There is much into this writing. I noticed a double "and" you might wish to
cancel:
"surfaces and and crevices"
Opus40 : a great stony story!
For those who wish to know more of Tad, here is an autobiographical poem:
http://www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=313
and his page on the Corner:
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=67
On 5/27/07, TheOldMole <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Well, the pictures aren't actually here, but this is part of a
> collaborative project with a photographer, Dan McCormack. Dan was asked
> to contribute to an exhibit of photographs based on poems. Rather than
> make a photograph that would complement an existing poem, Dan wanted me
> to join him for a photo session with a model, and write the poem on the
> spot. So I said I'd give it a try. The photo shoot took place at Opus
> 40, the monumental environmental sculpture that I live next to, and
> administer.
>
> Anyway, here's the poem. It's not at all like what I normally write.
>
> DAN McCORMACK PHOTOGRAPHS LEAH, NUDE, OPUS 40, MAY 2007
>
> Rock, sedimentary, formed in the Upper Devonian era, striations etched
> by pebbles dragged under receding glaciers. quarried a century and a
> quarter ago, quarried a century and a quarter ago, abandoned, discovered
>
> Seventy years ago by a sculptor, reimagined with the imagining of hands,
> the shape growing from flesh, tanned, calloused, boots and gloves and
> shorts, then sinew and flesh, straining against stone, the stone yielding,
>
> Block by block, quarter ton, half ton, to lever and fulcrum and the
> resolve of flesh, till it rises, fully formed, and again fixed in time,
> complete, unfinished, never ceasing to change; it slopes, juts,
>
> Curves in here, here out, here planes and ramps interrupted by bushes,
> birches, branch and leaf and needle,
>
> Reflecting sun, absorbing rain, swirling with snow or fog, muted or
> brilliant, endless metamorphosis,
>
> "You can't get it from photos. You have to see it, enter it, touch it,
> explore its surfaces and crevices, to begin to experience it."
>
> And so with flesh, not painted, carved, photographed, imagined—
>
> Try to imagine Leah's friend Annie, T-shirt and jeans, curled over her
> sketch pad, into flesh, but you can't,
>
> Any more than you could imagine Opus 40 from words on paper, or images,
>
> Flesh is itself only, and will vanish
>
> Soon enough, like the notes from Leah's violin, into clothes, into dust,
> into Dan's pinhole camera, flattened, later to be reshaped, reimagined,
> digitally manipulated
>
> And why not? It will never be the same
>
> As this tangible moment. You can imagine entering her, becoming part of
> her, exploring across her and through her, surfaces and and crevices,
> imagine her yielding
>
> Part by part, imagine the brilliance of sunlight in her eyes, the
> softness of rain in her breasts and stomach, the swirl of fog
> surrounding you,
>
> But that's imagination, like the unheard melody of the violin in Dan's
> image, channeled into her, form and music melded. Imagination, I can as
> easily
>
> Imagine it with Annie, and I do, my attention wandering, before it's
> called back to the palpable immediacy of flesh, the staccato taps of
> Leah's bow on percussive strings,
>
> And Heisenberg was right: you can't have it both ways.
>
> Opus 40 will change from dawn to twilight, from sun to rain, and
> imperceptibly over years,
>
> As Leah will change in weeks, months, years, but I won't see it—become a
> memory in hours, Leah and Annie, like so many passing through my
> classrooms, always the same age,
>
> But I'm older each year, my fantasies fonder if not fainter, and the
> classroom an enchanted forest, full of beautiful wild animals, tamed for
> an instant, eating from your hand, lioness and roe, the unicorn in
> captivity, but all to disappear forever if you reach out to take,
>
> Well, Opus 40 is enduring, as permanent as things get, and so is flesh
> enduring, though transient, as Leah sheaths her magic parts again, and
> Annie has never shown hers, and they disappear into Dan's camera, Dan's
> car, and for all you know,
>
> She may be the last you'll see, just as one day, though you didn't know
> it, a new woman undressed before you, and slipped into bed next to you,
> and later bent down and kissed you, and walked away, her buttocks
> swaying, and it would never
>
> Happen again, just as one day you will make love to your wife for the
> last time, and you won't know, and if you did,
>
> You couldn't hold it and savor it anyway, and flesh will go on, but for
> you only your own, and that no mystery, only the mystery and certainty
> of decay,
>
> But not yet, and here's Dan's Leah, chopped and channeled like a '55
> Ford, digitized, manipulated. smooth, in two dimensions, and under our
> clothes, stopping in front of it, all of you are flesh, and naked.
>
>
>
>
> --
> Tad Richards
> http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
> http://opusforty.blogspot.com/
>
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