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Robert
Grenier Drawing Poems
New and Old Prints
Marianne Boesky Gallery is pleased
to make available a number of 'old' (2003) and 'new' (2004) Giclée prints
by the poet-artist Robert Grenier.
Grenier is a 63-year-old,
wiry/paunchy, white-haired, disaffected, formerly influential,
prototypical/clean-shaven/Harvard-educated 'Language Writer' (from
Minnesota) become wildly innovative, 'neo-Romantic'/'old-fashioned',
hand-craft-writing/image-making, scruffy, corn, beans and
squash-growing/blackberry-apple jam-making/set-in-his-ways type of
opinionated, 'archaic'-nuthead/vociferously 'correct',
'liberal'/verbal/'extemporaneous' person living in Bolinas, CA.
For the past 14 years, he has written exclusively by hand in blank
black notebooks, in four-colored ink. He has filled about 170 such
notebooks with his funny-looking drawing poems, which foreground the
'challenging' graphic characteristics of Grenier's
communicating/overlapping and tangling letter shapes, which (if one has
time & makes room for an odd/ordinary kind of spatial comprehension)
may provide the reader/looker-on with a seemingly impossible/doubtless
'illusory', 'direct'-if-provisional engagement between the physical act of
verbal composition and the actual thing drawn/'said'. (This claim is not
unakin to that formerly fluently provided for certain patent medicines,
& very possibly ought not to be swallowed.) It is true that each poem
is a singular and 'colorful' verbal and visual arrangement, not
reproducible by typographic means.
Some of them are quite
'beautiful'. Others serve whatever 'function'; they 'say'. Our favorites
'combine' beauty with function and participate in what they make
happen/write--e.g., the character of a March, 2004 day.
There is a
peculiar 'governing attention' given to number and balance of graphic
elements/'things' in their literal relations become
'literary-second-nature' throughout, recalling and differently confirming
William Carlos Williams' sense that the poet 'thinks with the poem' (here,
the letter shapes of these images, making words). For the artist-poet, the
works' primary interest remains firmly in the realm of Literature (echoing
the book page, in time), but the complexity and fascinating/irritating
graphic qualities of the recent poems (in space) make them maddening and
dazzling sites of 'literary'/'visual' exploration.
[Normally, each
line is underlined in the ink with which it is written; each (letter &
line/word) is 'based' on the 'value' of the drawn letter (in relation to
the other letters)--i.e., its SHAPE!]
Grenier has selected and
organized pages from his recent drawing/writing notebooks and produced a
developing group of four-color drawing poems as signed, limited edition
Giclée prints on Hahnemühle Digital FineArt papers, sold individually and
as organized sets, as follows:
Three Poems/November 2002
15 ¼ x
17 ½ inches/Hahnemühle 310 gsm German Etching
single prints $300
(edition of 10)
set of 3 prints $800 (edition of 10)
Nine
Poems/December 2002
11 ½ x 15 ½ inches/Hahnemühle 310 gsm German
Etching
single prints $250 (edition of 6)
set of 9 prints $2000
(edition of 6)
35 x 47" uncut print of Nine Poems $2000 (edition of 11)
Six Poems/November 2003-January 2004
15 ¼ x 17 ½
inches/Hahnemühle 308 gsm Photo Rag
single prints $300 (edition of
10)
set of 6 prints $1600 (edition of 10)
35 x 47" uncut print of
Six Poems $1600 (edition of 12)
Four Poems/February 2004
17 ½ x
23 3/8 inches/Hahnemühle 308 gsm Photo Rag
single prints $350 (edition
of 10)
set of 4 prints $1200 (edition of 10)
35 x 47" uncut print
$1200 (edition of 12)
Four Poems/March 2004
17 ½ x 23 3/8
inches/Hahnemühle 308 gsm Photo Rag
single prints $350 (edition of
10)
set of 4 prints $1200 (edition of 10)
35 x 47" uncut print $1200
(edition of 12)
Four Poems/April 2004
17 ½ x 23 3/8
inches/Hahnemühle 308 gsm Photo Rag
single prints $350 (edition of
10)
set of 4 prints $1200 (edition of 10)
35 x 47" uncut print $1200
(edition of 12)
Red Wood/February 2004
17 ½ x 23 3/8
inches/Hahnemühle 308 gsm Photo Rag
$350 (edition of
20)
Afternoon Sunshine/April 2004
17 ½ x 23 3/8
inches/Hahnemühle 308 gsm Photo Rag
$350 (edition of
20)
Produced on an Epson Stylus Pro 9500 printer at 1440/720 dpi
with six, pigment-based, archival inks, these Giclée prints (properly
framed and conserved) have a 'projected life' of at least 100
years.
Three further suites of Four Poems--May, June and July
2004--are in the works (toward 'completion' of a year of RG's life in the
'Agricultural Year' 2004).
Robert Grenier, who has received two NEA
fellowships for poetry writing, has presented his drawn poems extensively
in readings and slide presentations at many colleges and
universities/sites, including Woodland Pattern Book Center (Milwaukee,
WI), Stanford University (where his Archives are housed), The University
of Maine (Orono)(where he particularly enjoyed reading/discussing his
'stuff'), SUNY/Buffalo (There Too!), SUNY Albany (certainly!), California
College of Arts & Crafts, U.C Berkeley (where he taught Contemporary
American Poetry & Advanced Poetry Writing in the English Dept. in
1969/before he had written a thing!), Brown University (where he was
treated like a king in 2000!), Mills College (where he taught All his
'understanding of Poetry' in his shirtsleeves in 2002-2003), and in his
living room (for an otherwise-preoccupied/barely attending group of
friends!) oftentimes, over a period of years, etc.
Prints and
unique drawn poems have been exhibited at Marianne Boesky Gallery, both in
the exhibition Poetry Plastique (2001) and in conjunction with a reading
event hosted at the gallery in 2003.
Robert Grenier will show
Slides of These Very Same Drawing Poems (in different real-world/hand's-on
imaging)(Fujichrome Sensia 100, with fingers) in a reading/showing with
lifelong friend Kenneth Irby at Columbia University this coming September
16, at 8 p.m. in 602 Hamilton Hall (where you can see, in a different
medium, 'more or less'/differently, 'what they look like'), as a 'warm-up'
before the September 17-19, 2004 Louis Zukofsky Centennial Conference at
Columbia/Barnard.
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