Collaboration
"I've been working with Peter Knapp in an improvised capacity for a couple of months now. We first met the week or so before his gallery opening at the Anchor House of Artists in Northampton, where his work stuck & moved me. I suggested that I play him some of my music, and we quickly decided that Gary Fieldman & I would perform some of our music at the opening night of Peter's show. We have since been in touch, and I've found him to be an ardent supporter of my work in poetry as well. He sent me an image of this painting last week, and asked if I'd be willing to compose a poem based around it. I had been working on a poem, "Horizons" that immediately sparked a connection with the painting when I saw it. I started work on trying to fine-tune the connection, and we have decided here to share our work together, for the first time, with one of my poems side by side with his painting, "Wonder's Wanderings." Let it move you in whatever way it will; I don't think there's a right or wrong way. See the poem and the image below."
Eliot Cardinaux April 30th 2022 Poet & Pianist
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HORIZON
The earth is a whetstone
singing
incomparable words
As light eases into the blood
Lay dark & beating,
heart
in the grave the sky made
of apples
& the eyes of other
animals
redden in translation
Things that are leaving
after being said
begin to advertise the evening
Under the lindens
day will freeze up toward
Where if not far away
Eliot Cardinaux 12/4/2022 Facebook Post:
"Excited to announce 3 chapbooks in a series, now complete. A triptych of sorts. Each cover graced by a beautiful work of art by Peter Knapp. You can order them up on my website:"
bodilypress.bandcamp.com/merch
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The Margins Weep Slow Roses
These are poems exploring the lyric-narrative from the margins through the lens of grief, loss, friendship, addiction, mental illness, advocacy, & recovery, dedicated to the memory of the late trumpeter and composer Daniel Levine.
Narratives of the Strata
These poems are influenced by George Oppen, Tomas Tranströmer, Bei Dao, & William Carlos Williams, among others: imagistic lyric-narratives exploring the different layers, or “strata” of consciousness & reality, in my own time & place, throughout what feels like many lives here already, on Earth.
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Caprice
These are poems responding to war. I’ve written before about the Western world’s willful blindness on the part of disasters occurring outside the supposed frame. These poems grapple with notions of spirit & collapse, & are dedicated to Pierre Joris & Jerome Rothenberg, two poets who have been gracious to me in their support & generous in their work both as translators, & as poets & cultural critics themselves.
