[Image: “Self-Portrait in Mouth of Crocodile” (1965) by photographer-adventurer Peter Beard (who had earlier shot the 15-foot crocodile alongside Lake Rudolph in Kenya). One source says that while the photograph was being set up, “the insides of the freshly dead crocodile began to contract, nearly crushing [Beard’s] legs.” The photo almost certainly inspired the rather problematic “Crocodile Eating Ballerina,” Helmut Newton’s 1983 photo (see the “Lot Notes” tab at that link).]
From whiskey river:
The Happiest Day
It was early May, I think
a moment of lilac or dogwood
when so many promises are made
it hardly matters if a few are broken.
My mother and father still hovered
in the background, part of the scenery
like the houses I had grown up in,
and if they would be torn down later
that was something I knew
but didn’t believe. Our children were asleep
or playing, the youngest as new
as the new smell of the lilacs,
and how could I have guessed
their roots were shallow
and would be easily transplanted.
I didn’t even guess that I was happy.
The small irritations that are like salt
on melon were what I dwelt on,
though in truth they simply
made the fruit taste sweeter.
So we sat on the porch
in the cool morning, sipping
hot coffee. Behind the news of the day—
strikes and small wars, a fire somewhere—
I could see the top of your dark head
and thought not of public conflagrations
but of how it would feel on my bare shoulder.
If someone could stop the camera then…
if someone could only stop the camera
and ask me: are you happy?
perhaps I would have noticed
how the morning shone in the reflected
color of lilac. Yes, I might have said
and offered a steaming cup of coffee.
(Linda Pastan [source])
…and:
You look at the world and it may seem whole or it may seem broken but the world looks back and some sort of reciprocity that is not romantic and is not of any school of poetry or any single denomination happens, and in our absolute attention we feel attended to:
…for here there is no place
That does not see you. You must change your life.
(William Olsen [source]; last two lines by Rainer Maria Rilke [source])
Not from whiskey river:
Caroline In Sickness
Tonight the full moon is stopped by trees
or the wallpaper between our windows—
on the threshold of pain,
light doesn’t exist,
and yet the glow is smarting
enough to read a Bible
to keep awake and awake.
You are very sick,
you remember how the children,
you and your cousin,
Miss Fireworks and Miss Icicle,
first drove alone with learners’ cards
in Connemara, and popped a paper bag—
the rock that broke your spine.
Thirty years later, you still suffer
your spine’s spasmodic, undercover life…
Putting off a luncheon,
you say into the telephone,
“Next month, if I’m still walking.”
I move to keep moving;
the cold white wine is dis-spirited…
Shine as is your custom,
scattering this roughage to find sky.
(Robert Lowell [source (quoted)])
…and:
I know someone who drops houses.
Small houses. Condemned ones. He buys them for nothing and uses cranes and helicopters to haul, then drop them from on high, then he drops the pieces until they reduce to sharp angles and wire and corrugation, and he photographs the drops.
For a while I just looked at the photos — the colors, the angles, the motion. The order of descending shapes. The evolutionary lopping of edges, the cracking of form.
Now I don’t know what to think. But I think I’m supposed to be thinking. So here goes:
The subject doesn’t seem to be the ominous destruction of the family.
The process isn’t wasteful, since the houses are going to be demolished anyway.
I read that the artist doesn’t like to talk about how he does it — that he “never intended the process to be a concern for the viewer.” He just takes the pictures and presents them, massive and simply framed. He is “happier when people react to the actual image.”
But then, his catalog provides all these sneak peeks at the process… helicopters positioning houses for a drop; the cluttered work sites; rented trailers and folding tables loaded with lunch; plans unscrolled like blueprints; disembodied fingers pointing; the artist, central in white T-shirt and jeans, walkie-talkie clipped to his belt wearing his regulation hard hat…
There must be a thousand ways to make a thing seem to be a falling house, and the story behind it big.Oh.
I get it. Making-it-seem.
No houses are falling.
The site isn’t real. The crew isn’t real.
Everything made is coming unmade.
(Lisa Purpura [source])
…and:
On Hearing the Testimony of Those Revived after Cardiac Arrest
Wrenched back to life,
the door of death abruptly slammed
in their faces,
each mentions light
across that threshold
and someone once loved
waiting.I think of Blake’s Songs
Of Innocence; of God
and his lambs on a pediment of cloud;
of harps and incense.
Those candles snuffed out
by the cold thumb of reason
rekindle now:they light up
pastures as rolling
as these Maryland hills;
my father practicing surgery
on an angel’s wing;
the coin of metaphor spinning,
coming up Fact.But long ago I chose
a purer sleep: no lamb
no tiger.
(Linda Pastan [source])
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