POEM with artwork - after Jay Defeo's The Rose

Cosmic Super Nova, Mountain, Flower, Nirvana

on Jay Defeo's the Rose 

 

On top: The Rose, Bottom:
my response to it

At the start was a vague idea

 about climbing mountains, the forms,

 the form   of mountains

It became   a mountain of paint

a canvas 11 feet high,
8 feet wide, 11 inches deep

A mountain eight years long.

There were brushes for painting it up, 

slathering on the peaks

Knives for carving down the crevasses

making symmetric straits and canyons of implosion

hacking away material

to get down into the mythical center

of this inverse starburst..

Cleaning the brushes

sharpening the knives

day after day, month after month

year on year, the daily wrestling

the readiness to cascade to the center 

of toil her commitment leading deep, 

and growing deeper though glistening white

Like the expansion and contraction 

of a universe And those opposing planetary forces

the building up and the wearing away, 

 the building up the carving down into 

 the building up despite the erosion of sharpened steel 

 in her own two hands she shaped it with 2300 pounds of oil paint.

And when it was done it lurked behind a wall

like a dormant volcano 

or a lover you no longer want as a roommate

and she refused to paint for years

Later she painted smaller-sized botanicals, 

little but weighty abstracts as if the literal enormity 

had gone out of her.

Eventually the mountain went down the fire escape 

They took out the window took out the wall 

to get it out of the Filmore Street studio

to let it unfold in public view 

let it flower, this endless road

this journey of making

the name came late,

The Rose, 

a concentric flower

petals, arrayed around a center
of daily sweat followed by stillness

its silvery shimmering a monument 

of whites of lights and highs accented 

by shadowed abyss, this human reaching 

for meaning reaching and collapsing

 into the event horizon of art

c MM Walker  2011
written for a Free Poets Collective reading  celebrating the Women Beat-ear poets, writers and artists, held at Broad Street Books in Middletown

Update: It's on display at the Whitney currently http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/JayDeFeo

Honoring The Women Beats

Helen Peterson

Yvon Cormier

An event called Women Beat Era Poets/Authors/Artisits: A Celebration, took place at Broad Street Bookstore in Middletown, CT on Sunday. Like most women during the 50s, they were a bit under-exposed, and despite their own rebellions they seemed overshadowed at the time by their outlaw men.  I have to admit I enjoyed listening to their work.
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 Poet Yvon Cormier who organized the event, asked to me read poems representing someone, and I chose Jay Defeo - a visual artist rather than a poet, who now in retrospect is considered one of the definitive American Abstract Expressionists.
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Joan Kantor

Colon Haskins

For the occasion I put together six poems, five so called found poems gleaned from her own words as found in a lengthy oral history interview with Defeo conducted around 1976. The last was a reaction poem to her monumental one ton painting, The Rose which was eleven feet high, eight feet wide, 11 inches deep and eight years of effort long. It's now owned by the Whitney Museum.
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Dolores Lawler

Mad Mar Walker

The former Poet Laureate of Long Island, George Wallace was suppoed to read Janine Pommy Vega. He was unable to come at the last minute so Dolores Lawler read Pommy Vega's work instead, as well as some some Denise Levertov and some of her own. Helen Peterson, co-editor of the Waterhouse Review read Diane DiPrima, Joan Kantor, author of Shadow Sounds, read Hettie Jones, Yvon, who organized the reading, read Mary Fabilli and Colin,Haskins, who's put out a whole slew of fine poetry chapbooks and started the Free Poets Collective among many other ventures, read Elise Cowen.
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Robin Sampson

Sympetalous

 I only have two pics from the open mic, Robin Sampson and Sympetalous.  I have video but give me a month or two to sort that out.

According to the press release: This event is proudly presented by the FREE POETS COLLECTIVE, IN COLLABORATION WITH BROAD STREET BOOKS & CAFÉ, The Wesleyan Bookstore. The next Free Poets Collective event is Farmtober on 10/22, 1-4 at Fort Hill Farms in Thompson, CT