On the other hand, our speaker claims that he’s reporting this vision “because I love you.” I suppose that in some ways honestly divulging one’s nightmares about one’s partner is a good thing? If the poet-artist has also severed his own legs, and wants to tell his partner about that as well, perhaps this sort of dark sharing is a regular part of their relationship? Our speaker admits to occasionally imagining his loved one “with fangs.” I imagine the image is probably not one the lover would find flattering. The first thing I respond to is the unsettling emotional context. from War of the Foxes, ©2015 by Richard Siken, published by Copper Canyon Press, used by permission Of shoes at the foot of the bed not going anywhere. Something has happened in the paint tonight and
Putting dots of color everywhere and you are sleeping. Paint drunk and put dots of color everywhere. With whiskey and call it social drinking. It looks like I’m floating but I’m not floating. I erased my legs and forgot to draw in the stilts. I know of other poets who were also visual artists (William Blake first and foremost) but Siken is the first poet-painter I’m aware of who delves so deeply into the problems of creation, whether that creation is on paper, canvas, or in the imagination itself.īefore I go too far down this road, here’s the poem: But Siken is a painter himself (as you can see on his website here) and often his subject seems as much about the creation of an image or painting as it is about our response to viewing it. Sometimes the painting is a jumping off point for the poem, or a point of contention.Ī lot of poems in Richard Siken’s War of the Foxes could be called ekphrastic. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts,” there is a description of the piece (usually a painting) that puts its images into some other context.
Dominik Parisien, “After Convulsing in Public”.Steven Heighton, “Night Skaters, Skeleton Park”.Dean Young, “The Late Work of Pinkham Ryder”.
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