What people are saying about WRITTEN EYE: VISUALS/VERSE “Somewhere between what we see and what that vision asks of us, is poetry. In art’s reciprocal space A. Robert Lee’s Written Eye: Visuals/ Verse lingers, bringing to readers “entrance words” to engage their own “witness eye.” This catalogue of seeing, this caressing litany of artistic encounters across continents takes us from the surfaces of photographs, film, sculpture, architecture, and painting to their interior reverberations — and ours. Lee’s poetry brings to this “feast of angle” a wealth of knowledge, an eye for striking detail, and a poet’s questions. From Georgia O’Keeffe to Ai Weiwei, the Parthenon to Prague, take this tour: This is imagination alive, exhaling.” — Kimberly Blaeser, Wisconsin Poet Laureate, author of Apprenticed to Justice
“A. Robert Lee’s enquiring eye roams over paintings, photographs, sculptures, movies, buildings and cityscapes. Whether in occident or orient, whether surveying a railway station or the Acropolis, whatever he sees he describes, quizzes, probes, challenges, contextualizes — and relishes. Sometimes he notices the quirky, the absurd, the improbable, the outrageous, the stunning. Occasionally, he gapes, astonished. From time to time his heart is warmed by the familiar, the undramatic, the quotidian. In each and every text, he picks the locks of vision. Through multiple modes of seeing, these vignettes and meditations reveals a rich, varied world, brimming with energy and delight.” — Richard Berengarten author of Under Balkan Light, Cambridge, UK.
“A. Robert Lee in his new collection of poetry, Written Eye, shows what an eclectic mind can do when viewing painting, photography, film, sculpture and architecture. Paintings, by such opposed sensibilities as Turner and Rothko are seized upon and given Lee’s genial but loaded
commentary. He illuminates just what stands behind the artist and the work in personal anecdotes — with considerable artlessness and often funny too! Unpretentious in style: an authentic voice that we hear vividly on each page.” — Nicholas R. Williams, Saitama Institute of Technology, Japan
“What a feast for the senses! A. Robert Lee’s verse courageously explores the pinnacles of artistic achievement; the fragments of a whole that kaleidoscope and then coalesce in the mind’s eye. I felt as though I had traveled the globe, a witness to some of the finest spectacles humanity has offered.” — Jared Baxter author of On Researching Van Gogh and His Works
“A. Robert Lee’s Written Eye is a wonderful exercise in the ancient art of ekphrasis: the literary re-enactment of a work of art. Lee takes us on a visual journey spanning all the arts — painting, photography, film, sculpture and architecture, pondering and exploring the ways and skills of seeing. His rich language and eye of curiosity makes for his own art history book. These texts are beautiful and full of interest in their own right.“ — Frida Ingvild Forsgren, Professor of Art History University of Agder, Norway
Written Eye: Visuals/Verse
Written Eye: Visuals/Verse A Poetry Collection by A. Robert Lee
NEW YORK www.2leafpress.org
P.O. Box 4378 Grand Central Station New York, New York 10163-4378 editor@2leafpress.org www.2leafpress.org 2LEAF PRESS is an imprint of the Intercultural Alliance of Artists & Scholars, Inc. (IAAS), a NY-based nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that promotes multicultural literature and literacy. www.theiaas.org Copyright Š 2017 by A. Robert Lee Cover art, book design and layout: Gabrielle David Library of Congress Control Number: 2016951240 ISBN-13: 978-1-940939-59-9 (Paperback) ISBN-13: 978-1-940939-60-5 (eBook) 10
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Published in the United States of America First Edition | First Printing
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For Andy Sotiriou (and camera)
Contents
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 1
PROLOGUE :: 3 Eyes Down: “Las Líneas de Nazca” ...........................................5 Steady Eye: “The Great Buddha of Nara” ......................................................7 Eye of the Needle: “The Bayeux Tapestry” ...............................................................9
PAINTING :: 13 Right There: Vermeer’s “View of Delft”........................................................ 15 Floating: Hiroshige ...................................................................17 Curvature: Cézanne’s “Bends” ............................................... 19 Cut-Out: Matissse .....................................................................21 Bridging: J.M.W. Turner’s “Rain, Steam, and Speed– The Great Western Railway” ................................................... 23 John Singer Sargent: “Robert Louis Stevenson and His Wife” ....................................... 25 Vienna Modern: “Egon Schiele (Leopold Collection)” ................................................................27 American Colours: Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Cow Skull” ...............................................37
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Migration Series: Jacob Lawrence .......................................... 39 Cuban Africa: Wilfredo Lam’s “Madame Lumumba” ........................................41 Planes: Rothko ........................................................................ 42 Scapegoating London: Gilbert and George at White Cube ......................................... 43
PHOTOGRAPH :: 47 Henri Cartier-Bresson: “Juvisy, France” ....................................................................... 49 Some Kiss: Eisenstaedt’s “V-J Day in Times Square”........................................................51 Karsh’s Auden ......................................................................... 53 Ansel Adams: “Canyon de Chelly National Monument” .............................................................. 54 Back to Back: Man Ray, Horst P. Horst .......................................................... 55 Sebastião Salgado: “Genesis” .................................................57 Weegee: “My Man” .................................................................. 59 Andre Kertesz: “Broken Bench, New York” ..................................................... 60 Robert Mapplethorpe’s Body Culture ......................................61 Diane Arbus: “Patriotic Young Man with a Flag” .......................................... 63 David Bailey: “Kray Twins” ...................................................... 65 Andy Sotiriou: “Snowscapes” .................................................. 67
FILM :: 71 Silent Eruption: “Metropolis” .................................................. 73 End of the Pier: “Brighton Rock”............................................. 75
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Ozu’s Ache of Intimacy: “Tokyo Story” ............................................................................77 Inside Space: “Forbidden Planet”........................................... 79 Civilization and Its Discontents: “Queimada” .........................81 Film Art: “Barry Lyndon” .......................................................... 83 Shadow Life: “Touch of Evil” ................................................... 85 Frontier Score: “Once Upon a Time in the West” .............................................87 Goddam: Nina Simone’s “Montreux 1976” ..................................................................... 89 Cello Music: “Departures” .......................................................91 Exenomorph: The “Alien” Chronicles ............................................................. 93 A Rufus Over Your Head: “Duck Soup” .............................................................................97
SCULPTURE :: 101 Parthenon .............................................................................. 103 Pole Position ......................................................................... 105 Stones and Peace: “Noguchi in Paris” ................................................................. 106 Rodin Live .............................................................................. 107 After Flight: Alexander Calder’s “Flamingo” ............................................. 109 Attenuating Circumstance: Alberto Giacometti ............................................................... 111 Reclining with Henry Moore ................................................. 112 Louise Bourgeois: “Maman” ................................................. 113 Niki de Saint Phalle: “Miss Black Power” ............................................................... 114 Whale Paths: Frank Stella and “Moby Dick” ........................ 115
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China Dragon: Ai Weiwei’s “S.A.C.R.E.D” ............................. 117 Ron Mueck: Magnus ............................................................. 119
ARCHITECTURE :: 123 London Transitions ............................................................... 125 Prague Album ........................................................................ 129 Corner Spain .......................................................................... 133 Medieval New York ................................................................ 137 Chicago Stock ........................................................................ 139 Tokyo Crossway...................................................................... 143 Tangier Faith: Le Grand Mosque ........................................... 144 Sevilla: One and the Same ................................................... 145 Chemical Brussels: Atomium ............................................... 148 Musée d’Orsay ....................................................................... 149 Welsh Windows .................................................................... 151 Architectures Unseen ............................................................ 153 ABOUT THE POET ............................................................................157 OTHER BOOKS BY 2LEAF PRESS ................................................ 159
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Introduction
For the eye altering, alters all. — William Blake
Realism is not tenable. You have to write a poem about what you are describing. — Robert Stone
VISUALS. VERSE. Together they refract encounters that for one reason or another and over the years have caught and then held my eye. I hope readers of Written Eye will hie to the originals that give rise to these poems, a variety of pleasures in their own right. Almost all are to be found in image on the web. In some cases I have concentrated on the single work or edifice. In others I have tried for the broad span, the fuller reach of a group of works, or a scenario in its multiple aspects, or a city. In whichever case the aim has been the same: to see and voice. By way of opening are touchstones from three continents. Three landmarks of seeing and the seen. Nazca. Buddha. Bayeux. The compositions that follow, each in sequences of a dozen, seek to work as ekphrasis. Paintings as pigment and signature. Photo-shots as aperture and grammar. Film as image and style. Sculpture as mass and vernacular. Architecture as construct and form. A span, I hope, of international sight and saying. None of these choices is to imply some simply best-of, a canon. Rather, they have each entered my own reckoning by their singularity. High or popular. Not to say pitched somewhere between. And always by the invitation to have eye and word collaborate.
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Prologue Art does not reproduce, rather it makes visible. — Paul Klee
Eyes Down: “Las Líneas de Nazca” Desert Peru seen from Economy Class. What gods or formations are these below? Do here be dragons you kind of ask. And even as you select pasta or chicken. Or take advantage of the wine list. A feast of tribal imagination. Cartography markings. Landing runways. Time trails. Trapezium, grid. Sun, star and cross geo-glyph. Deities? Sky messengers? Or, milagrito, the extra-terrestrial. Imagined galaxy visitors. Welcomes, homage, awaiting worship. Perhaps, you fantasize, to yourself looking downward. You look closer. Hummingbird and Spider. Pelican and Monkey. Ocean orca, rock lizard. Historiae animalium. Calendars? Canals? Handprints. Suction feet. Coil, spine, wing, silhouette. Scraped pebble red to reveal white. Earth as palette. You in window seat. Now the avian visitor. Guest or god privilege. Eyeing art’s enigma. Eyeing art’s earthwork.
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Steady Eye: “The Great Buddha of Nara” i. Some of Buddhism you think you see. Mantra, wheel, lotus, karma. The repose, harmony, even the ears. You learn Siddhartha Gautama. You read Herman Hesse. You look to awake Buddhas. You regard Buddhas at rest or seated. You think world Buddhas, cosmos. You travel in mind through heaven and earth. But your eye remains that of visitor.
ii. How, best, to see what’s there to see? There are Buddhas you have still to learn. Silk Road cave Buddha. Tang Dynasty Leshan river Buddha. Hong Kong Lantau Island Buddha. Phuket white marble Buddha. Taichung smiling Golden Buddha. Bihar Bodhgaya meditation Buddha. Korea Mount Sorak Buddha. Bamiyan Taliban-lost Buddha.
iii. So you keep looking. Twice-over in Japan. First the Kamakura Buddha. Robe-folded, seated.
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Kōtoku-in Temple. Mountain backdrop. Daibutsu. Giant Buddha. Amida. Celestial. The entrance words. Gateway to the Eternal.
iv. Then you look south. Kansai by shinkansen. Nara. Ancient capital. Icon Japan. Tōdai-ji. East Temple. The Great Buddha. Nara Daibutsu. Tranquility’s face. Spread hand of peace. The gaze afar.
v. You stay, look, try again to see. Acolyte, no, but eye engaged. Eighth century time. Presence yet distance. Copper, bronze. Pillars of harmony. Force, sun, colossus. Birushani. A power of sight and guidance. The invitation to yet more seeing.
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Eye of the Needle: “The Bayeux Tapestry” Tapisserie de Bayeux. The stitch and weave of history. Chronology sumptuously medieval. Norman helmet. Saxon axe. French Normandy. English Wessex. William. Harold. Hastings. Ship. Horse. Armor. Shield. Mace. Battlefield cut and thrash. Equivocation shadows truth to fact. Heirships to crown. Harold Godwinson’s arrow death. William’s legitimate kingship. Bishop Odo as player. English army flight. Norman pillage. Victor history? But this is mural, fifty strips. Queen Matilda and ladies at needle. Invasion as embroidery, hem and linen. Human face and body figure-drawn. Animal and hunt borders. Halley’s Comet burst. Latin tituli, wool-woven, blue-black. Terracotta, olive, reds, russets. Museum Bayeux. Design, needle, craft.
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You visit, look, admire. Truth to history? Maybe. Summoned event yet invention. Time in imagined pattern. Art’s roll. Art’s vision. And your own witness eye.
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Painting There can be no doubt that there is something peculiar in the condition of the English retina. Said Taine, viewing a first exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite art. — David Markson This is Not a Novel (2001)
Right There: Vermeer’s “View of Delft” Gezicht op Delft Schie river. Rotterdam Gate. Herring boat repair. Barge, mast, prow. Gates and barbican. Quayside yellow. Roof tile red. Fallen rain. Gezicht op Delft. Dutch Republic confidence. The settled townscape. The solid burgher encounters. Things in their place. Things, well, a picture. Exactness. Gezicht op Delft. Dutch golden age for sure. But idyll hinting of disturbance. Repose yet looming cloud. River-calm yet hint of eddies. Citizen ease yet in for a shock. Calm and un-calm in tension. Gezicht op Delft The experts pronounce. Photo-real but not quite. Civic-real but not quite. Vista adjusted.
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Perspective altered. The artist’s eye craft. Gezicht op Delft. The gaze lingers, ponders. Each muted ochre, umber. Gradations of Colour. The feast of angle. The visual poetry. Beauteous, elided, contrary.
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Floating: Hiroshige it was one of his favorite Hiroshiges . . . graceful calligraphy, a sea that was pale blue except for the edges . . . pinedotted mountains of grey and blue. — Hisaye Yamamoto, “Seventeen Syllables”
Step into Edo Japan. Be seated under sakura. Stroll river bank. Watch the carp-kite. Hanging willow branch. Resting crane. Walkway bridge. Fuji-san vista. Season changes. Parasol and umbrella. Walkers under sun, under snow. The exquisite impression. Temple, pagoda, bell. Iris, ripple, pine. Plum tree, whirlpool, horseback. Eyed variety, the draftsman’s precision. Ukiyo-e: each a landscape, a seascape, afloat. Woodblock: each a line, grace. Tableau: each a face, figure, tint, script. Hiroshige: each a master image, skill.
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Curvature: Cézanne’s “Bends” i. River Bend (1865) Coin de rivière Shadow-dark sighting. Thick-oil coloration. Deep-bold stroke. River run and turn. Tree presence, rock force. Sky movement. Greenery. Painted, saturated, My God, touch the paint. Even the bank-side figure.
ii. The Bend Through the Forest (1873-5) La Route tournante en sous-bois Insistent leaf green. Insistent sky blue. Rightward wheel track path. Leftward lean of tree and branch. Homestead turn of corner cottage. A touch of breeze? Early Spring flower? Pastoral just about to leave the real.
iii. A Bend of the Road (1900) Un virage de la route Beyond post-impressionism, swab, swirl. Almost cubism, wash and block.
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Roadway light patina. Tree bodies a family blur. Bank, forest, hill, sky a colour menu. Locale yes but far more. Brushstrokes gestural, approximate. The road towards abstraction.
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Cut-Out: Matissse La main n’est que le prolongement de la sensibilité et de l’intelligence. The hand is only an extension of sensitivity and intelligence. — Matisse, Notebook
Dancing beauty. Gymnastic prism. Scissored kaleidoscope. Matisse speaking. “Cutting directly into colour.” “Abstraction rooted in reality.” Fern, tendril, star. Gouache patterns. Glued clusters. Technique doesn’t say enough. These are walls of life. Figurings of breath. Kinetic pallets. Swirl and gust of blue or red or green. Plays of light and pattern. You look at Jazz and Verve. You read the journals. Illustration and text junctured into art.
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But the eye fixes always upon the image. The ballet of blue nude dancers. Icarus un-waxed and falling. Each cut-out a vision, transcendent. Oceana fish, coral, bird flights. Vence studio forms of plant and leaf. There’s Tahiti, Morocco, Creole Africa. The Parakeet and Mermaid. And that gyred, unfolding snail. His Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence goes bolder, An unbeliever’s Jesus, Mary, Saint. The luminosity of glass cut-out. Large Decoration with Masks offers a gathering. Late age perfection. Illness’s rebuke. Himself the cut-out of Art’s summons. In-gallery, or even catalogue, the colours hold. A magic of paper, embossment, pigment. This is imagination alive, exhaling. How not to re-see those hands at work? Shape, composition, hue, light. The scissoring of vision.
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Bridging: J.M.W. Turner’s “Rain, Steam, and Speed– The Great Western Railway” Skyline, cloud, wave, storm. Land and sea, the canvas-scapes hold you. Luminosity, the see-through blur, impasto. Turner fare and vision. The slave thrown overboard. Trafalgar’s Temeraire. Sunrise sea monsters all opportune gullet. Canalled Chichester and Venice. The vortex of Snow Storm. The bible of The Deluge. Each its spectrum, each its sublime prism. Genesis or no, Light and Colour speaks. The painter’s own language. Abstract precision. Rain, Steam and Speed. Almost odd to see the iron train. Technology’s speed through the downpour. And Brunel’s Maidenhead bridge. Funnel, carriage, a screeching track. Soot, sound, passenger excitement. The river, the bank, the horizon. Pastoral, a boat to remind of ebb. Scale, the composition’s balance. Fierce engine thrust, sky-swirl. Arched viaduct, land’s edge. Turner’s daring brushstroke command.
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Sculpture Sculpture is the art of the hole and the lump. — Auguste Rodin
Parthenon O Παρθενώνας. O parthenonas. Parthenon Marbles. And yes, you could say, the Elgin Marbles. The Parthenon. History takes you back to templed Athena. Then to Greek Church and Turkish Mosque. And even to Gunpowder Store. You remember Empires. Byzantine. Ottoman. Venetian. British. Since Elgin, the English 7th Earl, the sites divide. Disputes, wars of possession and word. Byron gave his smack as did Mercouri. Doric splendor. Colonial theft. Classic Greece. Larcenous Albion. Acropolis and British Museum. You let this somehow inhabit the art. But not rule it. Athens frieze. Gods. Polis. Family. Male cavalry. Female weavers. Ceremony and Procession. Rites and Sacrifice. Ritual more lost than found. Athens sculptings. Perfect Selene horse-head, battling centaur.
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Dionysos handsomely at rest, warrior horsemen. Helios rising, draped sister goddesses. Compositional, inter-positioned. Anatomies from life and size. Olympic, too, ideal, deific. Time’s gift, time’s beauty. You see it even in broken statuary. You see it even in broken ownership.
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Pole Position The very names carve a poetry. Kwakiutl, Haida, Tlingit, Nootka. First nations of word and meaning. Another language. For Pacifica. The Northwest. Alaska. You could say symbol or decoration. But you know the risk of tourist-speak. Memory, rather, of clan and lineage. Red cedar semaphore. Designs of realm and story. Thunderbird wings spread wide. Raven beak, whale head. Bear, otter, salmon, eagle. Beaked faces. Outstretched tongues. Native chisel. Learn the grammar. Welcome, death, memory. Shaman fare. Even tease. High to lowest on the totem pole. Each, new and ancient, a calling card. Step into Native timeline. Give sight to trunk, gauge, dye. Savor heraldry’s carve and craft. Alert Bay or Howkan. You have the privilege of invitation.
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Stones and Peace: “Noguchi in Paris” i. Landscape. Garden. Sculpture. The overlap teases even as it holds you. Is this UNESCO France or UNESCO Japan? The eye, imbibing, says both, and then more. Sakura, plum tree and bamboo. Lake ripple, gurgle stream, fall of water. Cross the Hiroshige bridge, regard the lotus floats. Tantric, a calligraphy of peace, wā. Circles of raked pebble. Pathways under eastern pergola. Banks reflected in pool shimmer. Paving as hand-drawn as kanji.
ii. Stones, earth’s own sculpting, act to mark and pivot. Axis and satellite, uprights and flats. The perfect pattern amid flower and cascade. Each a weather, an archive. Time stones, stepping stones. Heart stones, head stones. They speak loud silence. Shapings of space and spirit. Blue-grey, rust, lichened or not. They secure the garden’s design. Codes, a Japanese language. Noguchi’s sentinels for peace.
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Rodin Live Les Bourgeois de Calais. The eye looks upon them in different loci. France, for sure, but Philadelphia and Copenhagen. It also looks upon different histories. English feudal conquest. Hundred Years War. Burghers, the six of them. Un-shoed, bare of head, noosed, bearers of keys to the city. Shapes of anguished surrender. Sculpture as dirge, fate, bronze elegy. In one sense how un-spectacular. Together yet separate, scapegoats marked for sacrifice. You see anguish, query, above all a pending. You look upon gaze turned in upon itself. The sculptor’s hand shapes each body’s feeling. A fashioning of shared aloneness. The reverse of ceremony. For sure there’s other Rodin. The Kiss, he knows life’s kinetics. Turn to John the Baptist, all force of prophecy. Admire his Thinker, the anatomy of concentration. Summon Dante and the Gates of Hell. Stride alongside his Walking Man. Face robed Balzac, sea-edged Hugo. Seize the real of The Age of Bronze. Then return to The Burghers of Calais. Not Greece nor Renaissance this. Neither Venus de Milo nor Michelangelo’s David. These are the physiques of modernity.
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Beings inhabited, breathed, blooded. Their fear, their self-contemplation. Sad, plinthed in fate as in sculpture. Rodin’s sculpting of life at death’s shadow.
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Architecture Every great architect is – necessarily – a great poet. — Frank Lloyd Wright
London Transitions i. Burlington Arcade Regency footsteps. Lord Cavendish’s covered arcade. Make your entrance on to the red carpet. Beadles either end. Up-market roof above your head. Regency comedy. Why the enclosed corridor? M’lord’s anti-dumping. Hoi-polloi rubbish. Oyster shells into his garden. Regency prices. Antique, jewel, earring. Cashmere, perfume, chocolate. Silk jacket and Med-swimsuit. “Rare and collectables.” Regency footfall. Toff-wear window display. Shoe polish service. Time’s vintage watches. Gentility since 1819.
ii. Albert Memorial Wonderfully preposterous. Victoria’s Victoriana. Gilbert Scott baroque. Yet a regal widow’s fond lament.
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Gilt-bronze Albert. Dead of typhoid’s 1861 ravage. Imperium stalks your way there. Queen’s Gate. Prince’s Gate. Prince Consort Road. The Royal Albert Hall. Imperial College. And none other than the V&A. Discrepancies enter. Latter Day Saints Temple. Sir Alexander Fleming Building. The Proms with Land of Hope and Glory. The busker guitaring Pachelbel. The Royal Park with skateboarders. Start with the plinth and then ascend. Global queen astride the beasts. The span of continents. Europe. America. Asia. Africa. Bull. Bison. Elephant. Camel. And then the podium. Master of the domains. Manufactures. Horticulture. Commerce. Engineering. Sculptures of the Virtues. Sculptures of the Arts, the Sciences. Albert, plus angels, canopied under mosaic. Posed, ornate, regnant. Over a Parnassus frieze of hundreds. Poetry to Science. Sculpture to architecture.
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Painting to Music. Each the eye of imagination. “Queen Victoria and Her People.” The age’s Boadicea to her Consort. The public good, tribute, memory. How to doubt it? A worthy. Albert as God-ordained Englishman. Never mind the Saxe-Coburg accent.
iii. Pancras Station To wags, and those of uncertain English, Saint Pancreas. Dig into martyrology. There’s the beheaded Roman Christian convert. But it’s Gothic frontage, red brick and spires. More Victoriana. Railway England. So you remember the Barlow train shed. The Grand Hotel. The Age of Steam. Scott architecture once again. Solidity. Now step into modernity. Revival out of 1960s platform dank. Betjeman campaign and commemoration in bronze. His name an eatery of “Best of British Breakfasts.” Paul Day “Meeting Place,” embrace, scale, cell phone. The inset arch, the hanging multicolour panel. Lower level arcade. Wine and “Order Food.” The Renaissance Hotel, stars and all. As much day-out gallery as station. Earlier travel becomes future travel. Internet your ticket. Pay by card. Eurostar and International Departures.
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Head at speed to Le Gare du Nord. Select a silent carriage. But take another look at driveway and storey. Memory’s concourse, clock tower, ceremony. Victorianism on a time machine.
iv. Gherkin Now you’re up to date. Norman Foster’s cross-hatch. High-rise swirl. Diamond windows. Street triangle entries. City of London business chic. Swedish built — what else? — postmodern. You can go formal. Swiss Re Building. 30 St. Mary Axe. Forty-one levels. Monied. Fellow high-rises do duty. The Shard as upward arrow. Lloyds all Fritz Lang Metropolis towers. You ponder the twist and shout. Does working there lead to dizziness? Suits, male, female, swan back and forth. You see cleaners platform-swabbing the glass wrap. Night-lit it might be an interstellar capsule. Sky News, right titled, broadcasts. London calling.
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About the Poet
A. ROBERT LEE was a professor in the English department at Nihon University from 1997-2011. British-born, he previously taught at the University of Kent, UK. His creative work includes Japan Textures: Sight and Word, with Mark Gresham (2007), Tokyo Commute: Japanese Customs and Way of Life Viewed from the Odakyu Line (2011), and the verse collections Ars Geographica: Maps and Compasses (2012), Portrait and Landscape: Further Geographies (2013), Imaginarium: Sightings, Galleries, Sightlines (2013), Americas: Selected Verse and Vignette (2015), Password: A Book of Locks and Keys (2016) and Off Course: Roundabouts & Deviations (2016). Among his academic publications are Multicultural American Literature: Comparative Black, Native, Latino/a and Asian Fictions (2003), which won the American Book Award in 2004, and Modern American Counter Writing: Beats, Outriders, Ethnics (2010). Currently he lives in Murcia, Spain.
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