Hi Peter: I think what I am alluding to is the use of an allegorical
landscape - at which Poe is certainly an adept, as are your wonderful visual
landscapes. They inhabit an opposite side of the psyche - American or
otherwise - as say opposite the empirical and objectivist clarity that we
find in Williams, Reznikoff, etc., etc.
Your snap I found entrapped in that world (well made but without an
interface with this one). Your visuals, I find, much more 'hip' on that
level - a step away from video game doom landscapes - but so much more
sophisticated.
But the use of allegory - when I think of American inhabitants - is deep in
the surrealist work of Philip Lamantia, and certainly pervasive in a number
of the writers, collagists and painters - particularly Jess - that
surrounded the world of Spicer (whose early work and education was shaped by
the Faerie Queen and other medieval romances, ones that would go into the
underworld. (This is the fifites and early sixties).
There the challenge was to keep the allegory interfaced with the local, or
now what we call Pop materials - a bag of potato chips would appear, etc. A
kind of frisson between the counter-romantic familiar and the journey of the
poem into the unfamiliar landscape of the night soul.
Providence is obviously full of the ghosts you mention - and a great space
to have your work invade, absorb, etc. I think I am suggesting the
collisions between those kinds of allegorical spaces and the twists of the
concrete present - the way all keeps unfolding, changing, transforming.
Hope that makes me a little more clear -
Stephen
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
> Curious association, Stephen.
> Poe.
>
> He walked these streets here in Providence where he met Sarah Helen Whitman,
> said to be the inspiration for his poem "Annabel Lee." I have taken to
> walking here also, almost as a career. Lovecraft's footsteps are indelibly
> etched in this landscape too. I am sure I have assimilated a bit of his
> horror as well. I can appreciate your photo journals for the same wandering
> wonderment and pace.
>
> I am curious too, of the motif you mention, and the difference between
> motif and style, or modus operandi that one is thrown to and how it becomes
> necessary to break away, and when.
>
> -Peter
> http://invisiblenotes.blogspot.com/
>
> On 4/5/06, Stephen Vincent <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Tho I have not looked at the poem in awhile, this one, Peter, echoes Poe's
>> The Raven for me which echoes back to the landscapes of your visual work.
>> I
>> wonder (out loud here) if, at some point,you have to break that landscape
>> open and see what falls out. I guess my concern is that the motif can
>> become
>> a prison. Like throwing the nineteenth century back on its head.
>>
>> Just a thought,
>>
>> Stephen V
>> http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
>>
>>
>>
>>
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