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An Invisible Dancer and a Charcoal Boat

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Back in the 1960s Ann Arbor was an incubator of performance Art, with my friend and mentor Milton Cohen as one of the pivotal leaders of the Once group. Milton brought visual arts into the temporal world already occupied by music, dance, and theatre. He was at home with composers, poets, actors, musicians, dancers; the world of here, then gone. Cohen, who was hired by the University of Michigan Art Department as a painter, evolved into a painter whose medium became light, color, and motion. In his studio, known as the Space Theater, above East Liberty Street, he scheduled performances of his colored light, sound, film, projections, optical manipulations, and a live dancer for a small audience who sat on cushions on the floor. I attended several performances over the years. The events were free of charge. Famously, during the early 60s Milton arranged for an entire crew along with all his Space Theater components to perform at the Venice Biennale and subsequent tour of additi...
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As Well As Visiting Brice Marden's Virgin Studio

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Of a Parking Lot Minus Vehicles The cat is in the kitchen nudging the spoon in his bowl to reach that last morsel beneath His moist black nose sparkles the way fresh tar does I hear him still pushing the metal spoon and now the non-sequiturs: Filled cracks in an empty parking lot A jumbled web of shining tar And of visiting Brice Marden’s virgin studio before the floor trembled in fear of paint Written oh so many years ago, after visiting Marden in his then pristine, new studio, before he had done a lick of work. It was a day after visiting Frank Stella's firehouse studio where he showed off his little model of cigar smoke inspired sculpture. Stel...
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Homage to Ellsworth Kelly

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Homage to Ellsworth Kelly While certainly an unintentional homage to Kelly This work is created by a poster-putter-upper Down in the Paris Metro As a word of explanation those who maintain the Metro advertising posters use green and blue paper to cover offensive vandalism of commercial posters What was covered over in this case could have been anything from a vulgar word to an obscene drawing Regardless, this “editing” has a bit of panache and seems Kelly-like It seems inspired to take Kelly to another level an off-balance asymmetrical push and pull of crisp blue and clear green with a distortion of what is an actual square shape pasted to a curved wall I would love the opportunity to pay actual homage to Ellsworth Kelly by devoting the poster slots of a complete Metro Station to such images
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Five Roman Forum Poems

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Five Roman Forum Poems One, Getting Lost The first taxi driver got lost He knew how to navigate Using Google Google knows where the Roman Forum is NOT Where the entrance is We hailed a second cab Two, Our Tour Guide’s Foot Our tour guide was on crutches Making the tour pace Deliberate and detailed She took her time Old stones are not in a hurry The path bumpy Our daughter with an injured foot Three, Partial Temples The Basilica of Amelia is little more than bits of conglomerate columns lined into rows Each a crumbling fruitcake on a stone plinth One stone a fruitcake in turtle form Four, Visual Comparison Lining fallen stones that had once been capitals into rows Takes me back to the Standing Stones at Carnac There is no relationship Only coincidence of order Carnac held not a roof but the sky Five, Locked Door The Temple of Romulus remains intact copper doors Green wi...
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Young Paul's Scribbles

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A Fantasy Piece with a Concrete Product The artist known as Jackson Pollock was born Paul J. Pollock. Jackson was his middle name. His first name, Paul, had no “punch”, while Jackson Pollock sounded unique. Jackson had a certain ring to it. I use his first name, Paul, for the title of a series of drawings I would have imagined Paul Jackson Pollock might have made, rather than the drawings and sketches he actually put in his sketchbooks and onto sheets of white paper. Pollock's early drawings depicted ubiquitous things and fragments of nondescript stuff, sometimes they represented objects and recognizable forms, but even when Pollock created biomorphic sketches and imaginary inventions he seemed to be "driving with one foot on the brake". In no case do we see evidence of the full-body dance we witness when he flung liquid paint onto canvas. There is nothing fluid about the drawings. This is logical as liquid paint and ink may flow, but...
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Two Laundry Poems: Folding Laundry in Rome & Brautigan’s Craft

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Folding Laundry In Rome Perhaps they were songbirds squabbling outside in the trees They seem not to notice that the sun engulfs them and warms their feathers They squawk in spite of an absence of the dark and spitting clouds that until yesterday had plagued my short Roman Holiday These birds should be rejoicing, singing hosannas Instead, they peck at each other and I stand inside folding laundry before it wrinkles. Brautigan’s Laundry A dirty shirt rinsed in whiskey and put into a hot drier, then forgotten; coming out still dirty, smelling of booze, and more wrinkled than ever. I had entered Richard Brautigan's houses, cabins, hotel rooms, apartments and not only gone through his filthy laundry, but tried it all on, piece by piece Writing is laundry (is this a poem within a poem?) When all the shirts have been washed, dried, and hung. After the socks cleaned and matched put into drawe...
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Paint It BLACK: Shipwreck With Countless Spectators Helpless to Save Them

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That Old Shipwreck Scene Neither that rainstorm in the middle of the night Nor the brilliant sunlit day changes a thing The castaways are doomed Those well-fed victims clinging to a black raft Mounted on the wall in the Louvre Will float adrift forever waving at that distant ship Never to be rescued Yet never to eat nor starve And I say well fed because these are models Parisians with full bellies and not those Who at the moment depicted Had neither nibble nor sip for two weeks Always in torment much like a frozen ball Of worms or tangled marionettes smeared with tar Painted with bitumen a fake paint And their tipsy raft is lost upon choppy water Meringue on lemon pie not yet cut into wedges Never placed on the table with fork and cup of tea Just a raft of people who have perpetually Lost their boat and are fated to float till the end of time Last night’s rain will not quench their thirst None of the thousands who walk through the gallery May p...
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