Torn Awake


Forrest Gander - 2001
    Proposing models of hybridity, each of the book's major sequences develops a unique subject, rhythm, and form. Bringing to light the molten potential at the core of personality, the poems illuminate ways that language, as history read by anthropologists, discourse between lovers, gestures between parent and child, graffiti in temples, or even language as an event in itself (the very experience of words at play), incarnates presence. Addressing father and son relationships, and venerating erotic love, Gander's poems surge with vitality: the energy of active discovery.

Sad Girl Poems


Christopher Soto - 2016
    Their first chapbook Sad Girl Poems delves into their relationship with domestic violence, queer youth homelessness, & the suicide of a close friend. Of the chapbook, Eileen Myles wrote "Sad Girl Poems are revolutionary and sad and finely wrought on the fly… I keep reading, needing to be living in the world of them.” CAConrad wrote “You are an asshole if you read this book and are not destroyed and renewed and see through the poet Loma a way to redemption for us all.” Christopher Soto is originally from the Los Angeles area but now lives in Brooklyn.

Unwelcomed Songs: Collected Lyrics 1980-1992


Henry Rollins - 2002
    A must for all Rollins fans.

Looking at Pictures


Robert Walser - 1981
    His essays consider Van Gogh, Cezanne, Rembrandt, Cranach, Watteau, Fragonard, Brueghel and his own brother Karl and also discuss general topics such as the character of the artist and of the dilettante as well as the differences between painters and poets. Every piece is marked by Walser’s unique eye, his delicate sensitivity, and his very particular sensibilities—and all are touched by his magic screwball wit.

Chalk: The Art and Erasure of Cy Twombly


Joshua Rivkin - 2018
    Twombly carefully managed his own image, writing almost nothing about his life and work, and giving only a handful of interviews. Through years of scholarship and archival research, first-person interviews, and a sensitive eye to Twombly's art, Joshua Rivkin--who received a Fulbright grant to pursue this story--separates the myth from the reality to bring to life a more complicated and fascinating Twombly than we've ever known.

A Chance Meeting


Rachel Cohen - 2004
    We encounter Brady again as he photographs Walt Whitman and then Ulysses Grant. Meanwhile, Henry James begins a lasting friendship with William Dean Howells, and also meets Sarah Orne Jewett, who in turn is a mentor to Willa Cather...Cohen brilliantly reanimates these unforgettable pairings and those of Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz; Carl Van Vechten and Gertrude Stein; Hart Crane and Charlie Chaplin; Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston; Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore; Richard Avedon and James Baldwin; and John Cage and Marcel Duchamp; Norman Mailer and Robert Lowell. Ultimately, Cohen reveals and long chain of friendship, rebellion and influence stretching from the moment before the Civil War through a century that had a profound effect on our own time. A Chance Meeting is an intimate and original act of biography and cultural history that makes its own contribution to the tradition about which Cohen writes.

Agnes Martin: Writings = Schriften


Herausgegeben Von Dieter Schwarz - 2005
    Her "floating abstractions," in which lines and free bands of color emerge almost imperceptibly, can be reproduced only with difficulty. Her writings, on the other hand--although certainly not intended as programmatic statements--offer valuable clarity regarding her own works and poetic insight about art in general. Since its original publication in 1991, this volume of Martin's writings has been a fundamental document for libraries of artists, collectors, and critics. Rather than identifying herself with her Minimalist peers, Martin has aligned herself with the ancient Greeks, Egyptians, and Chinese, asserting that "the function of art work is . . . the renewal of memories of moments of perfection." In combination with illustrations of her works, these texts--including lectures, stories recorded by critic Ann Wilson, passages ostensibly arranged in associative sequences, and "fragmentary ideas"--form an eloquent artist's statement by the creator of "silent paintings."

Blues & Chaos: The Music Writing of Robert Palmer


Robert Palmer - 2009
    He was an authority on rock & roll, blues, jazz, punk, avant-garde, and world music -- often discovering new artists and trends years (even decades) before they hit the mainstream. Now, noted music writer Anthony DeCurtis has compiled the best pieces from Palmer's oeuvre and presents them here, in one compelling volume.A member of the elite group of the defining rock critics who emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, Palmer possessed a vision so complete that, as DeCurtis writes, "it's almost as if, if you read Bob, you didn't need to read anyone else." Blues & Chaos features some of his most memorable pieces, including gripping stories about John Lennon, Led Zeppelin, Moroccan trance music, Miles Davis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Philip Glass, and Muddy Waters.Wonderfully entertaining, infused with passion, and deeply inspiring, Blues & Chaos is a must for music fans everywhere.Flirtations with chaos / by Anthony DeCurtis --The big picture : "The opinions expressed are dangerously subjective." --The blues : "A post-Heisenberg-uncertainty-principle mojo hand" --Jazz : "A kinetic kaleidoscope" --The originators : "Where the hell did this man come from?" --Soul and R&B : "It had to come from somewhere, and the church is where it all came from" --Classic rock : "Musically, we weren't afraid to go in any direction whatsoever" --John Lennon and Yoko Ono : "Now the music's coming through me again" --Punk rock and beyond : "Fear and nothing" --World music : "The world is changing and so is our music" --Morocco : "We fell through each other, weightless, into the sky" --On the edge : "Listen, as if a new world had suddenly opened up" --Sonic guitar maelstrom : "All hail the overdriven amp."

Littlefoot: A Poem


Charles Wright - 2007
    Littlefoot, the eighteenth book from one of this country's most acclaimed poets, is an extended meditation on mortality, on the narrator's search of the skies for a road map and for last instructions on "the other side of my own death." Following the course of one year, the poet's seventieth, we witness the seasons change over his familiar postage stamps of soil, realizing that we are reflected in them, that the true affinity is between writer and subject, human and nature, one becoming the other, as the river is like our blood, "it powers on, / out of sight, out of mind." Seeded with lyrics of old love songs and spirituals, here we meet solitude, resignation, and a glad cry that while a return to the beloved earth is impossible, "all things come from splendor," and the urgent question that the poet can't help but ask: "Will you miss me when I'm gone?

Gustav Klimt: Drawings & Watercolours


Rainer Metzger - 2005
    One of the most fascinating representatives of the Belle Epoque, Klimt is chenshed for his rich use of ornament and his paintings of fin de siecle Viennese high society, which bring to life the decadence of the era through vibrant colours and patterns. Yet there can be no doubt about Klimt's greatness as a draughtsman. Remarkable above all is the intensely sensual mood that he establishes in his limpid, fluid drawings and watercolours; the line with which his subjects are described explores and caresses as though the drawing itself was an act of seduction. Here, Rainer Metzger brings together hundreds of Klimt's works on paper in a way that enriches our knowledge of the artist and enhances the visual impact of his oeuvre. Many revolve around Klimt's taboo-breaking main themes - the naked woman, erotica and homoerotica - while others provide allegorical and historical insights. Between these...

Gustav Klimt: 1862-1918


Gilles Néret - 1992
    In his own time, Kilmt (1862-1918) was a highly successful painter, draftsman, muralist, and graphic artist; in the intervening years, iconic works such as The Kiss have been elevated to nothing less than cult status. Klimt's unfading popularity attests to the appeal of not only his aesthetic sensibilities but also that of the recurrent universal themes in his work: love, feminine beauty, aging, and death. He once wrote, "I am a painter who paints day after day from morning to night...Who ever wants to know something about me...ought to look carefully at my pictures." With this overview of Klimt's work, readers will delight in taking up that challenge.About the Series: Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features:a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice


Kelli Russell Agodon - 2013
    Created by poets for poets, this calendar of exercises offers inspiration and a place to begin. Whether you are a novice or well-established author, The Daily Poet is an essential resource for poets, teachers, professors, or anyone who wants to jumpstart their writing practice. The Daily Poet is portable, coffeeshop tested, and offers quick warm-ups for any writing group or classroom. An excellent guide for students, The Daily Poet is also a handy reference for poets looking for fresh ideas to share in their writing workshops.

Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love


Kara Walker - 2007
    Over the past decade, she has gained international recognition for her room-sized tableaux, which depict historical narratives haunted by sexuality, violence and subjugation and are made using the paradoxically genteel eighteenth-century art of cut-paper silhouettes. Set in the antebellum American South, Walker's compositions play off of stereotypes to portray, often grotesquely, life on the plantation, where masters, mistresses and slave men, women and children enact a subverted version of the past in an attempt to reconfigure their status and representation. Over the years, the artist has used drawing, painting, colored-light projections, writing, shadow puppetry, and, most recently, film animation to narrate her tales of romance, sadism, oppression and liberation. Her scenarios thwart conventional readings of a cohesive national history and expose the collective, and ongoing, psychological injury caused by the tragic legacy of slavery. Deploying an acidic sense of humor, Walker examines the dialectics of pleasure and danger, guilt and fulfillment, desire and fear, race and class. This landmark publication, which is sure to win international design awards, accompanies Walker's first major American museum survey. It features critical essays by Philippe Vergne, Sander L. Gilman, Thomas McEvilley, Robert Storr and Kevin Young, as well as an illustrated lexicon of recurring themes and motifs in the artist's most influential installations by Yasmil Raymond, more than 200 full-color images, an extensive exhibition history and bibliography, and a 36-page insert by the artist.

Human Anatomy Made Amazingly Easy


Christopher Hart - 2000
    Avoiding complex charts of muscles and bones that are more helpful to doctors than to artists, this book’s refreshing approach teaches anatomy from a cartoonist/illustrator’s point of view. For example, there are many large and small muscles in the neck, all rendered in great detail in most anatomy books, but here, master teacher Christopher Hart shows only the four that are visible and need to be drawn. His clear instruction helps readers to visualize and portray shifting body weight in a pose without the need of a model, and instead of showing a mass of facial muscles and bones, he translates them into the simple planes an artist needs to draw a range of expressive faces.

Ultima Thule


Davis McCombs - 2000
    a grave, attentive holding of a light” by the contest judge, the distinguished poet W. S. Merwin. The poems are set above and below the Cave Country of south central Kentucky, where McCombs lives and which is home to thousands of caves. The book is framed by two sonnet sequences, the first about a slave guide and explorer at Mammoth Cave in the mid-1800s and the second about McCombs’s experiences as a guide and park ranger there in the 1990s. Other poems deal with Mammoth Cave’s four- thousand-year human history and the thrills of crawling into tight, rarely visited passageways to see what lies beyond. Often the poems search for oblique angles into personal experience, and the caves and the landscape they create form a personal geology.