Back to Green Integer Review
Stephen
Ratcliffe
from HUMAN
/ NATURE
1.17
yellow of scotch broom branch slanting across green plane
of ridge, blue jay perched on tobacco plant branch in left
corner, streaked sparrow on table below it
color theorist
noticing “red-orange appears red or yellow-orange,” magenta
and cyan will cause “cleavage of yellow into red and green”
de Kooning claiming “everything that passes me I can only
see a little of, but I am always looking,” adding “and I
can see an awful lot sometimes”
parallel lines of low
thin white clouds in pale blue sky above right-sloping
shoulder of ridge, whiteness of gull passing overhead
1.18
shadow slanting across tree-lined canyon of green ridge,
finch pecking up seeds from table on right, sunlit silver
jet passing across cloudless pale blue sky overhead
woman
in red shirt seeing how small the world is when you get down
to particulars, noting “I’m afraid of talking to most people”
woman in black claiming people who see The Birth of a Nation
don’t know actors are in black face, adding “I’m a novelist,
like leaving space for the reader to fill in”
white wall
of wave breaking across blue plane in the left foreground,
sandstone-colored cliff against blue-white sky behind it
1.19
orange circle of sun rising below upturned curve of pine
branch, plane of fog on top of ridge, jet trail slanting
across cloudless blue sky overhead
Barnett Newman claiming
Mondrian’s way of drawing illustrates a scientific attitude,
how life “moves in relation to a vertical”
short-haired
girl noting the air around the fruit in Cézanne’s still
life, how the curve of the pear appears to be leaking,
surface of table tilting toward the left
pale blue
sky reflected in blue-green plane, rainbow in curve
of white spray above wave breaking into foreground
1.20
pink-white line of light below grey plane of fog in right
corner, golden-crowned sparrow pecking up seeds from table
in foreground below it, green slope of ridge across from it
Hoffmann thinking width of a line presents idea of infinity,
mood of a landscape results from relation of certain things
man in grey truck recalling corrugated metal shed in Topeka
Springs, Death Valley, “Paradise” on the wall above “Closed
Please Call Again” in the lower left corner
white spray
above blue-green shoulder of the wave breaking in right
foreground, whiteness of gull gliding across above it
1.21
grey light coming into the sky above still dark pine branch
in right foreground, sound of drops falling from tobacco
plant leaves below it, invisible jet passing overhead
woman on beach seeing freighters making their way to China,
“reds-and-blacks at odds with airscape of motion and light”
Merleau-Ponty wanting a direct description of experience,
noting how “all problems amount to finding definitions
of essences, the essence of perception” for instance
shadowed grey wall of swell moving across grey plane
on right, wingspan of a gull gliding across above it
1.22
grey plane of clouds moving above still dark ridge in window
opposite unmade yellow and blue bed, pink line below grey
in window above it, waves breaking in channel
Holmes
admitting “I have confined my investigations to the material
world,” Baskerville running from hound for fear of his life
man on radio noting Winslow Homer fished with scarlet ibis,
studies of rods and cones showing red is most vivid color
for fish, scraped tapered line into paintings with a pin
grey cloud lowering across circular green pine on point,
drops falling into grey-green plane in left foreground
1.23
fox sparrow perched on angle of shadowed tobacco plant
branch in lower right foreground, green leaves above it,
sound of a jet passing overhead
man on phone recalling
going downstairs a little after midnight, finding his wife
on the kitchen floor “face down and shaking”
woman on left
claiming that
Mary Lamb murdered her mother at the age of 32, stabbed in
heart with kitchen
knife, put in mental hospital
rather than prison because she had no remorse
pink-white
opening below grey plane of clouds in upper right corner,
gull perched on triangular orange tip of the GROIN sign
1.24
diagonal line of jet trail slanting across blue-white sky
above ridge, finch landing on rose branch next to feeder,
sound of waves breaking in the channel
woman on phone
recalling thinking television waves make you infertile,
“what nine year old girl thinks about future parenthood”
Derrida believing “there’s a future which is predictable,”
noting that Heidegger and Hegel erase their private lives
from their work, “speech is what’s taking place right here”
triangular grey cloud in front of darker green of the ridge,
white wall moving in across grey-whiteness of plane below it
1.25
thin grey line of fog on top of black forest green ridge,
horizontal patch of blue opening in grey-white cloud above
it, finch on right perch of feeder in lower right foreground
man at
microphone standing to the left of curved granite rock wall,
wondering “how
many people want to buy gouache on rust”
critic claiming that Orwell’s 1984 sold 1,370 copies a day
in 1973, Leslie Stephen noting Defoe’s “clear recitation
of the facts”
triangle of sunlight flickering across
grey plane of swell in left foreground, circle of sun
next to curve of grey-white cloud in corner above it
1.26
light green planes of nasturtium leaves above green passion
vine-covered fence, dried hemlock stalk slanting across
ridge above it, streaks of grey-white cloud overhead
man
on left thinking of using the endless line to create images,
noting that “color is a way of keeping shapes apart”
woman
in black leather jacket noticing flecks of aluminum in right
foreground, pattern of concentric lines in rectangular plane
on right, yellow square in the center to the left of red one
upturned curve of waning white quarter moon in pale blue sky
in left corner, circular green pine on tip of point below it
____
Stephen
Ratcliffe’s books of poetry include Portraits
& Repetition (The Post-Apollo Press) and SOUND/(system) (Green Integer). REAL is
forthcoming from Avenue B this fall. Listening to Reading, a collection of essays on contemporary “experimental” poetry, was published by SUNY Press. He lives in Bolinas, California, and
teaches at
Mills College in Oakland.
Copyright ©2006 by Stephen Ratcliffe.