Every poem an epitaph, every poem a ticket to ride, from Sappho’s “bittersweet” eroticism to the “wild civility” of Robert Herrick. Martin Corless-Smith is a poet, painter, and translator of canonical poems, and each of these vocations is on view in this memorable defense of poetry as he reads from Virgil to Notley in sight of the impossible blue of Bellini’s Doge Leonardo Loredan and Piranesi’s otherworldly Pyramid of Cestius while contemplating the paradoxes of the finite body of the poet dreaming immortal poetry. —Keith Tuma Querying the embodiment of poetry, Corless-Smith begins in the body of the poet—living and/or dead—and passes from there through the body of the reader in order to argue the mutual construction of the body of a poem as a shared body and a new commons, which, like all things vital to survival—air, water, hope—must be maintained as open and available to all. These succinct, elegant essays perform this maintenance and, in the process, return us to all poetry charged with the energy and insight necessary to continue that maintenance ourselves. —Cole Swensen
Poetry. "A painter and poet, Corless-Smith draws upon the water table of his own gifts to preserve, destroy and create THE ONGOING MYSTERY OF THE DISAPPEARING SELF, again and again. 'Call the beautiful a surge in feeling an atmosphere a reaction a response to the world to our senses but whatever it is it cannot be held fast.' I keep returning to this line as the watermark or imprint of this collection, something that's both a part of the paper it's written on and the means of its dissolution."--Bhanu Kapil
This is a collection of poems by Martin Corless-Smith. Populated by snakes, birds, vines, insects and mysterious lovers, Of Piscator is a dreamscape of natural and manmade jungles.
Every poem an epitaph, every poem a ticket to ride, from Sappho’s “bittersweet” eroticism to the “wild civility” of Robert Herrick. Martin Corless-Smith is a poet, painter, and translator of canonical poems, and each of these vocations is on view in this memorable defense of poetry as he reads from Virgil to Notley in sight of the impossible blue of Bellini’s Doge Leonardo Loredan and Piranesi’s otherworldly Pyramid of Cestius while contemplating the paradoxes of the finite body of the poet dreaming immortal poetry. —Keith Tuma Querying the embodiment of poetry, Corless-Smith begins in the body of the poet—living and/or dead—and passes from there through the body of the reader in order to argue the mutual construction of the body of a poem as a shared body and a new commons, which, like all things vital to survival—air, water, hope—must be maintained as open and available to all. These succinct, elegant essays perform this maintenance and, in the process, return us to all poetry charged with the energy and insight necessary to continue that maintenance ourselves. —Cole Swensen
Este libro ofrece el caso de estudio perfecto para explorar algo que me parece crucial para la poesía contemporánea: la relación del sinsentido con la belleza del lenguaje, con la belleza descrita provisionalmente como impresiones sensoriales, emocionales, intelectuales o imaginativas, fuertes y positivas, ya sea por sí sola o en alguna de estas combinaciones. Hace tiempo que pienso que lo indecible también debe participar de alguna manera en esta relación. Lo que plantea el tema de la relación entre el sinsentido y lo indecible. ¿Es el sinsentido un intento valiente de articular lo indecible? ¿O es una especie de juego de manos que nos permite vislumbrarlo? Bitter Green está lleno de ejemplos perfectos de bello sinsentido, como los cuatro versos que abren una de sus páginas: “Un alcatraz que atraviesa el óleo no puede / y un pardillo sin siquiera un canto / el invierno salda las cuentas todas / el agua sin cauce sobre la tierra”. "This offers the perfect case study for exploring something that I feel is crucial to contemporary poetry—the relationship of nonsense to beauty in language, particularly written language, with beauty provisionally described as strong and positive sensual, emotional, intellectual, or imaginative impressions, either alone or in some combination. I’ve long thought that the unsayable must somehow also be involved in this relationship. Which raises the question of the relationship between nonsense and the unsayable. Is nonsense a valiant attempt to articulate the unsayable? Or is it a kind of sleight of hand that allows us to catch a glimpse of it? Bitter Green is full of perfect examples of beautiful nonsense, such as the four lines that open one page: “A gannet thru the oil cannot / and a linnet sans a song / the winter is of every count / the water without ground.” - COLE SWENSEN
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