Customer Reviews

Imaginary Museum: Poems on Art

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Anyone who has ever gazed at a favorite work of art and longed to DO something about it will cherish Joseph Stanton's IMAGINARY MUSEUM, a collection of poems that respond to images from the visual arts--painting, sculpture, movies--and the arts of drama and story. Stanton's own images and word-music concentrate your attention in fresh and startling ways, quicker than thinking. In these poems you'll find a ghost's sleeves dripping with salt, fire trying to outlive the burning house, a bird disappearing with a cry into unpainted silk. The arrangement of the book "museum" into galleries is delightful. Visit the Western Wing with its Vermeer, Cezanne, and Magritte poems; the Eastern Wing with its stunning evocations of Noh Drama; The Moving Picture Room with its Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Blade Runner, Birds (look out for that darkening jungle jim!) and Incredible Shrinking Man; the golden-lit Breugel Gallery; the surreal yet familiar Exhibition of Tales; and the spare splendor of the Hopper Gallery (Edward Hopper is obviously a favorite artist of the poet's). From cover to cover, IMAGINARY MUSEUM is a rare beauty.