms; as

          though the strands of tune were elements of a sisterhood of dishes,

          the ladies, the spider in the cabinet, even of the dishwasher, done

          now with its grinding, which contributes a new sound — a continuo

          of satiety — to the gray motet the kitchen is singing.

 

-- Lewis Turco

The Jazz Joint, by George O'Connell

Captions by Lewis Turco

Listen to Lew Turco read his poem, "The Jazz Joint."

 

THE JAZZ JOINT

Images by George O'Connell,

Captions by Lewis Turco

 

 

 

 

 

                      Well, the gals were singing and we

 

 

 

In Memory of George O'Connell, Printmaker

 

 

 

 

          My dear friend and "artner," the printmaker George O'Connell, Emeritus Professor of Art at SUNY Oswego, passed from the scene on Sunday, May 10, 2015 at the age of 88. George was born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1926. He and I collaborated for more than three decades on books, exhibits, poemprints, memorials and Xmas cards -- our collection of these is in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution (www.aaa.si.edu/collections/lewis-turco-and-george-oconnell-christmas-card-collection-13428), By age 86 he had navigated so many health problems and accidents that I had begun to call him "Super George." In his last days he wanted nothing more than to be relieved of pain, and although those who knew him well are sad not to have him with us, we are relieved that he hurts no more.

          I had more than one reason to admire and honor George. Everyone who served in the armed forces of the US during World War II was my hero or heroine. Tom Brokaw called them “the Greatest Generation,” and they were. George O’Connell was a veteran of the War in the Pacific, and it is one of my strongest sources of pride that he and I were collaborators for so long a time. I was deeply privileged and honored to work side-by side with one of my heroes. To me, he truly was Super George.

          We began collaborating in 1976. Our first project was an Xmas card, "The House," the poem by me with "Owl," a silk-screen print by George O'Connell, published by George’s Grey Heron Press in a Limited edition of 130 cards signed by both of us. 

          Thereafter we began issuing more and more elaborate cards almost every year. The next. a broadside titled "A Winter Song," was rather large for a “card.” The poem was a modern version of an ancient Welsh poem by “Wesli Court,” (my anagram nom de plume) with a lithograph by George published by Grey Heron in 1977 in a limited edition of 200 numbered copies, of which 84 are signed by "Wesli Court."  For some reason we skipped 1978 and ’79, but in 1980 we issued two cards to make up for it, I guess -- “Fading Things” and “First Snow,” both poems from a series I was working on at the time titled A Sampler of Hours: Poems and Centos from Lines in Emily Dickinson’s Letters, published in book form by SUNY Press in 1993. We did more of Emily in 1987:

          Our first book publication was arranged by Charlie Davis, the leader of the early Indiana jazz band called “The Joy Gang” and composer of the jazz classic “Copenhagen.” When he retired during the Depression Charlie opened a furniture store in Oswego, NY, and when he retired from that he took some poetry composition courses at the College from from Roger Dickinson-Brown (who also died this year) and me. In the last class he took Charlie wrote a long poem inspired by William Carlos Williams’ “Patterson,” which I had ordered him to read, and when he’d finished that he published it himself and then wanted to start the Mathom Publishing Company.

          George had in common with Charlie that he was a jazz aficionado and musician; George had begun as a drummer in high school, and he played the vibes in local bands and orchestras. Charlie decided he wanted to publish a book of my poems from Mathom, American Still Lifes, so he asked George to do the cover and several illustrations. The book was published in 1981, the same year as the first exhibition was mounted in which George and I were partners.

          The Albany exhibit was titled, The New York Landscape, Poems by twenty State University of New York poets, with visual responses by twenty State University of New York artists. Our contribution consisted of "Millpond," a broadside poem I had written in Saratoga Springs at Yaddo in 1959. It was printed in handset type on handmade paper by Buffalo Papers, together with "Dusk Light," an intaglio by O’Connell. The exhibit was held at The Plaza Gallery, from 16 October through 30 November, 1981, and at the Pratt Manhattan Center Gallery, New York City, from 18 December, 1982, through 15 January, 1983, with a subsequent tour of New York State. The Catalog was edited by Peter Gordon for the Plaza Gallery.

          This original pairing led to establishment of the Jeffrey Sisson Permanent Memorial Exhibit: "Millpond," in calligraphy by Jean Garvey, together with four prints by George  O'Connell, at the Aurelia Osburn Fox Memorial Hospital in Oneonta, New York, in 1982. Subsequently there was a Chancellor’s Reprise Exhibition of the original show in the South Tower of S.U.N.Y. Plaza during the Fall semester of 1994.

          One of George’s favorite themes in his prints was, of course, jazz in all its glory and manifestations. The poem of mine that he liked best was titled “Lorrie” which I’d written at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs in 1959. This was the poem we used in the 1984 “Xmas card” paired with his print "The Girls Who Sing in the Band" in a limited edition from Mathom of 200 copies signed by both poet & artist.

 

Several years later, in 1989, George did an entire Artist Book on Lorrie, one of my prize possessions; one copy only exists.

          It would take too much time and space to list the rest of our Xmas cards here, but readers may see our 1996 "The Falcon Carol" on-line at

 http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/images/detail/george-oconnell-christmas-card-and-poem-falcon-carol-13219

         We had the opportunity in the spring of 1996 to mount a full-fledged gallery exhibition at the Rathbone Gallery of Sage Junior College in Albany — with the assistance of an S.O.S. grant from the New York State Council on the Arts — of my sequence of poems titled Bordello, issued during the exhibition in a five-copy limited edition portfolio of poem-prints and images, printed on paper hand-made by both printmaker and poet – we had a fine time making the paper in the basement of his home on Baylis Street in Oswego.

          Four years later George O’Connell and I collaborated on a series of black and white monoprints with poetry titled “The Jazz Joint” which was included in a four-person show, Some Kind of Narrative, at the Kirkland Art Gallery in Clinton, New York, from March 4 — April 11, 2001.

         

          A retrospective exhibition of our work, “Collaboration: Prints and Text,” took place at the Tyler Art Gallery on the campus of the State University of New York College at Oswego from November 9 — December 9, 2001.

          In 2009 I wrote a limerick for George’s 83^rd birthday which we always celebrated at a dinner in an area restaurant, and I used his print of my poem titled “Jasper Olson”: 

GEORGE O’CONNELL

October 16, 2009

 

The printmaking artist named George

O’Connell was apt to disgorge

Jazz pictures of ladies

Erupting from Hades

And Satan’s most blistering forge.

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GEORGE,

 and farewell, old friend.

 

Related articles

The Hero Enkidu: An Epic by Lewis Turco

At Home: A Poemoir

Correspondence with Alzo David-West

The Door

By Thom. Seawell

 

      Have you ever walked into a room with some purpose in mind, only to forget completely what that purpose was?

      Apparently the doors themselves are to blame for these strange memory lapses. Psychologists at the University of Notre Dame have discovered that passing through a doorway triggers what's known as an “event boundary” in the mind, separating one set of thoughts and memories from the  next. One’s brain files away the thoughts one had in the previous room and prepares a blank slate for the new locale.

     Thank goodness for studies like this -- It's not age that causdes such lapses, it's that damned door!

 

THE DOOR

On a sculpture by Ivan Albright

 

     There is a door

           made of faces

faces snakes and green moss

 

     which to enter is

           death or perhaps

life which to touch is

 

     to sense beyond the

           figures carved in

shades of flesh and emerald

 

     the Inhabitant at home

           in his dark

rooms his hours shadowed or

 

     lamptouched and that door

           must not be

attempted the moss disturbed nor

 

     the coiling lichen approached

           because once opened

the visitor must remain in

 

     that place among the

           Inhabitant's couches and

violets must be that man

 

     in his house cohabiting

           with the dark

wife her daughter or both.

 

By Lewis Turco 

From The Inhabitant, Poems by Lewis Turco, Prints by Thom. Seawell, Northampton: Despa Press, 1970. Out of print, but all poems from the series are collected in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007.

 

Related articles

Burns: A Memoir

Basso Profundo

Poem by Lewis Turco, image by George O'Connell

Bordello: Poems by Lewis Turco, Prints by George O'Connell

          S.U.N.Y. at Oswego Professor Emeritus of Art George O'Connell and his colleague Lewis Turco collaborated for for more than a quarter century, issuing annual Xmas cards which are a part of the Smithsonian Institution's archive of American art, including “The Falcon Carol” (13219) and one other that may be viewed on-line, that were combinations of poetry and printmaking. Their first joint project was on a book titled American Still Lifes by Lewis Turco, cover design and illustrations by George O’Connell, Oswego, NY: Mathom Publishing Company, 1981. ISBN 0930000177, signed, limited hardbound edition; 0930000187, paper, out-of-print, but signed copies are still available from the author @ $9.95 plus shipping.

          The first exhibition in which O’Connell and Turco were partners was The New York Landscape, "Poems by twenty State University of New York poets, with visual responses by twenty State University of New York artists." Their contribution consisted of "Millpond," a broadside poem by Lewis Turco printed in handset type on handmade paper by Buffalo Papers, together with "Dusk Light," an intaglio by George O'Connell. The exhibit was held in Albany at The Plaza Gallery, from 16 October through 30 November, 1981, and at the Pratt Manhattan Center Gallery, New York City, from 18 December, 1982, through 15 January, 1983, with a subsequent tour of New York State. The Catalog was edited by Peter Gordon for the Plaza Gallery.

          This original pairing led to establishment of the Jeffrey Sisson Permanent Memorial Exhibit: "Millpond," in calligraphy by Jean Garvey, together with  four prints by O'Connell, at the Aurelia Osburn  Fox Memorial Hospital in Oneonta, New York, in 1982. Subsequently there was a Chancellor’s Reprise Exhibition of the original show in the South Tower of S.U.N.Y. Plaza during the Fall semester of 1994.

         The collaborators had the opportunity in the spring of 1996 to mount a full-fledged gallery exhibition, with the assistance of an S.O.S. grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, at the Rathbone Gallery of Sage Junior College (now the Opalka Gallery) in Albany of Lewis Turco's sequence Bordello, A Portfolio of PoemPrints, issued in a five-copy limited edition portfolio of poems with images by George O'Connell, Oswego: Grey Heron Press / Mathom Press Enterprises, 1996, cased portfolio, O-P. All rights reserved. The image at the head of this posting is a photograph of the cover of the portfolio. This next image is of the title page, and the third is of the copyright page:

         This fourth image is of the first poem in the portfolio, “Jonathan Hawkins”:

 

          This thirty-five-line poem is written in the form of a ballade supreme. In the next several days the rest of the pages of Bordello will be mounted on this blog.