Caterina.net: <i>Poetry Plastique</i> & Nick Piombino

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{ Tuesday, March 18, 2003 }

Poetry Plastique & Nick Piombino

Yesterday in Victoria, waiting for my ride, I was killing some time in a Big-Box Book-Selling Retail Establishment, and was surprised to find Poetry Plastique, the catalogue from a 2001 show at the Marianne Boesky Gallery, curated by Charles Bernstein and Jay Sanders, and comprised of concrete & visual poetry, "concrete" in the sense of tangible, "visual" in the sense of retinal --retinal-conceptual word-art, with tricklings-in of film, land art, book art, typewriter art & what have you, also including old timey favorites such as A Humument, Carnival, and a lovely plexiglass piece by John Cage called Not Wanting To Say Anything About Marcel*, created on the occasion of Duchamp's death -- as well as new stuff by a whole clod of experimental poets (including Christian Bok, whose interview I am meant to be finishing this week, in spite of having been detoured by travel, distractions and endless David Foster Wallace-style asides such as this one...)

So, naturally, I bought it.

Last night, unable to sleep as usual and up reading as usual, I came across an essay by Nick Piombino (who has an excellent weblog, click 'n' see) in which he writes about the work of D.W. Winnicott, 50's psychoanalyst:

How does the infant or child learn to emotionally and mentally internalize representations of the existence of objects, human or otherwise? He discovered that children use "transitional objects" which reassure them of the continued existence of their parents when they are not present. These transitional objects continue to be needed until the time when the parent can adequately and instantly be visualized and remembered by the child by mental means alone. The process of utilizing transitional objects continues throughout life, and is especially important during moments of great stress. Transitional objects can also be particularly important when verbal conceptualizations adequate for communicating experiences have not yet crystallized.

(emphasis added)

Piombino goes on to relate his process of redefining his poetic and theoretical work by studying the visual arts, and by working in collage -- the collage pieces appearing in Poetry Plastique. He writes:

In order to "see" what I was struggling to do, I needed to work visually within a print landscape, what I would now call a conceptual "holding environment".

Jumping back and forth as I do between word and image, I've worked a lot in such a 'conceptual holding environment', but the idea of this thought-locus had remained unarticulated, in its own 'conceptual holding environment' (which I visualize as a kind of Cathedral of Erotic Misery/Hall of Mirrors/Funhouse, dizzying flashes of past, sense and nonce....).

Back to work.

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* And while you're stopping by the Cage piece, why not admire these Lithographs based on geologic maps of lunar orbiter and apollo landing sites by Nancy Graves?

LINK | 2:42 PM | TB

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{ COMMENTS }

years back, up in Portland, I had a print of one of the Flemish guys' 'Tower of Babel'. next to it, kind of X-raying in on it, was a photo of Nancy Graves with a big-box camera on a long tripod among, as I recall, camels and native somebodies in some hot dry dusty place. the photo was pushpinned on to a turn-of-the-(last)century nautical map of San Francisco Bay.
you've reminded me of that, and how it felt to look at it, then. thanks

msg | March 18, 2003 8:19 PM

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Thanks for your comment. I liked your blog! Didn't see an email for you at your blog page so I'm answering you here! You might check out the work of Vija Clemens - push pinned source material together to make collages...

Nick Piombino | April 11, 2003 5:55 AM

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