March 2007 Archives

For those of you who either missed my Bad At Sports podcast contribution, or would rather actually read reviews than listen to them, here’s a post. I’m introducing a work of art in book form by former Chicago artist: The Museum of Lost Wonder by Jeff Hoke, now of California.

“I mean, it’s…so retro.” Browsing through a Rosanne Cash interview a couple of years ago this remark caught my attention. She was talking about a song on a new record she had coming out with the line “I would change for you,” a point she felt needed explaining. A modern woman, she seemed concerned about a testament to a love so strong she was willing to go against her very modernity. I wasn’t a big fan of Rosanne’s music—certainly not the worst among the sons and daughters of famous fathers—but her choice of words struck a chord: retro, a word indicating something backward or passé. I thought of retrospective, as in an art show looking back over a career; and retroactive, more like a legal term referring to the past or previous conditions; retrofit, as in installing new or modified parts to an older piece of equipment; and retrograde. I liked that one, going backward, or contrary to the usual order. Contraries were fearless warriors who rode their horses backwards. I suspected myself as being hopelessly, irretrievably retro, if not fearless.

Introducing a new Shark contributor: Yaroslav Rovenskikh. Yaroslav was an art and art history student of mine years ago. Now he is a painter, garage rocker, DJ and is involved with music management. Yaro, as many call him, is from Moscow, studied in Switzerland with an American (me) and now resides mostly in Paris, France. I like to think of him as my protégé. He speaks Russian, English and French fluently, and some German (and maybe some Italian after that last girlfiend?). He was one of my favorite students and even collaborated with me and several other ex-students of mine on a group artwork for an exhibition in Switzerland a few years ago. According to his My Space page his motto is “Come Spy with Me.” He’s (only) 25 years old, but has a strong set of quirky interests and views on art and a crazy cosmopolitan background, to say nothing of all the insanity and half-truths I taught him. So I hope he’ll be contributing some unique viewpoints on art, music, Paris, Russia, Europe and more. He’ll be posting under my rubric until we get him set up here at Sharkforum. Добро пожаловать! (Welcome! Or something like that!)

Noah Eli Gordon is the author of A Fiddle Pulled from the Throat of a Sparrow (New Issues, 2007; winner of the Green Rose Prize)and Inbox (Blazevox, 2006), the forthcoming Figures for a Darkroom Voice (Tarpaulin Sky, 2007; in collaboration with Joshua Marie Wilkinson), and Novel Pictorial Noise (Selected by John Ashbery for the 2006 National Poetry Series), as well as The Area of Sound Called the Subtone (Ahsahta, 2004; winner of the Sawtooth Prize), and The Frequencies (Tougher Disguises, 2003). His work has appeared in Publisher's Weekly, Boston Review, Jacket, and others. He writes a chapbook review column for Rain Taxi: Review of Books, teaches at the University of Colorado at Denver, and publishes the Braincase chapbook series.

xi. how even snow can settle on a steeple

Since when? Thinning, the boundaries tore
across a stain of white in the hallway, where

1. A device used for hanging a person until dead; a gallows.
2. An upright post with a crosspiece, forming a T-shaped structure from which executed criminals were formerly hung for public viewing.

1.
- To melt away.
- To disappear as if by melting.
2. Chemistry.
-To dissolve and become liquid by absorbing moisture from the air.
3. Botany.
-To branch out into numerous subdivisions that lack a main axis, as the stem of an elm.
-To become fluid or soft on maturing, as certain fungi.

1. of or relating to cilia projecting from the surface of a cell [syn: ciliary, cilial]
2. of or relating to the human eyelash [syn: ciliary]
3. having a margin or fringe of hairlike projections [syn: ciliated]

Sharkforum is proud to present a post by the talented and influential New York painter, David Reed. He is a friend of mine and a regular email correspondent, as well as a painter about whom I have written and with whom I have discussed issues in art and especially in painting. Reed thoughts are always edifying and stirring, so when I heard that he has given a speech on Rubens for the exhibition in Las Vegas, of all places, of paintings by that miraculous Baroque artist, I asked him if he would write a version of his notes for Sharkforum. Reed was kind enough to do so, although he is busy with his work and with the exhibition titled High Times Hard Times New York Paintings 1967–1975, on which he served as advisor to the curator Katy Siegel, about which I posted earlier.

Packing on the afternoon of the 17th we knew it would be a short night, with the alarm set for four, and I’m not sure we slept more than two or three hours before it went off. Wolfing down toast and coffee, we walked to the Bahnhof in a howling rain storm that turned Edith’s umbrella inside-out. We wouldn’t see daylight for another two hours. A conductor checked our tickets that read: Diessenhofen, Schaffhausen, Zürich, Basel, Paris. We were going as the crow flies. Another high-speed train called the TGV runs from Zürich to Bern, swinging way around to Geneva before heading north to Paris. They have a sleeping car you can take at night and arrive fresh in the morning. We were trying to save ourselves a hundred Francs. As it was we weren’t expecting to come home with a lot of money, especially after staying over an extra day and night. But it was Paris, after all, with all that the name implied. We wouldn’t mind changing trains, we said.

Justin Marks' poems have appeared in recent issues of Absent, Fulcrum, H_NGM_N, MiPOesias, and La Petite Zine, and are forthcoming in Soft Targets and the Outside Voices 2008 Anthology of Younger Poets. His first chapbook, You Being You by Proxy, was published by Kitchen Press in 2005. [Summer insular], his second chapbook, is forthcoming from horse less press in 2007. His first full length manuscript was a finalist for the 2006 May Swenson Poetry Award. He lives in New York City.

Day's Travel

Cramped and cramped, your foot you hard stamped
and stamped upon yourself a precious map

The latest installment of the famed Garage Rock radio-pod-cast show named “Little Steven’s Underground Garage” has Chicago as its theme. Some great music, quotations and more. Go to the site at http://www.littlestevensundergroundgarage.com/splash.htm
or directly to the clickable “jukebox” here:
http://linux.littlesteven.com/nebuplayer/258/06jukebox.html
Unfortunately there is no downloadable form. The main page’s intro film is worth watching before listening. A lot of fun.

Mallard Duck Next to Path

peritoneum, n.

The serous membrane that lines the walls of the abdominal cavity and folds inward to enclose the viscera.


“Like an axe-blow
the void gusts down under the diaphragm
and now it’s the purpled rose
whose tongue explores
the peritoneum
in angelic vacancy”

--Robert Marteau, “Circe”

Mark Turcotte (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) is author of three poetry collections, including The Feathered Heart (Michigan State University Press, revised 1998) and Exploding Chippewas (Triquarterly Books/Northwestern University Press , 2002). His work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, POETRY, and TriQuarterly, as well as other journals. Turcotte was the recipient of a 2001/02 Lannan Foundation Literary Completion Grant, and was awarded two Literary Fellowships by the Wisconsin Arts Board. He now lives and works out of Kalamazoo, where he is part the MFA Program at Western Michigan University. *Cover art by Tony Fitzpatrick.

Go

Back when I used to be Indian
I am gripping the wheel with both

I wish to introduce a new word and a new phrase into the international artworld dialogue. The Dictatorship of the Consensoriat. Please assist me by using it every chance you get. Forming neologisms is one of my favorite diversions, especially now that I have been learning Latin. It may be a slightly arcane hobby, but I enjoy it, and terminology can control far more of ones thought processes than we are often happy to admit — therefore, why not grab the bull by the horns and begin to develop our own phrases for what we feel it is necessary to discuss or critique. Shakespeare created words like amazement and radiance, which have become commonplace. These made-up words have stood the test of time because they expressed notions people wanted to articulate, and because they were understandable. Let's hope I can do something similar, if less inspired. In fact, Shakespeare, in his plays, sonnets, and poems, used approximately 17,677 different words —and of those 17,677 words, 1,700 were brand-new, coined by him.

As David Reed says, "Hard times are good times for painting."

The exhibit High Times Hard Times New York Paintings 1967–1975 features over forty significant works by thirty artists and is on view at the National Academy Museum until April 22, 2007. Curator Katy Siegel and David Reed, who served as the exhibit’s advisor, discuss the work and artists included in this broad survey of experimental abstract painting in an encouraging interview published in the Brooklyn Rail, the magazine of art criticism and discussion by Phong Bui.

Mary Biddinger was born in Fremont, California. She grew up in Illinois and Michigan, and received degrees from The University of Michigan, Bowling Green State University, and The University of Illinois at Chicago. She is currently an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Akron. She is an Associate Editor of the literary magazine RHINO. Her poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, Notre Dame Review, Ploughshares, and numerous others. Her first book, Prairie Fever, is now available from Steel Toe Books. You can visit her blog here. (Give this woman a chili pepper and buy her book!)

Drift

What you did that day
beneath the tracks

That's right kids, Sharkforum's very own John Kruth has published what promises to be the definitive text on one of America's greatest songwriters ever, Townes Van Zandt. This is no vanity press, it's the venerable Da Capo Press. We here at SF are proud as punch, and will continue to post reviews. It will also be available at bookstores worldwide beginning this monday, March 5.

Following the jump is a review from the Nashville Scene.