The first time I ever heard of Howard Finster was in the pages of Missing Pieces (Georgia Folk Art 1770-1976), that useful catalogue in honor of the American Bi-Centennial issued by the Georgia Council for the Arts and Humanities. I made a note to visit Pennville and see the “Paradise Garden,” which I persisted in calling the “New Improved Garden of Eden,” just to be ornery. It is not my custom to have too much truck with country preachers.
In August of 1994, President Clinton’s Crime Bill destroyed the monies designated on a nation-wide basis for all Prison Education programs. The Federal or Pell Grants were for books; without books, like it or not, there are no programs. Those monies constituted less than one percent of all federal funds designated for higher education and were beginning to offer proof, at least in the program of which I was a part, that this form of rehabilitation might be the cheapest, most far reaching yet devised.
I Ostriches in flight —therearewomenwhosewordsareashtrees. Shadows stitch together harbors of air. In the midst of the stampede, a hand rests on the arc of a kneecap. Cigar and smoke. Rosy cypress sleep. The scent reaches far beyond the border. From the bureau — power, smile destroyed/ ocher temptation, strophic enjambed body. Vestibule.
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE. Éric Suchère’sMystérieuse is an image-to-word “translation” of collaged pages from Hergé’s TinTin comic books, rendered in painstakingly conceptual detail: each frame of each comic, and even each stroke of each drawing inside each frame, are accounted for linguistically, from TinTin’s unforgettable drops of sweat to Snowy’s emoticon-esque reactions, to the broad stroke backgrounds of the comic squares.
Poems and poetics