1130: Cy Twombly's Untitled (Say Goodbye Catullus, to the shores of Asia Minor) by Javier O. Huerta

The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

American Public Media

Arts, Performing Arts

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 31 May 2024

⏱️ 7 minutes

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Summary

Today’s poem is Cy Twombly's Untitled (Say Goodbye Catullus, to the shores of Asia Minor) by Javier O. Huerta.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “This week’s episodes are a special feature on ekphrasis – poems which engage with works of art. Ekphrastic poetry sometimes pushes back against the idea of simple art made complicated in idea, born from an eccentric personality. Inspired by another famous Twombly painting, one that itself is inspired partly by a poem, today’s poem realizes the frenetic sense of the artist’s canvas is a conceptual product of a sophisticated and sometimes frustrating mind.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Transcript

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0:00.0	Echrasses means description in Greek, but when poets undertake
0:05.3	Echfrasas we're talking about art and more than that we're making poems that
0:11.4	not only describe art, they tap deep into the work of artists
0:16.4	to ask bigger questions about our languages and our experiences in the world.
0:23.0	This week's episodes are all in conversation with art,
0:28.0	and those magnificent poems on art.
0:32.0	They are only possible through the work of the institutions that care for,
0:37.0	share, and support the work of artists. We encourage you too to visit and support these museums, galleries, and art spaces. I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.
0:56.0	I'm Major Jackson and it all the time,
1:14.8	upon seeing drawing so pure in shape and color,
1:18.0	or that mimic the intense scribblings of kindergartners,
1:22.0	my kid could have drawn this. What they jokingly
1:27.0	diminish is a spirit of freedom in making, one that is typically unattainable, so conventional wisdom tells us if one pays a mortgage
1:38.4	or has been tragically hardened into a cynicism. If one's mindset does not leave room for whimsy or play that
1:47.9	vacillates between seriousness and joy and yet that very play undergirds a class of people many refer to, sometimes
1:59.8	derisively, as creatives.
2:04.5	A person who makes such a remark
2:06.6	wants to protect an ordered existence.
2:09.7	He wants clear demarcated lines that define adulthood and
2:14.2	juvenileity. We cannot have adults making art like children, he implicitly
2:19.7	states. Such art defies the notion of progress. Hasn't this person grown up already?
2:27.0	And yet, it is that childishness that is the laboratory of creation.
	...

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