Sketch  

  by Gerald Solomon                                          

 

Pictures of an artist’s pictures, in a book.

Diego. He sits on a chair. All of a piece.

 

A chair, curve-backed, body-shaped―

already something of a puzzle.

 

(A chair says it must be itself alone

if to mimic human flesh and bone.)

 

A bare floor, an elder brother.

His pen moves for a growing shape.

 

Black lines, thin, to shake semblance.

A net of stress. Brother draws brother.

 

To get it down, if not once and for all.

A sense of form cloning forms of sense.

 

A single sun-ray, yellow, naïve―

the glass of turps on the shelf turned yellow.

 

Incompleteness completes the art’s desire.

Things still become things, otherness inspired.

 

Bio: Gerald Solomon was born in London and studied English Literature at Cambridge University. After a short spell as sales assistant at a bookshop in London's Charing Cross Road he worked as a  producer at the BBC. Subsequently becoming engaged in education, he helped found General Studies courses at Hornsey College of Art, and this led eventually to an enjoyable period teaching poetry courses at Middlesex University. He retired early in order to paint and write. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines in the USA and UK as he prepares his first collection. He is married, with four children, and lives in Manhattan.

 

 

jackson pollock, JACKSON POLLACK,

   by  Richard Fein

 

Place your cheek against the canvas

and you=re blinded to the congruence of form.

Your myopic eyes see only the closest globs of paint.                                  

But lift your head into the third dimension

eye to eye with Jackson as he saw it.

And from this higher plane behold

your world of lesser dimension below

with its counterfeit chaos and higher plane order,

a shrouded rhythm for the inner eye.

 

Titan of technique, natural geomancer,

his brush hovered over canvas,

not with a wild splashing but a measured dripping.

Squiggly lines within squiggly lines,

one-dimensional strokes swirling in tandem,

a three-dimensional symmetry embedded  in two-dimensions,

each line a branch and each branch a branching,

fractal microcosm within fractal macrocosm. 

 

Bio: Richard Fein was a finalist in The 2004 New York Center for Book Arts Chapbook Competition A Chapbook of his poems was published by Parallel Press, University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has been published in many web and print journals such as: Reed, Southern Review, Roanoke Review, Skyline Magazine, Birmingham  Poetry Review, Mississippi Review, Paris/atlantic,  Canadian Dimension, Black Swan Review, Baltimore Review,Exquisite Corpse, Foliate Oak,  Morpo Review, Ken*Again   Oregon East, Southern Humanities Review, Morpo, Skyline, Touchstone, Windsor Review, Maverick, Parnassus Literary Review, Small Pond, Kansas Quarterly, Blue Unicorn, Exquisite Corpse, Terrain Aroostook Review, Compass Rose, Whiskey Island Review, Oregon East, Bad Penny Review and many, many others. Birmingham  Poetry Review, Mississippi Review, Paris/atlantic,  Canadian Dimension, Black Swan Review, Baltimore Review,Exquisite Corpse, Foliate Oak,  Morpo Review, Ken*Again   Oregon East, Southern Humanities Review, Morpo, Skyline, Touchstone, Windsor Review, Maverick, Parnassus Literary Review, Small Pond, Kansas Quarterly, Blue Unicorn, Exquisite Corpse, Terrain Aroostook Review, Compass Rose, Whiskey Island Review, Oregon East, Bad Penny Review, MUDDY RIVER POETRY REVIEW, ALLITERATI MAGAZINE, and many, many others.