Just gone through the Poetry sections of Blackwells and Borders in Oxford and there is NOTHING worth buying. I go on Amazon and order i) the Complete Stories of Arthur C. Clarke,ii) a bumper Cornell volume and iii) the Scroggins 'Zukofsky'.
Then we go to the Science Museum (the old Ashmolean) and look at astrolabes and other scientific stuff. I'm thinking about Joseph Cornell.
Tonight's DVD: Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain. Truffaut meets Proust.
And here's an advert for Crossroads Garage of Kidlington and an anti-advert for Yateley Motors and the Renault garages in the Farnborough-Fleet area. When you want your boot lock repaired go to CROSSROADS!
2 comments:
Hello again.
"Painting has always been an influence on my poetry, though. The year after I wrote 'The Battle', Life magazine did an article on Alfred Barr's celebrated show 'Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism' at the Museum of Modern Art. I think it was at that moment I realised I wanted to be a Surrealist, or rather that I already was one. It was nice to know I was something and to know what that something was. For years I pored over that issue of Life, and then found some more examples in the museum library, including View magazine and a book about Joseph Cornell, who immediately became my favorite artist and has remained one to this day."
John Ashbery, 'Robert Frost Medal Address', 28 April 1995 (from Selected Prose, Carcanet, 2004) -- purchased in Blackwell's, Oxford.
See also 'Pantoum', Ashbery's poem contribution to A Joseph Cornell Album (Da Capo, 2002) -- no doubt you have this already. Also Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell (NY Review of Books, 2007) by Charles Simic. I like Simic, even if he belongs to that more conservative tradn.
Cordially yours,
Walrus
Yes, thanks for this - Cornell does seem to be a not-so-secret 'source' for several of the writers we like. When I first found the Simic volume (in a secondhand warehouse near Wall Street in New York) I thought it was a SIGN. Then I read it and liked it less than I'd hoped.
Do you know the short films by i) The Brothers Quay and ii) Jan Svankmayer? These seem to be fellow spirits - although it's perhaps dangerous to press the similarities too far.
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