Myself Painting: Poems [Paperback]

Clarence Major (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2008

In Myself Painting Clarence Major seeks to recreate for readers the inexpressible feeling that comes from creating art with poems that speak not of painting itself, but of its underlying process. Major incorporates the techniques of painting--particularly that of Post-Expressionism--into his verse, describing scenery with an artist's eye and using form and color to evokes striking images: "Desire, artichoke green . . . leaves all radiant, / creating the thickness of blue shadows." A master of highly structured free verse, Major also paints sounds, enthralling the reader in a real world of private symbols and dream visions. Using dynamic, surreal images, this original collection invites readers into the poet's own fascinating world.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Prizewinning poet, painter, and novelist Clarence Major is the author of ten books of poetry, including Configurations: New and Selected Poems, 1958-1998, a National Book Award Bronze Medal finalist. He is also author of critically acclaimed nonfiction and fiction and is editor of several landmark anthologies. Winner of the National Council on the Arts Award and the New York Cultural Foundation Prize, both for poetry, he is professor emeritus at the University of California at Davis. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 104 pages
• Publisher: Louisiana State University Press (October 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807133671
• ISBN-13: 978-0807133675
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,797,717 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars how to paint with a pen, January 25, 2009

By 

Case Quarter (CT USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Myself Painting: Poems (Paperback)

the best way to gain rewards from major's book is to approach each poem as though a sketch pad were in hand, a sketch pad or a canvas, paintbrush and easel and to walk along the lines as walking along some littoral of some foreign city, behind you a boardwalk of restaurants and small shops, and you're constantly on the lookout for the scene you will draw or paint. this is how these poems unfold. well, most of them. there are also some bucolic settings unexpectedly joined to the chaotic, the jeering crowd, the riot, the off beaten path in the tourist town leading to where the natives live.

major's reputation for being an abstract expressionist doesn't follow him in myself, painting. even when expressionistic these poems are very accessible and far from being as abstract as, say, any poem by john ashbery. when major writes:

`outside, your red pony chews blue grass.'

is there any doubt he's in kentucky, or even that his red pony evokes the steinbeck title?

clarence major has become the poet of the matter of fact, some poems fit a day book, a daily journal chronicling the everyday experience of nothing in particular . this is his offering to reader, the artist as anyone who happens to be in different cities for no particular reason, but once there wherever he happens to be, be it rome or san francisco, on some beachfront, some shore, or seated at a table in some restaurant where he looks at the scenery, maybe, he imagines, some picture will come out of it. how he imagines is what makes him who he is, clarence major, poet musing on the visible for artistic inspiration and motivation. of the poems directly concerned with artistic inspiration `in search of a motif for expressive female figuration' is the best poem in the collection, and may just be the best poem major's written; `in search of a motif...' is a montage of women, the first three words

`she, the many...'

guiding the reader through numerous guises of one woman or many women.

the final poems in the book `copying', `bad nudes',

we are a roundtable of painters.
we're talking about how to get around
the usual perception of common objects.

`difficult pose', `open session', and `when the model does not show' describe the artist in community with other artists and models.

selections from major's paintings are found on his webpage. major favored blended colors, black edged greens, smoky cranberry reds, mustard yellows, and caramel browns sheened in iridescence, set aglow by sunlight. the cover of myself painting is of one major's beach landscapes, colors of a different palette, the greens are milky, the browns beige, his blues culled from cornflowers and his red cut from a silk red dress.