Song of a Reformed Headhunter

  Yesterday, visited a place that I had always wanted to visit since I heard about it: Frida Kahlo's Blue House, or Casa Azul. It was a beautiful compound of house and garden. The great paintings were not there, as they were scattered in the world's museums, but the material remnants of one's life were. The wheelchair in front of the easel in the artist's studio. The mirror above the beds in the day and night bedrooms that enabled the artist to paint while lying down in excruciating pain. The artist's ashes in an urn in the shape of toad, to recall Diego's nickname for himself, the toad-frog. The corsets—medical and decorative—that held the broken body straight. The song written by Patti Smith, painted on the garden wall, inspired by Noguchi's gift of a display case of butterflies to Kahlo. Famously, when Kahlo had to remove her gangrenous foot, she said, "Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?" After Casa Azul, we walked to the lov...

Read on Sunday night with Ocean Vuong at JujoMukti Tea Lounge in the East Village, at a reading series curated by David Lawton. We read a poem each in turns, and the poems played off each other wonderfully. An electrifying moment happened when Ocean read his self-portrait as Jeffrey Dahmer, and then I read my self-portrait after Frida Kahlo. The body broken and eaten becomes the body put back together and giving nourishment. A number of friends came for the reading, Linda Lerner, Miriam Stanley, Jackie Sheeler, and Brant Lyon. GH was there too. Rachael Briggs also came, and read two witty poems written during NaPoWriMo. She, GH and I had dinner afterwards at the Polish diner, Odessa. I sold two books at the reading and traded with Ocean.

The lure was at least double. I had never visited El Museo del Barrio on upper Fifth Avenue and I did not know much about art in the Americas. The museum has just reopened after a modest makeover. I did not like the plasticky colors in its lobby and shop, both of which imitated the corporate look of better funded boutique museums. The lobby, shop and cafe space could have been given over to the art. Because the art was so compelling, and still looked crowded in the slightly expanded galleries. The "Nexus New York" show was so much more than Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. They were there, she represented by "The Suicide of Dorothy Hale," and he by his drawing for the Rockefeller Center mural. But there were also Cuban Carlos Enriquez and American Alice Neel, husband and wife, and artistic rivals in their figurative art. Placed side by side, their paintings of each other,  their surviving daughter (one died),  and neighbors were a fascinating study of influence and d...

Built around a squarish stairwell, the interior of the museum presented to the eye a series of cuboid faces, which resolved, as one climbed up the stairs, round and round, into circular shapes at the very top, a metal bridge spanning the stairwell, leading to the final galleries. Martin Puryear's craft-like sculptures were on display at the top, and having seen them in New York MoMA I enjoyed making my acquaintance with them again, especially the "Circle" series.  Just below the top floor, a whole level was dedicated to participation art, which I am not interested in, and so did not visit. Another level for photography showcased images of microscopic specimens and telescopic sights. Walking through that space I felt I was looking at natural history, instead of art. The SFMoMA seemed to suffer from a multiple personality disorder. On the second level were the paintings and sculptures from the permanent collection. The exhibition space was not large, and so most painters we...

Study #5 after Frida Kahlo I dream I am a wreck of a woman. I am not grand like a ruins, I am not a broken column. I am the traffic accident on morning radio. A bus handrail is sticking in my uterus like a huge thumbtack. My collarbone hangs round my throat like a necklace. I dream a monkey is picking up bits of my spine with his pale hands. The monkey is carefully arranging me back together. I hear the Professor say the monkey is the traditional symbol for lust. My monkey is very gentle. When he is finished, I will take him to my breast, and offer him my nipple. *

Poetry-Free-For-All is getting people to write seven poems in seven days, starting on the seventh of the month, i.e. this Friday. It is a week-version of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWrMo), in which you write a poem a day for 30 days. Seven seems like a good distance to me, to write at full stretch, and it gives three weeks for rest and recovery before the next race. Seven is such a potent figure too, inspiring all kinds of magic and myth.  I plan to write "Seven Studies for a Self-Portrait." Each study will be written after a well-known self-portraitist. That "after" is very open. My seven masters will be Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Vincent van Gogh, Egon Schiele, Frida Kahlo, Andy Warhol, and Yasumasa Morimura. Rembrandt and van Gogh are obvious suspects; the others came to me as I googled the net. I did not know Morimura's appropriation art till this morning, and he seems to make a good endpoint since he photographs himself in the garb and post...