Idiosyncratic Icons: A Manifesto
|
|
Idiosyncratic Icons: A Manifesto
Andy Warhol’s Invisible Sculpture
hits the mark on its invisible nose.
Gertrude Stein’s inimitable syntax
cuts to the bone of the risible rose.
Ronald Firbank’s coy eccentricities
reveal more than just one cardinal’s pose.
Mina Loy’s lunatic baedekers map
the terrains of prophetic furbelows.
Georges Bataille’s jaded girls and slim boyos
fixate on bulls’ eyes and are led by the hose.
Sappho’s prolific infidelities
still echo on the island of Lesbos.
Boccaccio’s ten days of tales within tales
survived plagues of bluenoses and buboes.
Balthus’s impervious impure maidens
have done away with flirty underclothes.
Nina Hamnett’s tragic bohemian end
on a fence meant no more laughing torsos.
Aubrey Beardsley’s horny unicorn
taught Venus what to do with her elbows.
Leonora Carrington’s Mexican asylum
is where no one wants to but everyone soon goes.
Freud’s (Lucian’s not Sigmund’s) analyses
flay our complexes from ego to toes.
And John Cage’s famous emptinesses
spring the latch to free our wingless woes.
These are artists that speak to me more than
Leonardos or Michaelangelos.
What we need are more Zazies in more Metros,
more Raymond Queneaus — and more Oulipos.
_______
Andy Warhol’s Invisible Sculpture
hits the mark on its invisible nose.
Gertrude Stein’s inimitable syntax
cuts to the bone of the risible rose.
Ronald Firbank’s coy eccentricities
reveal more than just one cardinal’s pose.
Mina Loy’s lunatic baedekers map
the terrains of prophetic furbelows.
Georges Bataille’s jaded girls and slim boyos
fixate on bulls’ eyes and are led by the hose.
Sappho’s prolific infidelities
still echo on the island of Lesbos.
Boccaccio’s ten days of tales within tales
survived plagues of bluenoses and buboes.
Balthus’s impervious impure maidens
have done away with flirty underclothes.
Nina Hamnett’s tragic bohemian end
on a fence meant no more laughing torsos.
Aubrey Beardsley’s horny unicorn
taught Venus what to do with her elbows.
Leonora Carrington’s Mexican asylum
is where no one wants to but everyone soon goes.
Freud’s (Lucian’s not Sigmund’s) analyses
flay our complexes from ego to toes.
And John Cage’s famous emptinesses
spring the latch to free our wingless woes.
These are artists that speak to me more than
Leonardos or Michaelangelos.
What we need are more Zazies in more Metros,
more Raymond Queneaus — and more Oulipos.
_______
Repetition is an Elephant
Repetition is relevant, she said, a habit
performed since childhood. Like gossip,
variations on a theme, creatively inconsistent.
Harmless as geometry to a ballerina.
First the theorems, then their corollaries;
first the fine arteries, then we put on our
thinking capillaries. It’s fun. It doesn’t have to be
drudgery. Think of the circus elephants
learning tricks to earn their keep
at a trunk’s length and hip to hip;
first they learn to concentrate
while clowns carouse to Kachiturian,
then adroitly to compose themselves
like biographers
upon a fifty-gallon drum,
like ladies in mortarboards
laying it on, while Emily the Elephant
performs to canned Chopin.
Richard Collins has lived in Eugene and Cucamonga, Upland and Venice Beach, Balboa Island and London, Bucharest and Timişoara, Blagoevgrad and Bakersfield, Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Swansea and Sewanee, Tennessee, where he currently leads Stone Nest Zen Dojo. His recent poetry appears in Alien Buddha Zine, Littoral Magazine (UK), MockingHeart Review, Northridge Review, Paper Dragon, Shō Poetry Journal, Think, Urthona: Buddhism and the Arts, and Xavier Review. His books include John Fante: A Literary Portrait (Guernica); No Fear Zen (Hohm Press) and a translation of Taisen Deshimaru’s Autobiography of a Zen Monk (Hohm Press).