WEBVTT

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I'm going to start
with two poems

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about looking at paintings.

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This one is from a book
called A Door in the Hive,

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and it's called
"The Life of Art."

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"The borderland, that's
where, if one knew how,

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one would establish residence--

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that watershed, that
spine, that looking glass.

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I mean, the edge between
impasto surface, burnt sienna's

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fixed, striate,
gleaming swathes,

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and windrows of carnal paint
or canvas barely stained,

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where warp and
weft peer through.

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And fictive truth-- a room,
a vase, an open door--

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giving upon the cloud.

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A step back and you have
the likeness, its own world.

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Step to the wall again,
and you are so near

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the paint you could lick it.

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You breathe its
ghostly turpentine.

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But there's an interface--

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immeasurable, elusive.

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An equilibrium just
attainable sometimes

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when the attention is rightly
poised, where you are opulently

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received by the bravura
gestures, hand and brush

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proffer, as if a courtier
twirled a feathered velvet

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hat to bow you in.

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And yet, without losing sight
of one stroke, one scrape

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of the knife, you are drawn
through into that room,

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into its air and temperature.

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Couldn't one learn to maintain
that exquisite balance

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more than a second?

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One sees even the penciled
understrokes and shivers

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in pleasure.

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And one's fingertips touch
the carpet's nubs of wool,

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the cold fruit in a bowl.

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One almost sees what
lies beyond the window,

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past the frame beyond."

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