VANITAS : a journal of poetry, writings by artists, criticism, and essays. During its decade of intervention in the public realm, VANITAS came out quasi-annually, serving as a forum for international voices with an emphasis on coming to grips with current world situations. Each issue contained writings by artists whose primary modes were non-literary and featured the work of a visual artist. [www.vanitasmagazine.net]
For the seventh and final issue of VANITAS, we examine the idea of The Self. The work featured in issue 7 tests just how far the self can be stretched, partially as an exercise in self-expression, partially in search of what used to be called experience. Self, not so much in personae as in faces, in the sense the Mods used the term — referring to someone with style, perhaps within a culture of style, but an individual expression of that culture, or perhaps someone who can seemingly invent her own style, just standing there.
This issue features new work by Bruce Andrews, Mary Jo Bang, Anselm Berrigan, Steve Dickison, Danielle Dutton, Tonya Foster, John Godfrey, Robert Hunter, Paolo Javier, Ann Lauterbach, Kimberly Lyons, Dan Machlin, Gerard Malanga, Judith Malina, Filip Marinovich, Harry Matthews, Michael McClure, Anna Moschovakis, Stephen Motika, Jennifer Moxley, Michael Palmer, Aram Saroyan, Lewis Warsh, and many more. Featuring artwork by Diana Michener, Carol Szymanski, Gerard Malanga, Rudy Burckhardt, and Vivien Bittencourt.
7 comments:
Many thanks to Pam for her swell new book and permission to invite ourselves thereto, allowing us to virtually escape winter for a moment.
Let us arise and go now to a verandah, or possibly even
a Verandah Grande, s'il vous plait.
Should things get dull, which is unlikely, we can always escape, even in the rare Blue Mountains blizzard, like Mertz, through the verandah roof.
Thanks for this generous gesture Tom.
Yes, I am currently living in a house with verandahs on three sides, but it's in the town, Blackheath, not near the canyons and blue gum forests and creeks.
Pam
Tom, I'm up way too late putting a first crack into this interview for Kent. But at least the house will be warm for S. in just another hour when she rises for the woodstove swing-shift. Bleary-eyed I had to come to the blue gum forest and stick my head into the glassy crik, and read Pam's poem one more time. Been there, done that, and I'll do it again.
What is it about a verandah, then, that makes us so long for one?
Here's a verandah poem I bet Pam would know, it's by her countrywoman Jean Kent:
This is the country
Where feelings stay unspoken.
In the home paddock of the head,
Harvesting is private. Between the ripening
Thoughts and the reality of speech,
there is always this silence
this space between warzones
bordering us as the verandah
boards the deep space
between the heart of the house
and the world.
_____
(from 'Verandah Poems: Under a Roof of Rippled Tin')
Pam Brown is a genius sleight-of-hand artist. I don't understand how she does what she does, but you can watch her do it here.
Speaking for myself, I like to clutch the verandah post to keep from swooning.
I'm more of a take-me-by-the-hand-and-point-me-toward-the-hammock person, myself.
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