Smiling, laughing even, the man flung and swung the comically large sword from hand-to-hand. The image of a wide-eyed brown-faced man with a spike piercing his forehead had seared itself in my mind, but now they were somehow in Cairo, and Indiana, having escaped a chase in the casbah, found himself face-to-face with a black-cloaked, scimitar-wielding Arab. The swashbuckling Indiana Jones had somehow escaped a trap-filled temple in Peru with the golden idol in hand, but his local guide hadn’t. In the packed dark of our local theater, eleven years old, I’d been reeling, gripping the armrests in terror as Raiders of the Lost Ark flashed across the huge screen.
#Nizar qabbani your tenderness melts windows#
Jim's poems grow stronger and deeper for me each time I return to them. "It just came into view" - and yes, as Nin says, "So beautiful!" I think you've said it all about Jim's poetry hopefully there will be more where he comes from. I wonder, for example, if you might have happened to see The Glypotek Drawings? Steidl has issued some swell collections of Jim's drawings in recent years. After this search, I will never be tempted to do that again.įew draughtsmen are worthy of having their names included in the same sentence with Leonardo da Vinci, but I think Jim Dine is one. The challenge with this post was also the great private pleasure and revelation and labour and joy of it: a long night spent in the sketches and drawings of Leonardo.Īn artist so great and famous is perhaps too easily taken for granted. They are literally "fresh": with the poems you've seen here, the period between composition and posting can't have been more than a few days.
He doesn't do e-mail, so the poems come to me in the strangest fashion: he faxes the scripts from Europe to his assistant in Walla Walla, who types them into e-mails, which then come to me. I think Jim writes his poems the old fashioned way, with that curious object people used to use. Soon enough, we might have a pile of petals. (A Henry Green-ish title passed through the mind: "Museumgoing".)īut to attempt interpretation or "explanation" of such an elusive, intricate piece would be like an attempt to see a flower better by pulling off its petals. The "plot" of the poem and its internal dynamics really can't be picked apart. His poems don't so much buck the trend as ignore the trend or make their own trend. That one-off quality makes him a stand-apart poet in a landscape of continuous copycat sameness. "There's no other writer whose work this work reminds me of." That's the same feeling I get with Jim's poems. "I've never read anything quite like this." I'm fascinated how the poet arranges the poem and stays out of their way. John The Baptist and Leonardo are exceptionally strong characters.
It's funny: I've never read anything quite like this. The good word from a fellow artist - Jim and Leo are going to appreciate that. Jim Dine: We lived once in an ideal kingdom Virgin of the Rocks (detail): Leonardo da Vinci, 1483-1486 (Musée du Louvre, Paris)Īnother brand new poem fresh from the pen of the amazing American artist Jim Dine. Virgin of the Rocks: Leonardo da Vinci, 1483-1486 (Musée du Louvre, Paris) Madonna Litta (detail) : Leonardo da Vinci, 1490-1491 (Hermitage, St. Study for Madonna with the Yarnwinder (?): Leonardo da Vinci, c. Study of a woman's head: Leonardo da Vinci, c. Head of a woman: Leonardo da Vinci, 1508 (Royal Library, Windsor) (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)įemale head (La Scapigliata): Leonardo da Vinci, c. The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and the young Saint John the Baptist: Leonardo da Vinci, 1507-1508 (National Gallery, London)įemale head: Leonardo da Vinci, n.d. Madonna and Child with Saint Anne and the young Saint John the Baptist (detail): Leonardo da Vinci, 1507-1508 (National Gallery, London)
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