Residencies: Peter Reading's "Marfan" (2000)

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First the photos: Marfa, Texas where poet Peter Reading did a really interesting residency, read on below for more. The interior shot is Donald Judd's permanent installation of steel boxes in a disused factory and the other is a Prada "store" in the middle of nowhere, put there by the Milanese fashion house and the Marfa Arts Foundation. (photos thanks to Jane Lyons).

Residencies": these things that uproot creative types to different places--do they yield anything of real worth? August Kleinzahler is savage on them: his poem "The Art Farm" (in The Strange Hours Travelers Keep--FSG 2003/Faber 2004) is a case in point. Here's an excerpt:

..."Like a caravan, the Toyotas, Saabs and 4 x 4s
head south, breaking up among the interchanges
north of Boston and heading their separate ways:
some to the nation's colleges,
where they take up their residencies once more,
even with the thunder of the football season upon them;
some to the warrens and fastnesses of Brooklyn,
where the young, these days, position themselves.

Behind them, a cold front from Canada moves in
across the wooded peaks and ridges, settling
among the many valleys and turning to mush
the late vegetables, finishing off
what's left of the blackberries, deep in their brambles.
Beauty is difficult. Yes, yes, of course it is.
How would it be otherwise? Of course, of course.
But what a lot of good talk about process

and stimulating tete-a-tetes. Energized, inspired, even,
one leaves this peaceful place. Fructified:
yes, that would be the word, exactly.
Reluctantly, one returns to the world
and all its quotidian bother, fructified.
And with them goes their art, these cheerful,
satisfied customers, packed safely away
in their trunks and back seats: the rolled canvases
and tools; manuscripts-in-progress
safely transferred to hard disk and awaiting

application of all that encouragement and sound counsel:
ready for that final, determined drive
to completion and a great big FUCK YOU for you know who"...

I'm with Kleinzahler in a lot of what he's doing here: the phrase "position themselves" is just right, the whole picture of self-satisfied "consumers" of art process returning to the factories of "education" where poets are "turned out" or the art "world" of Brooklyn where they chase "success"--all this is necessary to be seen for what it is. Mostly. There are the rare exceptions. But I think Kleinzahler's point of view is essential in keeping the big picture in view and in causing us to ask the right questions: what does it take to make art? What is the "art world"? What is success in art/poetry terms? And so on. So many of these things are not challenged enough, and it takes the contrarian/marginalized voice to wake us up. (By the way, on this subject, I was surprised and delighted to hear the voice of poet Trevor Joyce on national radio here in Ireland the other day. He was talking about why poetry is a necessary art as it can do and say things that language can't do in any other way, and he was talking too about the corporatization of book-selling and how it has made most good (challenging) poetry inaccessible to punters. It was on Lyric FM. I'll try and find a link for you.)

Which brings us to poet Peter Reading (who trained as a painter), a contrarian if there ever was one. And three cheers to the Lannan Foundation for giving Peter Reading a literary residency in, of all places, Marfa, Texas. The resulting book, Marfan (which could be pronounced as "Martian" if you treat the "f" as the old English sibilant--Bloodaxe 2000) is just wonderful. It makes me laugh, deeply. I love poems that embrace humour--not chuckling, Billy Collins/Carol Anne Duffy-type humour mind you. Darker stuff. "Marfan" is full of dark humour.

No better man to plunk in the Texan desert (geographical and cultural). A poet who loves to use ancient metrical forms, who loves Latin, an expert in birds and geologic history. And he's forced into the Marfan public library("The Wisdom of West Texas, a slim vol."). Forced to read the local paper, The Desert Candle. All the while, blue-chip sculptor Donald Judd's "compound" lurks (he bought a huge disused factory complex there in the 70's where his gigantor steel, minimalist works are displayed).

Here's some of what Reading wrote during this "residency":

"Across the windswept, Pronghorn-browsed brown grass
Judd's row of concrete, seven-foot-high boxes
stretches a mile north-south, signifies zilch.

Some days I've seen Antilocapras shelter
from noon sun of a hundred-and-some degrees
in those cute sculptures--yes, and shit in'm too."

That's another beauty of this residency for Reading's work: the Texan talk seeps in
(as in the last line above) or it just takes over the poems completely as in:

"Th BP boys is doin wayl agin-
th Marfa Sector pulled in three more on em,
Undocumented Spiks lookin fer wk."

Or the sound of someone being taken over by a dialect, a sound, a "mind set".

"Sunset is like a busted-up fried egg."

"The indigineous can fuck off outa here."

"When this gets published I shall have to be
beyond the City Limit on a Greyhound."

++++
Yes, residencies good.