Adam Fitzgerald

Richard A. Barney (ed.), “David Lynch: Interviews” KM: If your paintings had sound what would it be like? DL: Different paintings would have different sounds. So This is Love would have a muffled sound like talking through a glove. A Bug Dreams would be a really shrill 15,000-cycle piercing sound. She Wasn’t Fooling Anyone, She Was Hurt Bad would be an extremely slow motion, muffled breaking glass sound. … KM: What kind of things function as seeds for paintings? DL: Inspiration is like a piece of fuzz—it kind of comes up and makes a desire and an image that causes me to want to paint it. Or I can be going along and see an old Band-Aid in the street, and you know how an old Band-Aid is. It’s got some dirt around the edges and the rubber part has formed some black little balls, and you see the stain [...]

We begin with an Interview with David Shapiro responding to Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn and much more. (You can catch up on the conversation by checking out last week’s post which included contributions from Alfred Corn, Richard Howard, Don Share, Dara Wier, and Richard Zenith.) MORE RESPONSES FROM POETS AND CRITICS That urn is cold. I find it strange that several poets and scholars speak of the beauty-truth equation as the last lines of the poem. That equation has called forth so much fuss – its bald assertiveness is immensely persuasive at first hearing, then almost instantly the mind rebels against the symmetry of identity. The equation seems like a handsome face you glimpse in the crowd—it teeters between vapidity and sublimity, depending on whether you keep on gazing or else close your eyes to retain the first impression. This very oscillation is Keats’ work, his way of [...]

Let’s begin with a recording of Ode on a Grecian Urn recited by Richard Howard, which was taken on 2/12/2010 through my iPhone. Ode on a Grecian Urn Thou still unravished bride of quietness, Thou foster child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loath? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared, Pipe to the spirit dities of no tone. Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold [...]

I. I assemble flapping into a mechanical bird. I replace the breathing ones with stuffed ones and suffer an applause of wings. Reach between the roost to feel compressed as they look. And O hovering ellipses: our hands cannot suppress the unbelievable synchronization of bee wing and lawn mower. We enter a playing field: molecules of water vs. molecules of water. We construct viable diagrams of living: a reversible motor heart. We test drive baby palates and consider them unsuitable for the farm. Inside each of us, three small red cells break in half until we cocoon in jars and wait to be watched. We prepare for peoplery: fall into pitch with darkness. Photograph after photograph we freeze images of a bullion cube dissolving. Skip death by lining the trees with ornaments of plastic bags. I assemble the deli counter into a whelping box and we all breed unanimously in [...]