tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post4517984607685974062..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Jack Delano/William Empson: DesolationUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-77818249954217318622010-10-04T19:16:40.120-07:002010-10-04T19:16:40.120-07:00Curtis, what's the old saw, "red skies at...Curtis, what's the old saw, "red skies at night, sailor's delight"? <br /><br />We get the Chinese pollution here on the West Coast, by the way.<br /><br />"Orange skies at night, in future's despite..."TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-70697747009243886752010-10-04T06:28:24.942-07:002010-10-04T06:28:24.942-07:00I think Empson (with the references to modern Chin...I think Empson (with the references to modern China) is the appropriate (and highly effective) choice. When we visited the city of Wuhan in south-central China in 1998, we were told that it would remind us of Pittsburgh in the 1890s. Well, not quite, but I think the advice was basically accurate in terms of feeling. I still visit Wuhan online fairly regularly to try to see if/how things are different. The photos I see invariably show more smoke than I remember, but things always look different seen from the inside.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-44732525228299215372010-10-04T05:01:48.383-07:002010-10-04T05:01:48.383-07:00Curtis, as we have discussed before, it's intr...Curtis, as we have discussed before, it's intriguing to try to get inside these photographers' minds, remembering that the ones who did the most travelling -- like Delano, Lee, Vachon -- were often following an "unscheduled" itinerary, largely, it seems, of their own devising. So as with the Marion Post photos of the copper region in the post below, I can't help imagining that in these instances the photographers more or less stumbled into a hell that was not marked as such on any maps. <br /><br />My first instinct was to use passages from The Inferno in these two posts, and I did find a few that were indeed all too apt; but in the end the unvoiced and wounded land seemed to wish to call out in the harsher speech of an epoch with a capacity for infernal violation far beyond anything Dante could have imagined.<br /><br />(By the by, I don't believe the files of either Delano's Georgia sawmill visit or Post's Copper Basin expedition have been featured in the various exhibits of highlights from the FSA/OWI collection; the responses they might evoke, perhaps too complicated to handily contain within such contexts...?)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-26295194120320529902010-10-04T04:36:02.762-07:002010-10-04T04:36:02.762-07:00Because of a previous Empson entry, I know this po...Because of a previous Empson entry, I know this poem and think this pairing is devastating as well as desolating. (In fact I was reminded on waking up to this of the time when my clock radio seemed to play Desolation Row every morning.)<br /><br />The Empson speaks (volumes) for itself. I wonder, however, what it felt like for Delano to be at the sawmill that day before the Kodachrome darkened – whether things were happy and chatty and what was actually going through his mind. It’s a bit like that feeling you have when you imagine whether after the director shouts “cut”, the actors playing the intense scene begin discussing where they will be having dinner that evening.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com