Visions: Paintings by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Chang Dai-chien, Georgia O'Keeffe and California Impressionists Seen Through the Optic of Poetry [Paperback]

Marc Elihu Hofstadter (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0967022452 | ISBN-13: 978-0967022451 | Publication Date: September 19, 2001

Poetry. VISIONS, a new collection of Marc Elihu Hofstadter's poetry, documents the attempt to reify the optics of paintings into the text of poetry. "Marc Hofstadter wields an optical instrument that captures the rays that emanate from the interiors of things, rather than from their outsides. This is what makes him a poet, an excellent one. I believe, as he does that the moment is the key to the eternal and color the key to the invisible"--Yves Bonnefoy. "To read Marc Hofstadter's VISIONS is to feel you're walking through an intimate museum.Zen-like, Hofstadter sets his spare evocations against 'reality, white,/which is unknown to us,' so that we're left to contemplate again the mysteries of art and artist, color and consciousness, and to remember that 'sometimes life's joys are small'"--Kim Addonizio.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Following the Chinese dictum, "Paintings are silent poems," Marc Hofstadter bequeaths the canvas word. -- Willis Barnstone

To read Marc Hofstadter's Visions is to feel you're walking through an intimate museum. -- Kim Addonizio

About the Author

MARC ELIHU HOFSTADTER, author of Luck (Scarlet Tanager, 2008) and Visions: Paintings Seen Through the Optic of Poetry (Scarlet Tanager, 2001), was born in New York City in 1945. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Literature from the University of California at Santa Cruz, writing his doctoral dissertation on the late poetry and poetics of William Carlos Williams. He received a second Master's degree in Library and Information Studies from the University of California at Berkeley, and for twenty-three years worked as the librarian of the San Francisco Municipal Railway, the city of San Francisco's transit agency. He is the author of House of Peace (Mother's Hen, 1999) and Shark's Tooth (Regent Press, 2006), and his poetry, translations, and critical articles have appeared widely in literary magazines.

Product Details

• Paperback: 72 pages
• Publisher: Scarlet Tanager Books (September 19, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0967022452
• ISBN-13: 978-0967022451
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,321,287 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Unique and lovely poetry, October 14, 2009

By 

Carl Goddard "Carl Goddard" (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Visions: Paintings by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Chang Dai-chien, Georgia O'Keeffe and California Impressionists Seen Through the Optic of Poetry (Paperback)

A friend gave me two of Hofstadter's books. I'm not a great reader of poetry, but "Visions" was truely a unique and lovely collection of poems on paintings that I admire. I've never read anything quite like it. I then read Hofstadter's "House of Peace" very different but wonderful as well.

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Poetry? No., January 23, 2008

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Visions: Paintings by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Chang Dai-chien, Georgia O'Keeffe and California Impressionists Seen Through the Optic of Poetry (Paperback)

Marc Elihu Hofstadter, Visions: Paintings Seen Through the Optic of Poetry (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2001)

After I'd read a few pages of this, I was relatively sure I'd read it before; however, I couldn't find a review of it, so I figured I was just caught in a case of deja vu. Turns out that, no, I did read it back in 2004. But my review seems to have slipped through the cracks, so here I am again, having wasted another four hours of my existence on this godawful mess. You can be sure that this time it's headed off to Half-Price Books so I don't make the same mistake again.

There are a great many aspiring poets who don't understand that poetry is not just prose chopped up into little lines. Thankfully, you see this trend a great deal less among the published set, but there are still times when it rears its ugly head:

"I'm an artist trying to make a work
I've learned to draw well
so I put this white line here,
shade this yellow rectangle just so
and make the orange glow
But it's not quite right
It expresses my soul
but not all of it"
("No. 19, 1949")

I'm not even sure where to start with all that's wrong with that poem. However, it's pretty easy to illustrate what I'm talking about: write it out yourself, taking out all the line breaks, as a paragraph, inserting the necessary punctuation. Do you find it notably changed when you read it that way? If not, then what's the justification for making it poetry and not prose?

An awful book from front to back. I guess the reason I read it again is because I'd blocked it out of my head the first time; I shall endeavor to do so again immediately. *