Concordance [Paperback]

Mei-mei Berssenbrugge (Author), Kiki Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2, 2006

CONCORDANCE is a new collaborative work by two acclaimed contemporary artists, poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and sculptor Kiki Smith. Inspired by Smith's image of a dandelion, whose floating silks Berssenbrugge compares to reading, the poet asks, "What if images were Eros as words?" In her deceptively childlike book, with its aura of fairy tale, large type and over-scale imagery, Berssenbrugge's poem traces embeddings of human and animal bodies, ideas, dreams and emotion in a concordance of parallel and contingent contexts. Smith's pochoirs of Eros as seeds, feathers, star-like explosions, and wide-eyed, unblinking owls embed the emotion Berssenbrugge's poetry ignites through brilliant insights that surface as layers of a "streaming consciousness . . . emanating from stars symbiotic with individuation. A second poem, RED QUIET, designed by Smith as brown typography on red Eames paper, explores the related theme of the force fields of attraction and repetition that can be created by words, emotion, images "He calls the location of accidents a morphic field: their recurrence is resonance, as of an archetype with the vibration of a seed." A Special Editions of Concordance, signed by Berssenbrugge and Smith and containing a limited edition print of an actual page of the book, is available from KSP for $350.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Mei-mei Berssenbrugge was born in Beijing, China, and grew up in Massachusetts. She has been publishing poetry for forty years. Her books include EMPATHY and four books from Kelsey Street Press: SPHERICITY, ENDOCRINOLOGY, FOUR YEAR OLD GIRL, and NEST. Among her many awards are two Asian American poetry prizes and a Western States Book Award. I LOVE ARTISTS, her new and selected poems was recently published by the University of California Press. HIDDENNESS, a collaboration with artist Richard Tuttle, was published by the Whitney Museum Library Fellows in 1997. Berssenbrugge lives with Tuttle and their daughter, Martha, in rural New Mexico and New York City. Kiki Smith was born in Nuremberg, Germany, and grew up in New Jersey. She has exhibited her work since the 1980s, when she was a member of COLAB, an influential artists' collective in New York City. Her work is represented in museums throughout Europe and the United States. A major retrospective of her prints, PRINTS, BOOKS AND THINGS, took place at the Museum of Modern Art, 2003. The Walker Art Museum last year organized a major survey retrospective of her oeuvre, which will move to Houston and, finally, to the Whitney Museum in New York. Smith lives and works in New York City.

Product Details

• Paperback: 48 pages
• Publisher: Kelsey Street Pr (August 2, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0932716679
• ISBN-13: 978-0932716675
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 8.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,265,583 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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