Monday, May 25, 2009

James Stotts on Instants


A new review by James Stotts of my chapbook, Instants, published by Ugly Duckling Presse. It begins:
muybridge’s photos are as iconic for art students as gray’s coloring book of human anatomy or as little, articulated wooden manikins.

i’ve known the details of his discovery of the lunging tread of the racing steed since i was a little boy. i’ve always known the frame-by-frame grids of his divers walking across a field of vision, wrestlers, panthers, buffalo, men and women, their quivering muscles.

it was a dream inherited by edgerton: to capture the erotic maneuvers of victoria with flashes of light; to invent the exact violence of fist to face, of a struck golfball, of a bullet passing through balloon, crystal, apple—all previsioned by muybridge’s cameras, muybridge’s gun.

and benjamin, with zoopraxis and germ fixed in his mind: the camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses. this was not retarded motion, but gliding evasions of gravity and time.

the voice is a little like frank bidart’s doing his esenin and cellini impressions, as metres does his best muybridge...


read on...

1 comment:

J.H. Stotts said...

philip,

i meant to add footnotes to the poem, too, since it is really a study in referents.
it's a beautiful job by UDP, and, like 'ashberries,' one of my favorite poems (i thought i'd add that, since the review doesn't really pass a judgment as record an impression).

thanks,
james stotts