Issue 06: Materials

Shinique Smith, Stargazer, detail, 2022.

 
 

Editors’ Note

 

In conversations about literature, we often speak of ‘material’ as the stuff of experience that must be discovered and refined into art, as in: “The poet found her material traipsing through the backwoods of her youth.” In truth, though, a writer’s material needs are few: a pen or pencil, a notebook, perhaps a computer. Coffee, tea, or booze sometimes seem to help. And snacks are often essential, as is a warm, quiet room. Compared to a painter’s studio, with its tubes and tubs, its canvases and rags and brushes, a writer’s desk is spare. . . .

 
 

Pour, Tear, Carve

 
 

The poems gathered here resulted from our journal’s call for ekphrastic writing inspired by an exhibition at The Phillips Collection called Pour, Tear, Carve: Material Possibilities in the Collection. Given this show’s interest in materiality and meaning, we thought writing generated in direct response to it would be a perfect fit for our Materials Issue. Baltimore poet Abdul Ali has graciously curated this feature, selecting the sixteen poems presented below.

— Paul Jaskunas

 

Full Circle : an introduction

By Abdul Ali

Before I ever encountered the term ekphrastic, I was a museum nerd exploring the streets of the big city. As if it were yesterday,  I can still see the textured paint strokes of Picasso, Pollock, and van Gogh on the walls of the MOMA, where I’d wander as a teenager. For what felt like hours, I’d fixate on the swirl of van Gogh’s Starry Night and try to put words to a notebook to describe what those painters did that moved me so. It would be too coincidental to say that these museum visits made me a poet, but I can say, with certainty, that there was an early conversation taking place. . . .

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The Body

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The Home

 
 
 
 
 

the Library

 
 
 
 

The Work

 
 
 
 
 

The City