In memory of Brice Marden (1938-2023)

The 17th series in the ongoing collaboration between George Quasha’s preverbs and Susan Quasha’s photographic work.

Adam, you were the one with brooding eyes and a Cheshire smile.

Ten poems translated from the Greek by Pria Louka.

here the vicious ribbons hiss, swanning
their hypnotic cursive dances, as if were calligraphic curses.
thither the come-hither flickers and quick slithers back.

Darksome, tenebrous, smoked, obscure / the gloam-time, sable-vested, fumid / hour of the witch / the gathering of storms / she wrote poems good as anyone’s / becloud, bedim, mirksome, engloom / when the moon’s dark / caliginous, somber / it’s a blind man’s holiday / eclipsed / embalmed

Farrokhzad speaks as a form hewn to the "line of time," trapped in the earthly realm — her sorrowful longing is one of disillusionment given the unrealizability of divine ecstasy.

By turns intimate and abstract, each poem is a moment of stilled time.

Four poems from Émile Verhaeren’s Tentacular Cities (1895) translated from the French by Jacob Siefring.

Eight poems with drawings from the chapbook Comes a Time.

“You see this truculent character here, with the curly hair and mustache?” Picasso asked about the Vollard Suite, “That’s Rembrandt. Or maybe it’s Balzac; I’m not sure. It’s a compromise, I suppose. It doesn’t really matter. They’re only two of the people to haunt me. Every human being is a whole colony.”

And on the fourth midnight the new bride slumbered on the stretch of grass * And in the same breath, I was in the newly sprouted leaves * or in the fluttering breeze * and perhaps even in the deep waters * And the breath of the wind stirring little blossoms on the thick tree wailed in me * and bright streams of rain wept in me. *

Poems by Losarc Raal for Tamas Panitz’s Steak Phase

What is contra natura is the dysfunctional rapport that human beings seem to have developed with this cosmic ladder, and that may very well be the source of what’s abusive in the power – whether cosmic, natural, or human.

It was on this final line / of descent that Avon brought / her Tarzan poem to a close, / following the message / from the Commander: / “MU-SIC! MU-SIC!”

When I died — a long time ago — I was buried with wolf-fangs and transistor radio. While brain festered in my skull, I pondered negative numbers and the mess I had left: bills, some jottings reminding me to return a phone call from the black side of the sun.

It was all a bullfight in the end—/The smell of death contends/With rain, and more blood than/We can measure or imagine is/Surrounded by spinning black/Umbrellas—

After the Snake, the title of which evokes another Fall, is a haunting meditation on the apocalyptic landscapes that – if like Dun we have the courage to look at them – lie smoking on the boundaries of our consciousness.

What if I said / I will never / talk to stone / brush grown to a golden / edge needs sing all night / who care?

In my solitude / I’m stripped bare, but now / you’re here too, to some degree.