Back from the Carolina Wren Press Reading...

Thanks to David Need who, after my reading, tried to get me to articulate the underpinnings and process of my current project. A brilliant listener (and no doubt reader) David's post-reading questions about my process in the Downburst Summaries has started much traffic in me. Some species of collage is no doubt at work, but i realize more and more that these "summaries" are striving for what i am failing at currently in my paintings...to Realize, as in the (m)any more physical mediums, a Composition, by asserting a family of gestures, images, voices, etc...and toward an abstract Composition, yes, but with the desire to retain Sentiment...to preserve some through-line of heart (sorry)... (and these are my own observations, by the way--not Davids). I intentionally have been reading a few of these "Summaries" at my last few readings as a kind of challenge to my self...to realize them or ditch them. Regardless, David pointed particularly to this poem, with his initial question of process:


RIBBON, LADDER


Hello, a ladder is wrapped in a ribbon. Ribbon creates the site of desire. A basket in the space of two rungs—paused. One of us ties our hair back with a ribbon. Cloth of wolf. Hair parting. Two levels of belongingness and saying and English. Ladder of discussion. Basket hog. A ribbon is tied to a brick like a gift. A wheel spins inside a dug spring. Emphatic, the bum loop. Closed house history. A nest of silver wires—everything does not have that soul.