George Spencer
Burt Kimmelman, The Way We Live (Dos Madres Press, 2011)
In this recent collection of poems by Burt Kimmelman, The Way We Live, each poem calls for its own commentary. But looking at them as an entirety, there are themes, some hidden others not, which wind their way through the poems and impress immensely.
There are ekphrastic poems about works of Morandi, Bonnard, de Kooning and Dumas seen at The Metropolitan Museum and MOMA in New York City. These visual artists speak to us about modes of seeing, as does Kimmelman:
Nothing much ever happens, yet there
is a comfort in simply living
among the objects of the day — bowls
of fruit, a vase of flowers on a
red tablecloth holding light coming
from a window outside the frame.
The lines above are the first stanza of a poem titled “With Fred Caruso, Standing in Front of Pierre Bonnard’s Corner of the Dining Room at Le Cannet.” As they did, I have the painting in front of me (see
Burt Kimmelman, The Way We Live (Dos Madres Press, 2011)
In this recent collection of poems by Burt Kimmelman, The Way We Live, each poem calls for its own commentary. But looking at them as an entirety, there are themes, some hidden others not, which wind their way through the poems and impress immensely.
There are ekphrastic poems about works of Morandi, Bonnard, de Kooning and Dumas seen at The Metropolitan Museum and MOMA in New York City. These visual artists speak to us about modes of seeing, as does Kimmelman:
Nothing much ever happens, yet there
is a comfort in simply living
among the objects of the day — bowls
of fruit, a vase of flowers on a
red tablecloth holding light coming
from a window outside the frame.
The lines above are the first stanza of a poem titled “With Fred Caruso, Standing in Front of Pierre Bonnard’s Corner of the Dining Room at Le Cannet.” As they did, I have the painting in front of me (see
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/pierre-bonnard/corner-of-the-dining-room). And what strikes one immediately is the casual photographic quality as if a photographer said “her disappearing through the door just caught my eye.” And what’s left in the painting is a collection of objects that appear to be where they are by chance. Yet there is no chance in Bonnard any more than there is in these lines and the other poems in this collection. Bonnard hides his calculations just as Kimmelman does. None of first thought, best thought stuff for either of them.
Regarding what’s going on in painting as in life, the next poem, “On the Terrace, Waiting to Enter El Palacio Nazaríes, Alhambra” is a telling juxtaposition with the poem quoted immediately above:
A man reads
of the old
palace out
loud from his
French brochure.
His wife stares
across the
valley to
the mountains
in their snow.
Is reality what we see in a work-a-day world? More? Less? Is she bored with his second-hand knowledge of art and prefers what the window frames? Is she bored with him? Thinking of what she left behind? Is the poem about art? About relationships? About travel? Why snow? In this second poem’s entirety of twenty-five words, it does not stoop to simple answers.
The Morandi poem, superbly titled “The Deception,” deals with Kimmelman’s aesthetic:
. . . it is best,
he must have thought, once he knew
he loved to paint, to leave things
unspoken — the mute smears of
color, the bare ground of the
horizontal — a made world,
something of his stubborn craft.
Construction is important. What goes where is important. A voice that is appropriate to the subject is important.
The lyric poems are filled with the realities of life, sad, happy and in
between. These lines are from “Artic Terns.”
[. . .] finally crossing the open
sea to the farthest reach of ice --
for a second season of days.
. . . .
in a rite beyond gravity --
they join for their entire lives.
Yet flying must be an act of
And what does gravity mean? The poems are full of these pleasant equivocalities. This “unfed longing,” after having twenty-five pages of excellent poems to feed on, is a good way to leave readers—full but wanting more about the intertwining of life, love, aloneness and art.
Burt Kimmelman thrives on simplicity and ambiguity. Not an easy act to pull off. Here he clearly does.
Regarding what’s going on in painting as in life, the next poem, “On the Terrace, Waiting to Enter El Palacio Nazaríes, Alhambra” is a telling juxtaposition with the poem quoted immediately above:
A man reads
of the old
palace out
loud from his
French brochure.
His wife stares
across the
valley to
the mountains
in their snow.
Is reality what we see in a work-a-day world? More? Less? Is she bored with his second-hand knowledge of art and prefers what the window frames? Is she bored with him? Thinking of what she left behind? Is the poem about art? About relationships? About travel? Why snow? In this second poem’s entirety of twenty-five words, it does not stoop to simple answers.
The Morandi poem, superbly titled “The Deception,” deals with Kimmelman’s aesthetic:
. . . it is best,
he must have thought, once he knew
he loved to paint, to leave things
unspoken — the mute smears of
color, the bare ground of the
horizontal — a made world,
something of his stubborn craft.
Construction is important. What goes where is important. A voice that is appropriate to the subject is important.
The lyric poems are filled with the realities of life, sad, happy and in
between. These lines are from “Artic Terns.”
[. . .] finally crossing the open
sea to the farthest reach of ice --
for a second season of days.
. . . .
in a rite beyond gravity --
they join for their entire lives.
Yet flying must be an act of
solitude, an unfed longing.
And what does gravity mean? The poems are full of these pleasant equivocalities. This “unfed longing,” after having twenty-five pages of excellent poems to feed on, is a good way to leave readers—full but wanting more about the intertwining of life, love, aloneness and art.
Burt Kimmelman thrives on simplicity and ambiguity. Not an easy act to pull off. Here he clearly does.