In poetry, as in music, for me it’s sometimes a matter of the right work at the right time— finding just the excellence I didn’t know I needed until that moment of discovery. In Alfred Corn’s splendid new book _Unions_, his vision of a potter’s reject-dump, in “Out Behind the Kiln.” This second stanza: Pine needles released from the permanent sighing overhead year after productive year have accumulated, mulching the discards in, solid colors, corrugations, calligraphic fragments though broken, a readable summary of evolving skills. And the the final stanzas vision of an apparently whole earthenware Buddha amid the “painted illusion.” In the mysterious ways of art and the need for it, what the doctor ordered, today.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 17:41:28 +0000