SHARKFORUM: OPINION WITH TEETH

SHARKFORUM: OPINION WITH TEETH tag:www.sharkforum.org,2009-10-16://1 2012-01-03T13:05:57Z Movable Type 4.32-en Podcast of and from the Venice Biennale 2011, the Accademia Museum and the Museo Correr tag:www.sharkforum.org,2012://1.2662 2012-01-03T12:49:30Z 2012-01-03T13:05:57Z

Mark Staff Brandl http://www.markstaffbrandl.com/

This week: Happy 2012! Bad at Sports kicks off the new year with Mark Staff Brandl reporting from Venice 2011!

A Venice Biennale 2011 extravaganza. Mark Staff Brandl is in the City of St. Mark. Brandl, the Central European Bureau and VaporettoShark, traverses and discusses his way through this huge international festival with sporadic assistance from Peter Stobbe, Claudia Tolusso, Manuela Gritsch, Elisabeth Payer, Tamara Remus, Lucas Malsch, Adam Vogt, Sarah Rohner, Johanna Gschwend, Marc Bless, Manuel Ackermann, Chandra Marquart and others from the Art Academy of Liechtenstein. He covers many of the national pavilions at the Giardini park, discusses much of the Centrale and even works his way through all of the massive Arsenale. Furthermore, at the end Dr. Mark and Dr. Peter visit and discuss some thrilling old paintings at the Accademia, the wonderful Venetian Museum and go to a retrospective of Julian Schnabel in the Museo Correr, located in the Piazza San Marco. Whew. Viva la Serenissima!
]]> This is the 54th incarnation of this show, probably the most important contemporary art exhibition. It takes place once every two years, the first Biennale being held in 1895. The Exhibition this year, titled ILLUMInations was curated by Bice Curiger; it is the largest yet, spreading over 108,000 square feet between the Giardini and the Arsenale, and features 83 artists from all over the world. The Accademia art museum is situated on the south bank of the Grand Canal, within the sestiere of Dorsoduro. It was founded in 1750 and contains among a huge number of others, works by Bellini, Guardi, Giorgione, Pietro Longhi, Lorenzo Lotto, Mantegna, Tiepolo, Titian, Veronese, Vasari, and Mark's great favorite: Tintoretto. The Museo Correr is the civic museum of Venice and extends along the south side of the Piazza. It holds art, documents, artifacts, and maps that chart the history of Venice across the centuries. It has also has shown one person exhibitions of contemporary artist such as Anselm Kieffer, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, and Enzo Cucci.

Link: http://badatsports.com/2012/episode-331-venice-2011/]]> the Collapsible KUNSTHALLE™ an exhibition of paintings by Julia Kubik, 2011 tag:www.sharkforum.org,2011://1.2661 2011-08-17T13:08:01Z 2011-08-17T13:17:08Z

An exhibition of paintings by Julia Kubik in the Collapsible Kunsthalle, which at this time has been in the Art Academy of Liechtenstein for a residence. Link.

Mark Staff Brandl http://www.markstaffbrandl.com/

An exhibition of paintings by Julia Kubik in the Collapsible Kunsthalle, which at this time has been in the Art Academy of Liechtenstein for a residence.

Link.

]]> Julia Kubik (1994) is a student at the Art Acadmy of Liechtenstein. She is a painter and photographer with interest in theatre and scenography. The paintings in this exhibition are in design marker on museum board with the last having elements of collage as well. Bad at Sports Podcast: Basel Art Fair Opening 2011 tag:www.sharkforum.org,2011://1.2660 2011-08-01T08:42:40Z 2011-08-01T08:45:15Z

This week: Mark Staff Brandl reports from Art Basel 2011! Link here: http://badatsports.com/2011/episode-308-basel-2011/

Mark Staff Brandl http://www.markstaffbrandl.com/

This week: Mark Staff Brandl reports from Art Basel 2011! Link here: http://badatsports.com/2011/episode-308-basel-2011/

]]> . Articles about Peoria Contemporary Art Center Installation tag:www.sharkforum.org,2011://1.2659 2011-07-20T13:26:51Z 2011-07-20T13:38:17Z

Mark Staff Brandl http://www.markstaffbrandl.com/

]]> Review of Christian Wiman's Every Riven Thing by Anthony Opal tag:www.sharkforum.org,2011://1.2658 2011-07-11T17:34:47Z 2011-07-11T17:48:56Z

Simone Muench http://www.simonemuench.com

Every Riven Thing by Christian Wiman
Anthony Opal

Bob Dylan, when asked why he admired Woody Guthrie's music, said that it had the ability to teach a person how to live. I feel much the same way about Christian Wiman's newest collection, Every Riven Thing, released last November by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. These are poems that, to quote Charles Wright, are born of "pain, and the rhythms of pain," which is to say that Wiman's writing embodies both grief and suffering, as well as a clear-eyed hope and a grounded joy.

In "After the Diagnosis," the poem which ultimately begins the collection, one is introduced to Wiman as an existential being, as well as a craftsman. The poem begins:

]]> when the apple sapling was blown
almost out of the ground.
No telling how,
with all the other trees around,
it alone was struck.

As a microcosm, these few lines display Wiman's propensity toward subjects of depth and arc, as well as his dedication to simplicity and directness. One can also sense the pressure that Wiman imposes upon his language, the form. Though just as in lived reality, this form is not fixed-- it adapts to the subject, just as the subject adapts to the form. This discerning restraint is a fixture in Wiman's poetics. The poem continues:

It must have been luck,
he thought for years, so close
to the house it grew.
It must have been night.

Here, with a line as simple as, "It must have been luck," or "It must have been night," Wiman invites the reader into a reality including, but also transcending, the afflicted tree. The title of the poem, coupled with public knowledge that Wiman suffers from a rare blood cancer, is to assume that the author sees something of himself in the tree, something of the tree's reality in his own. The poem concludes:

A day's changes mean all to him
and all day's come down
to one clear pane
through which he sees
among all the other trees
this leaning, clenched, unyielding one
that seems cast
in the form of a blast
that would have killed it,
as if something at the heart of things,
and with the heart of things,
had willed it.

These final lines resonate with an authority that is rare in contemporary poetry (whether this is the fault of postmodern misgivings, or simply a matter of personal taste, I cannot distinguish). However, it is worth considering that the genesis-point of poetry (and art in general) is the assumption that, no matter how enigmatic, there are fixed points of which reality is composed. Wiman uses his poetry to explore such leanings, while remaining clear of those dualisms which can give way to polemics and apologetics. Wiman makes it clear that any bit of wisdom he may offer is hard-won and born of struggle. In "Grace Street" we read:

I do not know how to come closer to God
except by standing where a world is ending
for one man. It is still dark,
and for an hour I have listened
to the breathing of the woman I love beyond
my ability to love. Praise to the pain
scalding us toward each other, the grief
beyond which, please God, she will live
and thrive. And praise to the light that is not
yet, the dawn in which one bird believes,
crying not as if there had been no night
but as if there were no night in which it had not been.

Again, one senses that Wiman's authority springs not from a belief system designed to bring solace or comfort, but from an inclusive worldview lived out within the tensions between despair and hope, love and fear, visible and invisible. These tensions, specifically those between the visible and the invisible, are most palpable in the title poem of the collection, which ends:

God goes belonging to every riven thing. He's made
the things that bring him near,
made the mind that makes him go.
A part of what man knows,
apart from what man knows,

God goes belonging to every riven thing he's made.

The two lines, "A part of what man knows, / apart from what man knows," can be read as a thesis statement for the whole collection--a dualism that Wiman leaves fully intact throughout, acknowledging that any truth, if one is honest, can only be experienced and understood opaquely.

However, one must be careful not to read Every Riven Thing as a book of mere existential agony and ecstasy, but rather a book in which the everyday plays a central role. In the poem "Five Houses Down," Wiman writes about his neighbor's "ten demented chickens," "the mailbox / shaped like a huge green gun," "the wonder cluttered porch / with its oil spill plumage," and "the dark / clockwork of disassembled engines." For all of Wiman's transcendent longing, it is clear that he fully embraces--and even revels in--materiality. These empirical leanings are compounded by the fact that nearly every poem in the collection engages the natural world in some significant way, such as "For D.," in which Wiman writes:

Groans going all the way up a young tree
half-cracked and caught in the crook of another

pause. All around the hill ringed, heavened pond
leaves shush themselves like an audience.

The poem ends with the stunning image:

A clutch of mayflies banqueting on oblivion
writhes above the water like visible light.

The final poem in Every Riven Thing, "Gone for the Day, She is the Day," is perhaps the strongest and most transparent piece in the collection. It is composed of four fragments which at first seem to gesture only distantly at one another, but then, when read in light of the whole book, become a set of north stars for the reader. The first fragment begins simply:

Dawn as a dog's yawn, space
in bed where a body should be..."

and then later:

the mind
nibbling, nibbling at Nothingness...

In the second fragment, Wiman addresses the insufficiency of language, especially when engaging notions of, and longings for, transcendence:

Sometimes one has the sense
that to say the name
God is a great betrayal,
but whether one is betraying
God, language, or one's self
is harder to say.

The third fragment situates the reader into a more concrete space in which Wiman attempts to ground his musings on being confined to language and longing to inhabit reality more fully:

Gone for the day, she is the day
razoring in with the Serbian roofers,
and ten o'clock tapped exactly
by the one bad wheel of the tortilla cart,
and the newborn's noonday anguish
eased.

The collection ends with the fourth fragment, a mix of prayer and wisdom--a benediction:

To love is to feel your death
given to you like a sentence,
to meet the judge's eyes
as if there were a judge,
and if he had eyes,
and love.

The cover of Every Riven Thing gives the impression of a piece of vellum placed over a photo of mist with the most subtle hintings of a face below. One can hardly even notice the face at first. But then, slowly, it emerges. Frank Wilson, quoting Whitman, is right to say of Every Riven Thing: "Camerado, this is no book, / Who touches this touches a man." Wiman is a true guide, not only through grief and suffering, but the whole of human experience-- a poet who wades out just far enough to have a greater perspective, but not so far as to lose sight of land.

]]> Contemporary Art Center Exhibition: "Meanwhile...." Mark Staff Brandl tag:www.sharkforum.org,2011://1.2657 2011-07-03T16:59:01Z 2011-07-03T17:04:07Z

Mark Staff Brandl http://www.markstaffbrandl.com/

Contemporary Art Center Press Release:

"Meanwhile...." July 11-August 27 Gallery 3R Mark Staff Brandl with Gary Scoles and Thomas Emil Homerin

The trio creates a comic book installation on site from scratch, eventually enveloping the entire room. Visitors are invited to watch the process and interact with the creators. Their activities are documented in video and photos, also becoming part of the completed exhibition.

Opening Reception: Saturday, July 16, 6:30-8:30 pm

When Mark Staff Brandl of Switzerland was invited to exhibit at the Contemporary Art Center, he realized this would be an opportunity to fulfill a long-held desire to reunite his friends Gary Scoles of Pekin and Emil Homerin of Rochester, New York into an active creative team in order to realize one of his Panels Painting-Installations, utilizing as a springboard the steady stream of comic-related ephemeral sketches and doodles he and Scoles consistently produce. Starting on July 11, the team will convene in Gallery 3R to create the work on site.

]]>
The installation will commence with a batch of collected comic-art-oriented doodles on various scraps and sizes of paper that Brandl and Scoles will have done and collected over the year prior to the exhibition. These have no planned continuity nor are even consciously link-ed or guided in any way. They will be laid out as well as mounted on the walls and serve as the basis for the event and installation. Then Homerin will concoct a narrative from these, telling the artists what to add, complete, extend, or change. Visitors will be invited to come to the Art Center, watch the process and interact with the creators. After a week, an installation-comic will envelop the whole room. The activities will be documented in a video, photos, perhaps even sections of "meta-comic" where sequences about the creation of the work will become part of the completed exhibition.

The opening reception on Saturday, July 16, 6:30-8:30 pm will also honor Minnesota artist Sally J. Bright in the Preston Jackson Gallery. Food & drink will be provided. Music provided by Paul Adams. Admission is free but a donation is requested.

This exhibit is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.

Hi-res photos are available.

Mark Staff Brandl: www.markstaffbrandl.com/

William Butler, Executive Director Contemporary Art Center of Peoria 309-674-6822 artcentr@mtco.com www.peoriacac.org

]]> Dr EuroShark (finally) tag:www.sharkforum.org,2011://1.2656 2011-06-27T20:36:21Z 2011-06-27T20:43:31Z

Mark Staff Brandl http://www.markstaffbrandl.com/

May 2011, Awarded PhD in Art History

Artist and Art Historian Mark Staff Brandl earns PhD with creative dissertation on visual art and metaphor theory

Mark Staff Brandl was awarded his PhD in Art History, magna cum laude, from the University of Zurich Switzerland on 20 May 2011.

He wrote his PhD dissertation on an original theory of metaphor in visual art.

Dr Brandl's book, titled Metaphor(m): Engaging a Theory of Central Trope in Art, presents and embodies his thesis that the formal, technical and stylistic aspects of artists' approaches concretely manifest content in culturally and historically antithetical ways through a uniquely discovered trope. His philosophy, termed metaphor(m) or the theory of central trope, is grounded in conceptual metaphor and cognitive science, particularly that of George Lakoff, as well as Harold Bloom's idea of poetic misprision. Brandl's concept is applied to painting, installation at, electronic media, the expanded text concept, art history timeline models, comics, and artistic cultural inheritance. This dissertation is in the traditional form of a book, but with the addition of paintings and sections in sequential comic form as well as an actual installation comprised largely of paintings.
]]> The famed philosopher Arthur Danto says of Brandl's dissertation that "there cannot be many dissertations that are quite that creative and colorful." Art historian James Elkins concurs, saying "it is the most colorful dissertation ever!"

Brandl's dissertation is now in the process of being expanded and translated into an art exhibition and installation with the curatorial advice of Markus Landert, Director of the Art Museum of Thurgovia Switzerland.

Mark Staff Brandl was born in 1955 near Chicago, where he lived for many years. He has lived primarily in Switzerland since 1988. Before earning his PhD, he studied at the University of Illinois (B.F.A. in Painting), Illinois State University (Art History), Columbia Pac University (M.A. in Art History and Literature).

He is docent in art history and painting at the Art Academy of Liechtenstein and the Higher Technical College for Visual Art, St.Gallen Switzerland. Brandl is active internationally as an artist since 1980, has won various awards, had many publications and had numerous exhibitions. His shows include galleries and museums in the US, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Egypt, the Caribbean; specific cities include Paris, Moscow, Chicago, Los Angeles, London and New York. As a critic, he is a contributor to London's The Art Book, Chicago's Proximity magazine and New York's Art in America. Works of his have been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Victoria and Albert Museum in London, The Whitney Museum in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the St.Gallen Art Museum, the Art Museum of Thurgovia, The E.T.H. Graphic Collection in Zurich, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the International Museum of Cartoon Art, the Art Museum Olten and others.

Link for images: http://www.markstaffbrandl.com/press-images/BrandlPhD_images.html
]]> Brandl: Four Works tag:www.sharkforum.org,2011://1.2655 2011-06-04T17:08:41Z 2011-06-04T17:11:23Z

(click on image to enlarge) A horizontal-scrolling doc of images of a few of my more recent works. Made for the profile on me at the Höhere Fachschule Bildende Kunst St Gallen Switzerland.

Mark Staff Brandl http://www.markstaffbrandl.com/

(click on image to enlarge)

A horizontal-scrolling doc of images of a few of my more recent works. Made for the profile on me at the Höhere Fachschule Bildende Kunst St Gallen Switzerland.
]]> . Interview with Dean Rader tag:www.sharkforum.org,2011://1.2654 2011-05-28T17:52:36Z 2011-05-28T19:09:40Z

Simone Muench http://www.simonemuench.com

Dean Rader is professor of English at the University of San Francisco where he held the National Endowment for the Humanities Chair. Rader's debut poetry collection, Works and Days won the 2010 T. S. Eliot Prize judged by Claudia Keelan (Truman State University Press, 2010). He has published widely in the fields of poetry, literary studies, American Indian studies, and visual and popular culture. He regularly contributes op-eds and book reviews to San Francisco Chronicle and blogs at The Weekly Rader, SemiObama and 52 Gavins. Read excerpts here and here.

This interview with Dean Rader about his poetry book Works and Days was conducted during the spring of 2011 by eight poets: Danielle Burhop, Aaron Delee, Dane Hamann, Sarah Jenkins, Anthony Opal, Christine Pacyk, C. Russell Price, and Lana Rakhman.

Q: When I first picked up your collection, before reading any of the poems, I made the connection between your title and Hesiod. In what ways did Hesiod's largely agrarian poetry influence this collection?

Dean Rader: I grew up in a farm town in Western Oklahoma. In fact, up until a couple of years ago, we still had a family farm, though neither my parents nor I worked the farm. But my grandfather did, as did his brother and, of course, their parents. Most of the economy in Western Oklahoma is farm-based, so I grew up smack dab in the middle of the culture, the patterns, and the values of farming. I was always very intrigued by Hesiod's Works & Days. It's a zany text. Rambly and a bit crazy. But, I loved how Hesiod's poem articulated this deep connection between farming, duty, and the divine. It was a trinity I related to on a profound level.

]]>
Q: "A Genealogy of Unfinished Love Poems" and several other poems include blanks, which leave the poems subject to the reader's interpretation more than if you had chosen to complete them. How and why did you come to this decision?

Dean Rader: I like elision. I like indeterminacy. And I like meeting (and gently frustrating) reader expectations--especially with love poems. In this piece, I wanted to write the most common kind of poem (a love poem) but also wanted to make it customizable. I really want the book to love the reader, and this is one way of making poetry more participatory. You can make aspects of the poem be what you want: funny, dark, sentimental, theological or even dirty.

One time after a reading in LA, I overheard one woman telling her friend that they should go home open up some wine and fill in the blanks. That made me pretty happy.

Q: I noticed that the cover of your book was designed by your wife. Besides inspiration for an occasional poem, what role does she play in your work--editor, sounding board, muse?

Dean Rader: Hmmm . . . there seem to be so many ways to mess up this answer. My wife and I have a very collaborative relationship. We both do pretty much everything and share in everything. One thing that tends to remain our own is our work. She actually studied English and Russian at the University of Chicago, but she's not an academic. She works in the dot.com field. So, the details of our work don't overlap.

However, I do show her poems, and the one thing she always urges me to do is to make them more accessible. Academics often have a tendency to write for themselves, to be intentionally obtuse or self-referential. She pushes me away from that. She would say the strength of the book is its ability to be accessed by many people.

As for the cover, she has a great eye. I love the design work she did. The cover is both inviting and a tad spooky.

Q: On Anaphora & America: Your use of anaphora, particularly in "Self Portrait: Rejected Pop Song," is striking, because the repeated phrases do not only frame and heighten the language, but they also steer the poem into commentary: it starts to read like a tiny jeremiad, a list of societal ills delivered with some wry nonsense-type humor ( ex: Just tell me you're the mouse ears/ Just tell me you're the asschord, the asschord ) with a complete drop-off at the end ( We are the logos, the logos/ We are this the ).

You choose to echo Eliot's Wasteland in this poem (shantih), as well as Eliot's use of allusions of high- and low-brow nature throughout (ex: "logos" can be read both as the high Greek "reason," or the "low," American circa 1950s modernist "logo"; see: Nike, Coke). Your content and type of humor here strikes me as quite American - a nod to the silly ( ex: No one is the White House homeslice ) as a means of getting across some cutting barbs.

Dean Rader: Another smart observation. I would add to your good reading that this strategy is particularly Oklahoman.

Eliot's poetry, especially the close of Wasteland can be so . . . precious, so high modernist, so neo-holy, I wanted to play with that a little. The translation of that appears later in "Frog Seeks Help with Anger Management," which again, tries to (mis)align high and popular culture.

Q: The poem seems to be commenting on something, and I think it might be more than the idea of a pop song as a frame for identity. I'd like to hear what your inspiration was for the poem, and how it developed for you - and whether you think my assessment is fair, to classify this as an "American" poem, in the sense that it seems to orbit around and comment on familiar American tropes.

Dean Rader: Yes. I wanted to do a few different things with this poem. One, I wanted to write a poem with anaphora that also took advantage of parataxis. Two, I wanted to play with the ability of pop songs to be both ridiculous and socially relevant. I'm always astonished how eager musicians, fans, and critics are to endow pop music with the mantle of social commentary. If a song can be both, certainly a poem can. And lastly, as you astutely notice, I wanted it to be a tad unclear if the poem is earnest or funny, deep or goofy, an homage to pop or a parody of pop. And lastly, I hoped the poem would become part of this larger conversation in the book about identity and the self as being formed in conversation with another text or texts.

Q: On Humor: Mark Twain said: "There are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind--the humorous...The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling; the comic story and the witty story upon the matter. The humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander around as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular; but the comic and witty stories must be brief and end with a point. The humorous story bubbles gently along, the others burst."

I am a big believer in using humor in poetry, for its ability to subvert the obvious, but also for its ability to surprise, and introduce discomfort. I noticed that you laced Works & Days with humor, particularly re: Frog and Toad: ( Hey, Frog exclaims, God and Toad sort of rhyme! ) and I was hoping you'd talk for a bit about how you think of humor in poetry, and what you hope it adds to the texture of your own work - and whether you agree with Twain's assessment, that there is something American about using form as the vector for humor. (I realize Twain referred more to narrative text, but I think his assessment of how "humorous stories" develop will have resonance for poets; please feel free to disagree.)

Dean Rader: Great question. I wonder, in reading Twain's quote, if the distinctions between witty, comic, and humorous have softened over time. Works & Days has been called all three by reviewers and maybe even by blurbists. How grand that I may be embracing my inner Frenchman.

I do think there is something American about the willingness not to be taken seriously. Or, better phrased, I think we are more eager than most to be seen as not taking ourselves or the world too seriously. We are willing to be unpolished and even ridiculous and to be knowingly, intentionally so. Perhaps it's part of America's ontology--our identity as rebels, revolutionaries, outlaws.

As for poetry, I like it when humor can puncture the puffed-up pretentiousness of the lyric. But, I also like it when humor becomes a form of insight and revelation. To note the comic in the everyday is to be the most human. So, I love it when poems acknowledge and embody that.

I should say that I've never been a fan of the Theater of the Absurd, and I tend not to respond to absurdist texts. Another confession: I don't like stand-up comedy. It almost never makes me laugh. What does make me laugh is the willingness to be vulnerable through humor. And to be wise.

Also, humor, along with grief, is the great unifier. It disarms. It invites. It's hospitable.

Q: On Construction: In a number of your poems, you do not "hide the seams," but instead allow the reader to see the construction of the artifact (ex: "PowerPoint Presentation on the Sonnet"; "A Genealogy of Unfinished Love Poems"). Some of your use of figurative language had echoes of this method to me as well; for example, in your book's very first poem, you hit the reader with two instances of bold figurative language straight away: The leaves leave on their orange parkas. / Winter sidles up like a bad salesman.

You do something similar in the next poem, "Frog and Toad Confront the Alterity of Otherness": The sun was hot in the sky/ like a muffin in a bright blue tin.

These are not sly metaphors that sneak up on the reader at the end of a poem, to sort of stand in as wise denouement; these start the poems in question, and call attention to themselves. I'd argue that they aren't quiet metaphors - and that, like your visually constructed poems, you intend for the reader to notice that these descriptions and comparisons are created. If you do have a particular take on figurative language, I'd love to hear more about it.

Dean Rader: That's such a smart observation. I don't know that I could articulate it any better myself. You've said almost exactly what I would say.

As part of my minor project to make poetry less pretentious, less anxiety provoking and, to a certain degree more populist, I am interested in debunking the myth of the precious genius, the artfully made jewel box, the glorious flawless product of divine inspiration. I believe that poems are made. Like crops, they flourish only out of hard work and a little luck. So, I like leaving the tractor in the field, the plow outside the furrow. It is a remnant of where the human hand was and is.

Q: I sense the influence of Charles Wright in some of your poems. What poetic tradition, if any, do you most identify with?

Dean Rader: As far as contemporary American poets go, I think I'm most jealous of Charles Wright, Terrance Hayes, and Jorie Graham. Wright in particular. I love his cadence, his crazy images that are always just a bit off, and his easy manner of making complex ideas go down like iced tea. Like Wallace Stevens, he a master of tonal modulation. He can write the most beautiful lyric line then follow it up with some smart-ass southern pith.

And, obviously, two of his major concerns--language and the idea of god--also concern me.

I would say I most identify with poets who look to the poem as a language-based way to make sense of the world. I'm more interested in language than story or narrative, but perhaps paradoxically, I am also attracted to poetry whose innovative language is not overly distancing. I like some L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, but it doesn't move me; same with flarf.

I will be more likely to skew toward all of the poets I mention above, plus people like Rilke, Celan, Akhmatova, and Amichai on one spectrum and folks like Bob Hicok, Lucia Perillo, and Troy Jollimore on another.

Q: Your forms vary. Some of your poems are more traditionally left justified, while others sprawl across the page. What makes a poem need to spread out?

Dean Rader: If a poem wants to expand or to be expansive, then it tells me it wants to stretch. Or, alternately, if a poem tends to be about the line, about the isolation of the line, then spreading and staggering lines can make things stand out.

Other times, I want the reader to experience a feeling of descent, so the poem deescalates. Other times, I want a poem to be as much about silence or breath as about noise or words. And spreading out the poem can balance negative and positive space and cadence.

Q: In the third part of the book, "Days," you encompass almost a decade of time in as many poems. How did you go about writing poems that take place over such a long period of time? Were there other poems for important dates between the years that we see now, or even duplicate poems for some of the years, that didn't make it into this book? Was the numbering of the Days poems conceived of as the poems were being written, or did that come as you were assembling the manuscript?

Dean Rader: That's a frequent question. Folks are surprised I might have been working on a project for 11+ years. But, it's true. Except for one or two, each of the poems was written if not on my birthday then around the respective birthday (with the exception of "Ocean Beach at Twilight: 14"). I was interested in a kind of map of what I was doing or thinking about or reading at these moments when I moved into another year. A poetic calendar of sorts. So yes, the numbering was intentional, and embarrassingly, planned for a l-o-n-g time. Some of the poems were published without that date attached to them, but others were published with the dates as part of the title.

I don't think there are other occasional poems in the book, except the opening poem about my grandmother's funeral. The Cuba poem I started while in Cuba but finished after arriving back in the states. Oh, that Yeats poem. I started a version of that on the day of the new millennium, but that poem swerved rather dramatically.

Q: There are several poems in this book, most notably "A Geneology of Unfinished Love Poems" and "[ ]," that utilize an underlined blank space. Did you incorporate the blanks as you were writing your poems or did you finish the poems and then return to them and remove certain words? Do you think the blanks open up the poems more for the readers, or was there a different intention?

Dean Rader: The original version of this poem was written for a wedding celebration and had no blanks. But, the poem needed a makeover to move from a celebratory performance to a poem that could stand on its own in a journal or book. I thought the poem in its original form participated too fully in the convention of the occasional love poem. I wanted a way to, as you say, open up the poem, and to let the reader know that I believe in her.

Q: Besides the underlined blank spaces, there are several other elements in your poems: various bullets and symbols, a division symbol (Curiously, one name for this symbol is "obelus," which was used by ancient editors to mark passages in text they believed to be untruthful. Is there a double meaning here?), brackets, and strikethroughs. These elements are used sparingly but prominently, yet probably can't be considered a thematic style. Can you explain why you used them?

Dean Rader: Again, I like showing the printer's marks, the seams, the stitches, the boom mike, the blooper, the edits, and, in some instances, the options. In poems with strikethroughs and brackets, I'm hoping to indicate that the poem could have gone in a different direction or, depending on how a reader reads the poem, can now go in a different direction. For me, a poem is never fixed. It never has only one way of getting to the end.

I'm so happy you know the printmaking history of obelus. The dash, the division sign--they are all connected. And, yes . . .

Q: The frog and toad poems are particularly compelling; where do they stem from? What inspired you to write about them? And, do they have a personal connection?

Dean Rader: When I was moving from one place to another in San Francisco, I came across my original copy of Frog and Toad are Friends, a book I loved as a tike. It's one of the few children's books I actually remember (along with The Pokey Little Puppy). I was tired that day, so I just sat down and read the book all the way through. There was one story in particular that fascinated me. Frog wants Toad to tell him a story, but Toad can't think of one. He tries all these tricks--going for a walk, pouring water on his head, banging his head against a wall. But the story won't come. Finally, the story comes and it goes something like this: Once upon a time there was a Toad, and his friend Frog wanted to hear a story. But, he couldn't think of one so he poured water on his head, banged his head against a wall. . .

I thought that was so smart--creative, self-reflexive, postmodern, funny, sort of strange, and just sweet. I remember thinking someone should write a poem about Frog and Toad.

A few days later, it occurred to me that that person should be me. So, I started working on "Frog and Toad Confront the Alterity of Otherness." I wanted to do in that poem what I want the whole book to do--blend high and popular culture. I wanted a sophisticated mash-up that would just toe the line between being provocative intellectual and wholly accessible. Smashing poststructural theories into characters from a children's book seemed like it might yield some fun (and thoughtful) poetry.

Q: Aside from frog and toad, you also undertake a number of Self Portrait poems; what attracts you to the self-portrait, and how do you approach it? Do you have any rules/guidelines when composing a self-portrait?

Dean Rader: In general, I only like self-portrait poems that are not overtly about the self. One of the epigraphs of the book comes from the scientist Kathy Steele, who, rather matter-of-factly states that the self is not continuous. I love this notion that the self is never fixed--like a poem--is always being composed and revised. It's also increasingly clear that identity is formed through relation; so rather than write a standard autobiographical poem or a predictable confessional poem, I am more interested in suggesting how the self (or selves) is collaged via that which is not the self; that is, how the self is constructed through poems, art, music, philosophy, science, family, politics, etc.

Q: Your poetry is very verbose; you've got a breadth of vocabulary at play in your poems (which is much appreciated by this reader); I was wondering if you had any words that you tried to avoid when writing, or that just tend to rub you the wrong way; and if so, why?

Dean Rader: Yikes! When I read the word "verbose," I panicked. I tend to have negative associations with that word (pompous, rambly, fatuous). One of my fears is that too often, the poems contain words that might turn off some readers. Alterity, alethia, metonym, antinomy. My parents were just totally stumped.

The book has gotten good reviews--I've been very lucky--but the one sort of negative comment was that the middle part of the book is marred by "postmodern pastiche." I don't agree, but I do worry that whatever the reviewer saw in this part is somehow linked to an insider vocabulary. My poet eye and ear is okay with this; my Oklahoma farm boy roots are not.

As for words I avoided . . . I wanted to be wary of "love." And I hoped to avoid the word "nature." I also wanted to avoid words I kept seeing in contemporary poetry like "calyx." I also tried not to use introductory phrases of setting like "Today, while walking . . ." or "This morning, I noticed . . ." My friend Matthew Zapruder does that well. I do not.

Q: You use the Spanish language sporadically in your book. In certain poems, I was pleasantly surprised by this switch (like in the Frog and Toad poem), but in other poems Spanish seemed to emerge organically. Can you outline your process by which you chose when to insert Spanish, and why you insert it; also, why Spanish, versus another language?

Dean Rader: I love Spanish. I think it is the great language for poetry. I wish I could write a whole poem in Spanish. I like it sonically, I like it semiotically, and I like it syntactically. Plus, it reminds me of Neruda and Lorca. Though, when I do the poems out loud at readings, I am embarrassed by my oh-so-lame pronunciation.

I think I use Latin as much if not more than Spanish. My use there is obvious, I assume. It's the language of the church, of formality, and of learning. I like inserting Latin phrases into non-Latinate settings to, again, create what I hope is both humorous and enlightening juxtapositions on culture and language.

Q: How did the title of the book come about, and how do you deal with titles in general? I noticed that all of your poems had terrific titles, and I would like to know more about this process; do you title a poem after it is written, before, during, etc.

Dean Rader: Great question. As you no doubt intuit, I'm obsessed with titles. I learned this from Stevens who is the master of the misleading-yet-not-misleading title. James Wright was also good at this.

I am a picky reader of poems. I assume if I am not drawn in by the title that I won't respond to the poem. So, I want the poem to entice the reader. Also, I think a poet can get away with a slightly more oblique poem if s/he uses a funny and/or helpful title.

In general, the titles come after the poem. I think of the title as being in conversation with the poem. The title and the poem complete the incompleteness of the other.

Q: I know there were a lot of questions about the blanks that appear most prominently in "A Geneology of Unfinished Love Poems," but also in "Self Portrait: Rejected Pop Song," "[ ]," and "What This Is: 35." While those questions focused on author's intent, I'm curious as to how Rader intends for, or simply hopes, the reader will navigate them--when he reads them, does he use the word "blank," or pause? There is an invitation for the reader to "complete" the line by filling the blank, almost a poetic Mad Libs. (It's another opportunity to talk about the blanks, from the reader's perspective.)

Dean Rader: I was just asked this very question at a reading. One audience member, also a poet, asked why, during a reading, I say the word "blank" rather than simply pause in silence. I had never thought of this, in part because there is not a blank space there, but a line. There is a mark, a textual symbol. To me, that indicates something rather than nothing.

I'm glad you see the Mad Lib connection. I've actually admitted that I missed a fun title opportunity here. My hope is that the reader will first see the blank and see/read "blank" but then wonder what I might have intended before ultimately putting in the word the reader wants to see there. It's all about the fulfillment of desire!

Q: There are many nods to poets who have influenced/informed your writing: Hesiod, Wallace Stevens, Charles Wright. How has your work in American Indian studies influenced your poetry?

Dean Rader: That's a tough question. Perhaps the recurrent theme of identity has influenced me. Perhaps also the tendency to play with form and genre. I guess I'm resisting answering the question because I don't want to make sweeping generalizations about "Native American Poetry." I can, though, see some commonalities with specific poets. Like Sherman Alexie, I tend to like funny poems; like LeAnne Howe, I enjoy tinkering with form; like Sherwin Bitsui and Orlando White I'm intrigued by language on a syntactic and semiotic level; like Linda Hogan, I am attracted to individual lines of beauty.

Q: Your poems have a biting realness to them, do many stem from personal experience? I'm specifically thinking of "How to Buy a Gun in Havana," and how that poem came about?

Dean Rader: That poem came about after a long afternoon my wife and I spent with a local couple in Havana. Most of the details in the poem come from that day. They took us around to some bodegas and explained how things worked. I knew I really wanted to write a poem about the experience, but I did not wanted to be exploitive. So, I went sort of . . . noir.

But, the narrative arc of the poem was largely influenced by the Cuban American novelist Cristina Garcia, who is a good friend. For over a year, she and I exchanged a poem a month. I was always impressed by how her poems had little plots. They told stories. I wanted this poem to be a slight departure for me. I wanted to write a story poem. For one poem in the book, I wanted story to overtake line, language, structure.

Q: If you could drive cross-country with any three poets, who would you pick? And who would you let choose the music?

Dean Rader: Would we all be in the same car? Dear god . . .

That's an impossible question, but I'd pick Terrance Hayes, Bob Hicok, and, of course, Simone Muench.

Hayes gets to select the restaurants, Hicok the route, and Muench the alcohol.

I drive, and nobody touches the radio . . .

]]> Interview with Beth Bachmann tag:www.sharkforum.org,2011://1.2653 2011-05-16T20:58:14Z 2011-05-16T21:54:18Z

Beth Bachmann's first book, Temper, was selected by Lynn Emanuel as winner of the AWP Award Series 2008 Donald Hall Prize in Poetry and won the 2010 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Her new manuscript recently won the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award. Read an excerpt here. This interview with Beth Bachmann about her poetry book Temper was conducted during the spring of 2011 by eight poets: Danielle Burhop, Aaron Delee, Dane Hamann, Sarah Jenkins, Anthony Opal, Christine Pacyk, C. Russell Price, and Lana Rakhman. Q: Many of the poems in the book feel restrained, in their messages and by the form (or in their lengths); you're always edging onto something, but cut away from it quickly. So, much of the book reads in what is not being said, rather than what is stated; the confusion, the mystery surrounding its central drama. Is there a particular reason you chose this route over lengthier and expository poetry? Beth Bachmann:I love the short lyric form: Dickinson, Rilke, The Book of Odes. I have a strong appreciation of silence. And in a poem, of staged space.

Simone Muench http://www.simonemuench.com

Beth Bachmann's first book, Temper, was selected by Lynn Emanuel as winner of the AWP Award Series 2008 Donald Hall Prize in Poetry and won the 2010 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Her new manuscript recently won the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award. Read an excerpt here.

This interview with Beth Bachmann about her poetry book Temper was conducted during the spring of 2011 by eight poets: Danielle Burhop, Aaron Delee, Dane Hamann, Sarah Jenkins, Anthony Opal, Christine Pacyk, C. Russell Price, and Lana Rakhman.

Q: Many of the poems in the book feel restrained, in their messages and by the form (or in their lengths); you're always edging onto something, but cut away from it quickly. So, much of the book reads in what is not being said, rather than what is stated; the confusion, the mystery surrounding its central drama. Is there a particular reason you chose this route over lengthier and expository poetry?

Beth Bachmann:I love the short lyric form: Dickinson, Rilke, The Book of Odes. I have a strong appreciation of silence. And in a poem, of staged space.

]]> Q: You pay great attention to detail in the poem, akin to a forensics officer. Even your use of language reflects this, such as in the first line of "Lineup": God pointed his finger and said step out of this body: the guy who makes his bed from a ream of the free papers and squats at the depot, the janitor in charge of public toilets, the drunk Noah, an anonymous ignudo, my father.

Given such distinct choices in words, I was wondering if you had any words that you considered overplayed in poetry/that you might steer away from or ever rethink before using?

Beth Bachmann: A list of words off-limits in verse? I just received ED spam titled, your nether attacker. I'd probably avoid that phrase. Also, the word numinous. It's a good idea to consider each word at least twice.

Q: In interviews you have said that you titled the collection Temper before writing the prologue poem "Temper." How did you come to Temper as a title, and why did you feel you needed a poem with the same title in the collection?

Beth Bachmann: I wanted to slow the pace down, light the fuse before dropping the bomb. The word temper has the looking once and looking again I wanted; it's a seesaw, in terms of balance.

Q: There is an important balance of personal and forensic details in your poems. How mindful were you of this balance when you were writing individual poems, and then when you were organizing the collection?

Beth Bachmann: Forensic comes from forum, a public place. A purely private collection likely wouldn't be of interest to anyone, not even me. I suppose part of the art of a poem is getting someone else to read it. Thanks for reading it.

Q: In your interview with Nashville Review, you told how you had written one poem, "First Mystery of My Sister," and you were encouraged to go/write "deeper," which led to "Paternoster" and the rest of Temper. What was your process for writing deeper?

Beth Bachmann: It was simple, in that I decided to finally enter what I'd clearly been moving toward. Deciding to jump's the hard part. Falling: easy.

Q: Many of these poems have appeared elsewhere in literary journals, but now that they've been published as a book, do you believe that each poem can stand alone? One of the things that stood out in this book was the consistency. Is the consistency too strong to separate these poems?

Beth Bachmann: I was just reading Rilke: Whoever has no house now, will never have one. /Whoever is alone will stay alone.

Taking the objects out of the house doesn't change the objects, but it changes the room.

Q: In many ways you have created a complex and exhaustive landscape in this book. The panorama of violence, death, accusation, guilt, and innocence encircles the main focus of the book. As readers, we move by each tiny detail, learning past histories and cataloging the way these things have come to rest. What was your process in creating this landscape and how did you approach this process without drifting into mystery writing?

Beth Bachmann: I always wore my seatbelt and did not text while driving, avoided large machinery while drowsy. Clearly, I'm not high-risk for drifting into mystery.

The process is bit by bit. Same field, a hundred things to do there.

Q: In your collection of poems Temper, most of your poems are composed with long lines and you even include two prose poems. During the initial draft of a poem, does the form present itself to you as a means to experiment, or is form secondary to either the language choices you make or the thematic significance you're going for?

Beth Bachmann: They happen at the same time and one follows from the other: pacing, subordination, weight, surprise.

Q: In another interview you mentioned that you originally studied photography, which is hinted at through the vivid and often startling images in Temper. How do you think your work as a visual artist has impacted your poetry? Have you ever thought about merging the two art forms? What do you think this could mean for your poetry? For your photography?

Beth Bachmann: Oh, I gave up photography around the same time I picked up poetry, though I did shoot a short black and white film of Nick Flynn reading Tony Hoagland's black and white poem at AWP for my private archive. Photography involves a lot of waiting for light. Poetry is more immediate and independent of others for the movement and intonation I desire. Bergman's in my ear saying again. Again. Again.

Q: the girl the fawn strips like a fisherman's rose

where a female crawls/ to birth a litter

the opossum's tongue grazes her lip

something is always// moving, suggesting a harness

muse: an open mouth,/ a muzzle

There is a motif of animals in your work, both wild and tamed. Wild animals are a natural part of the landscape you describe here, but your choices are striking: it is not a coyote that feeds on the body, but a fawn; the opossum's meeting with the body seems quiet, reverential. Conversely, you introduce words like muzzle, and harness, which you apply to human behaviors: speaking the word muse, or "mining the sky/ to generate light". These choices, to me, seem to invert the expected: the need to control untamed behavior through muzzle or harness is transplanted from animals to humans. Was one of your goals with this collection to reclaim and question nature - to ask the reader to re-evaluate the essential qualities of life?

Beth Bachmann: I'm looking at extreme acts of violence, what we might be tempted to call inhuman behavior, but what might be more readily human nature. So, yes, the big questions: what makes us human? What to do with the animal in us? And how the human act of writing is attempting to harness these questions.

Q: Your collection contains constant movement and transformation of the speaker. There's the accumulation of knowledge which mirrors the heaven-to-hell progression, as well as the personal journey of the reader in real time with the speaker's. When you set out to write this piece, how did you decide to order it? Did you have a basic structure in mind or did one poem spark a series and then suddenly you had a constellation of poems?

Beth Bachmann: One poem sparked another, more like flowers, weeds, the beasts in between, but, in the end, I had to think more about the art of the garden, how to move the visitor through it, which again has to do with pacing, pause, light, competition, color, shade.

Q: What I love most about Temper is your ability to portray such vivid details without having to use any proper nouns whatsoever. The setting as well as characters become universal through their non-descript monikers such as sister, janitor, and the men at the club. Because this collection is so personal, why were there never any names (places or people)?

Beth Bachmann: I always conceived of it as a collection about violence, not about a person or place. Names seem irrelevant to the project.

Q: How did you choose the order of the poems? How did you put the poems into sections, and what were your thoughts when forming the arc of the book?

Beth Bachmann: I love the order of Tokyo, the gardens of Kyoto.

Q: You focused entirely on your sister's murder, instead of on your sister's characteristics, which makes for an intriguing read. How did you manage to veer away from the sentimental, even though you are so close to the subject matter?

Beth Bachmann: My end goal was never memorial. If it's elegy, it's lamentation or howl.

Q: What is your understanding of the poetic line-- is it primarily sonic, visual, rhythmic-- and how does this understanding inform your writing process? Can you talk specifically about your use of longer, syntactically broken lines, opposed to shorter, enjambed lines?

Beth Bachmann: That's a tough choice. I'd say it's primarily about pause, which is all three. I suppose the length of my line is determined by how long I want to hold a gaze and who's the first to break it, and then the lure, linger, and consumption.

Q: What are your thoughts on MFA programs? How helpful has outside criticism been to the development of your poetry?

Beth Bachmann: Very. I wish I had an MFA.

]]> Babbits and Agits tag:www.sharkforum.org,2011://1.2652 2011-05-14T10:14:21Z 2011-05-14T10:18:38Z

"Every society honors its live conformists, and its dead troublemakers." Mignon McLaughlin --- "Jede Gesellschaft ehrt ihre lebenden Konformisten und ihre toten Unruhestifter." Mignon McLaughlin

Mark Staff Brandl http://www.markstaffbrandl.com/

"Every society honors its live conformists, and its dead troublemakers." Mignon McLaughlin --- "Jede Gesellschaft ehrt ihre lebenden Konformisten und ihre toten Unruhestifter." Mignon McLaughlin
]]> . ]]> Berta Fischer and Group Show 'Chairs' at Giti Nourbakhsch tag:www.sharkforum.org,2011://1.2651 2011-04-16T08:55:55Z 2011-04-18T13:36:09Z

There were two openings last night at Giti Nourbakhsch: a group show, Chairs, and a solo exhibition of work by Berta Fischer....

Sarah Kretchmer http://www.concentrick.com

There were two openings last night at Giti Nourbakhsch: a group show, Chairs, and a solo exhibition of work by Berta Fischer. ]]> The Group show was upstairs in a room that felt too small for the amount of work on display, and the pieces felt oddly placed; neither close enough together to make them seem like a cohesive group, nor far enough apart to give them some space of their own.

I found myself searching for wall plaques or printouts or something to explain what I was looking at, because I wasn't getting much out of it on my own. But since there were no such plaques or printouts to be found, I left Chairs and went down to check out Berta Fischer's work.

While Chairs may have been a disappointment, Berta Fischer's sculptures on the first floor made up for it. Many of them were constructed from colored Plexiglas, and it was remarkable the way the light lit up the edges like neon, forming bright lines of hot fluorescent color that twisted and curled through the pieces.

Some of the work was constructed from other materials which also played with the light, but in different ways, like this white, iridescent piece:

Here's a closer detail of the surface:

Both shows run from 15. April 2011 to 28. May, 2011. Giti Nourbakhsch Gallery is located in Berlin, Germany.]]> Podcast: Interview with Latvian Painter Ieva Maurite by Mark Staff Brandl tag:www.sharkforum.org,2011://1.2650 2011-04-15T04:48:49Z 2011-04-15T04:54:19Z

Mark Staff Brandl http://www.markstaffbrandl.com/

My podcast interview with Ieva Maurite, a young Latvian artist living in Riga. I interviewed her during her visiting artist gig in the Principality of Liechtenstein. Maurite is a painter, book artist and art academy instructor who has also had residencies in Paris, Iceland and many other parts of Europe.

Link: http://badatsports.com/2011/episode-292-ieva-maurite/

]]>
Maurite and Brandl discuss the itinerant European artist life, art study and the artworld in Latvia, Maurite's difficult-to-photograph linear imagistic paintings and generally have fun meandering around art topics while Brandl fails to pronounce anything in Latvian correctly including her name (which begins with an "i", by the way, in case Richard and Duncan screw up this paragraph.)]]> Warschauer Bridge Installation tag:www.sharkforum.org,2011://1.2649 2011-04-06T20:29:02Z 2011-04-07T19:23:38Z

Sarah Kretchmer http://www.concentrick.com

]]>

As seen in Berlin this morning at 8:30am. ]]> Real Art History for Artists tag:www.sharkforum.org,2011://1.2648 2011-03-30T19:36:06Z 2011-03-30T19:43:15Z

OK, once again I've had to discuss why I teach real art history to empower artists, when I could just propagandize them in the latest consensus correct attitudes of a history no longer than a decade ago, or alternatively why I have expanded the coverage to areas beyond central Euros. So read my darn dissertation chapter about it and get over it --- or hopefully enjoy it. Young artists love my approach and are demanding it and are empowering themselves. Link: http://www.markstaffbrandl.com/dissertation/Mark_Staff_Brandl_CHAPTER_NINE_timelines.pdf

Mark Staff Brandl http://www.markstaffbrandl.com/

OK, once again I've had to discuss why I teach real art history to empower artists, when I could just propagandize them in the latest consensus correct attitudes of a history no longer than a decade ago, or alternatively why I have expanded the coverage to areas beyond central Euros. So read my darn dissertation chapter about it and get over it --- or hopefully enjoy it.
Young artists love my approach and are demanding it and are empowering themselves.

Link: http://www.markstaffbrandl.com/dissertation/Mark_Staff_Brandl_CHAPTER_NINE_timelines.pdf
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