Mence’s poems are ambiguously allegorical in the schematism and suggestiveness of their settings and situations: a house under attack by unclear or mystical forces; a garden falling into decay; a train ride that both connects people and separates them.
For her final project in the MFA program at the Art Academy of Latvia, the poet and visual artist Linda Mence created illustrations of the seventeen virtues who figure in the twelfth-century morality play Ordo Virtutum, by the Benedictine abbess Hildegard of Bingen. While working on this project, Mence realized that she found the human figure “uninteresting,” as she recently remarked in a casual conversation, and turned instead to abstract geometric patterns in order to represent the virtues.
My thanks to Alan Thomas and Randy Petelos at the University of Chicago Press. This is my tenth book with Chicago, going back 25 years. Thanks also to Anthony Huberman and Eli Coplan (sound engineer) of GPS for hosting this event.
Anna de Noailles (1876-1933) was one of the most famous French poets of her day. While her work has mostly fallen out of fashion, I’ve opted to translate this poem because it was one of (if not the) first poems ever recorded to sound by a female poet. Her recording at the Sorbonne, made in the early 1920s, causes this ars poetica to realign itself with the performance of the poem rather than the written text. It speaks to pertinent questions of posthumous reception and the archive, through a light, playful, sexual mode: the nachlass as seduction. --Chris Mustazza
Tim Barry: Susan, I am very familiar with your work, as I showed you and your great friends, the wonderful artists Mimi Gross and Mira Schor, at my bookshop in Provincetown in 2016 in the show: “Three Friends.” So, congratulations on your first museum retrospective! The editor at Artsfuse, Bill Marx, recently saw the exhibition and noted that his initial take on your show was that it uses folk art and outsider art imperatives “to explore issues of feminism, among others.” Is this accurate?
Linda Mence’s Personification Allegories
Linda Mence, translated by Kevin M. F. Platt and Sintija Ozoliņa
Mence’s poems are ambiguously allegorical in the schematism and suggestiveness of their settings and situations: a house under attack by unclear or mystical forces; a garden falling into decay; a train ride that both connects people and separates them.
For her final project in the MFA program at the Art Academy of Latvia, the poet and visual artist Linda Mence created illustrations of the seventeen virtues who figure in the twelfth-century morality play Ordo Virtutum, by the Benedictine abbess Hildegard of Bingen. While working on this project, Mence realized that she found the human figure “uninteresting,” as she recently remarked in a casual conversation, and turned instead to abstract geometric patterns in order to represent the virtues.
Richard Foreman (1937-2024)
Richard Foreman
June 10, 1937 - January 4, 2024
Foreman at EPC/PennSound/Ontological
(PennSound page has many videos of Foreman's theater)
His memory, and the memory of his work, is a blessing for all who had the pleasure to experience it.
Launch for The Kinds of Poetry I Want: Essays & Comedies
with Tracie Morris, Christian Bök, Tan Lin, Felix Bernstein, & Charles Bernstein
at Giorno Poetry Systems in New York, Dec. 5, 2024
My thanks to Alan Thomas and Randy Petelos at the University of Chicago Press. This is my tenth book with Chicago, going back 25 years. Thanks also to Anthony Huberman and Eli Coplan (sound engineer) of GPS for hosting this event.
Anna de Noailles, translated by Chris Mustazza
Anna de Noailles (1876-1933) was one of the most famous French poets of her day. While her work has mostly fallen out of fashion, I’ve opted to translate this poem because it was one of (if not the) first poems ever recorded to sound by a female poet. Her recording at the Sorbonne, made in the early 1920s, causes this ars poetica to realign itself with the performance of the poem rather than the written text. It speaks to pertinent questions of posthumous reception and the archive, through a light, playful, sexual mode: the nachlass as seduction. --Chris Mustazza
A Conversation between Susan Bee and Tim Barry
Susan Bee's Provincetown museum show closed today. This interview is being published to mark the occasion.
Catalog available here.
Tim Barry: Susan, I am very familiar with your work, as I showed you and your great friends, the wonderful artists Mimi Gross and Mira Schor, at my bookshop in Provincetown in 2016 in the show: “Three Friends.” So, congratulations on your first museum retrospective! The editor at Artsfuse, Bill Marx, recently saw the exhibition and noted that his initial take on your show was that it uses folk art and outsider art imperatives “to explore issues of feminism, among others.” Is this accurate?