Station Louvre-Rivoli du Métro de Paris (ligne 1), Paris, France. La station qui dessert le musée du Louvre est décorée avec des reproductions d'oeuvres figurant dans le musée: photo by Pline, February 2007
Fresh and a warning
coffee, a cracker
Yr hand gripping the roof top
His drums blow forward
The sweat on his shoulder playing war, loving
and jitterbugging grey
pale teal comes across your face in stripes at Louvre-Rivoli
Then --
opalescent pink lights Creeley's face as a star
and whining
The knife in Jim's hand
Bob's knife in Jim's hand
Look back
400 years
The pink standing for fresh, clean lines
Polychromic opal, Bohouskovice, near Kremze, Czech Republic: photo by Xth-Floor, 25 April 2011
Robert Creeley: photo by Elsa Dorfman, 1972
Knife: Jim Dine, from Jim Dine & Robert Creeley: Pictures
Knife: Jim Dine, from Jim Dine & Robert Creeley: Pictures
La Station Louvre-Rivoli du Métro de Paris: photo by K e t y, 24 August 2008
Estación de métro de Louvre-Rivoli, Paris: photo by Payuta Louro, 4 August 2007
Estación de métro de Louvre-Rivoli, Paris: photo by Payuta Louro, 4 August 2007
La Station Louvre-Rivoli du Métro de Paris: photo by Santiagoagentino, 1 August 2009
Paris Métro station Louvre-Rivoli: photo by cys-arg, 5 November 2009
Station Louvre Rivoli du Métro de Paris (ligne 1), Paris, France. La station qui dessert le musée du Louvre est décorée avec des reproductions d'oeuvres figurant dans le musée: photo by Pline, February 2007
This is quite a blast on Sunday, New Year's morning, very different from the usual blasts of New York City subway air I'm used to. It's great.
ReplyDelete"The pink standing for fresh, clean lines"
It really does cut like a knife -- so unexpected.
Seeing the opal reminds me of a long, unexpected conversation I had last night with a woman who knows a lot about minerals and gemstones, especially, it seemed, Imperial Topaz. Waking up after speaking to her and reading and seeing this, I feel better informed for the day. Curtis
Curtis,
ReplyDeleteWhen I was at Cambridge in the early Sixties there were several members of the college who left for a period of time to seek opals at Coober Peddy. Their tales, upon return, definitely raised the conversational adventure-bar at evening table. It seems the standard procedure was for two opal hunters to search as a pair, and when and if opals were found -- they would be lying right there on the surface, but there was an awful lot of empty surface to search -- one partner would stay to hold the "find" while the other went back to civilization to stake a claim. The hazards of claim-jumping were notorious, we were told, and it was not uncommon (as the tales went) for the opal-guarder, left on his lonesome, to go missing. Spooky.
But these sculptures cached in marmoreal subway-platform catacombs, also an eerie space of curious discovery.
Jim's Glyptotek Drawings return one to the strong, bold lines of a renewable archaic. His poems seem conversant with all these divers worlds.
The Glypotek Drawings and some Dine's statements about them are really fine and inspiring. Your opal story is something else. I can't imagine doing anything like that myself, although I know people who might. My friend told me last night about new dimensions in gem hunting that have grown out of our military aerial surveillance efforts, which locates objects, including subterranean ones, through their specific thermal heat. Apparently, in Afghanistan our Air force has uncovered vast gem deposits of previous unknown scope and composition. It's said that this valuable information is being marketed for private gain. Similarly, the Chinese have apparently located large gold deposits, which are being secreted and left unmined for the time being. Sometimes I feel so small -- just me and the family and some friends. Curtis
ReplyDeleteQuite lovely, the words.
ReplyDeleteI wish NYC subways looked like that.
"arallyz"