Rothko
by
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SIXTEEN {Rothko was a ruminator who, like the young man in his pajamas, . . . [aspired] to consider his moves. He was both impulsive and deliberate. J.E.B.B.} There came in all my lives a slackening of drives, a stasis. Somewhere within the colors on the canvas, paper, was a Message—that torment was the contract simply for living, That conquest was contracted far beyond the self or manic Motion of forgiving. I knew what seemed was never ours Before, and yet no verbal motion could restate it, that ars Poetica were seldom without its torture, that grief is often Rupture, death often Rapture; and where this immolation Purchased final structure. There was a fullness that WAS, Finally fracture. I had gone on beyond luminosity or even Color; the browns, the grays the whites were isolation of, And by the self and past the whole; I struggled to be soul.
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About the Book
"Rothko," the title long-poem of this slim volume, is an attempt to crystallize 20 texts on a very elusive major “abstract expressionist” (a designation of which the artist himself derived scant satisfaction) into a dramatic monologue in a wholly new verse form, 33 sections of 6 couplets of nearly identical length lines, each section preceded by a brief haiku-like quotation from the 3 most seminal texts.
This ambitious “deconstruction” of both man and artist in the very act of his gashing forearms with a razor blade, is of interest to the scholar as well as the general reader, for it provides a fresh and compelling view into the psychology and motivations of one of our greatest Americans.
The other 4 long-poems in this volume provide another access to the general reader in particular, insight, that is, into the psyche of the poet himself—“Grove Street,” a paen to a quiet suburban setting; “Mundtot,” an investigation of the “mouth-death” or curtailment-of-verbal-expression in our own contemporary culture, an over-reliance on market in publishing circles as opposed to the more tangible political repression in the larger past, particularly Nazi Germany; “Beethoven’s Teeth,” the dark hole of the poet’s often wayward consciousness, imagery courtesy of 20th Century’s Francis Bacon; and “NORMAN Jack Turner,” the concluding work, a requiem for a dear friend, dead of AIDS in 1996.
The 4 long-poems exist in their own right but also simply as an aside when juxtaposed to the power and originality of "Rothko" itself.
About the Author
This is the poet’s 14th volume with iUniverse and his 16th book. He is “getting on,” at least in years, if not in commercial viability. Generous selections from his complete works are on Biblicalfictions.com, his web-site.