Who reads poetry? Not our intellectuals: they want to control it. Not lovers, not the combative, not examinees. They too skim it for bouquets and magic trump cards. Not poor schoolkids furtively farting as they get immunized against it.
Poetry is read by the lovers of poetry and heard by some more they coax to the cafe or the district library for a bifocal reading. Lovers of poetry may total a million people on the whole planet. Fewer than the players of skat.
What gives them delight is a never-murderous skim distilled, to verse mainly, and suspended in rapt calm on the surface of paper. The rest of poetry to which this was once integral still rules the continents, as it always did. But on condition now
that its true name is never spoken. This feral poetry, the opposite but also the secret of the rational, who reads that? Ah, the lovers, the schoolkids, debaters, generals, crime-lords, everybody reads it: Porsche, lift-off, Gaia, Cool, patriarchy.
Edward Hopper’s Lighthouse Village, Cape Elizabeth (1929)
Maine house, 1998, by Michael H. Coles
There is so much I love about the art of Edward Hopper, which is why I continue to turn to his work — so on the pulse of us as Americans. I have never been to Maine, let through painting like Lighthouse Village, I feel as if I grow up in Cape Elizabeth — his inspiration allows my imagination to capture reality.
“I once told Hopper that he shows us who we are,” said poet William Carlos Williams. “He’d have no part of my enthusiasm, or extravagance. ‘Yes, I try,’ he said–and then he spoke about ‘light,” how hard he looks for it. He told me to go ‘hunting’ for light, and I liked hearing him use that word–seeing his face get lit up as he spoke!” (“Seeking Maine’s Light,” DoubleTake, Winter 2000)
The Michael H. Coles photograph of a Maine house taken not far from where Hopper painted Lighthouse Village illustrates how Hopper was able to capture the light.
kenne
Edward Hopper, Self-portrait
Edward Hopper and the House by the Railroad (1925)
by Edward Hirsch
Out here in the exact middle of the day, This strange, gawky house has the expression Of someone being stared at, someone holding His breath underwater, hushed and expectant;
This house is ashamed of itself, ashamed Of its fantastic mansard rooftop And its pseudo-Gothic porch, ashamed of its shoulders and large, awkward hands.
The House by the Railroad by Edward Hopper 1925
But the man behind the easel is relentless. He is as brutal as sunlight, and believes The house must have done something horrible To the people who once lived here
Because now it is so desperately empty, It must have done something to the sky Because the sky, too, is utterly vacant And devoid of meaning. There are no
Trees or shrubs anywhere–the house Must have done something against the earth. All that is present is a single pair of tracks Straightening into the distance. No trains pass.
Now the stranger returns to this place daily Until the house begins to suspect That the man, too, is desolate, desolate And even ashamed. Soon the house starts
To stare frankly at the man. And somehow The empty white canvas slowly takes on The expression of someone who is unnerved, Someone holding his breath underwater.
And then one day the man simply disappears. He is a last afternoon shadow moving Across the tracks, making its way Through the vast, darkening fields.
This man will paint other abandoned mansions, And faded cafeteria windows, and poorly lettered Storefronts on the edges of small towns. Always they will have this same expression,
The utterly naked look of someone Being stared at, someone American and gawky. Someone who is about to be left alone Again, and can no longer stand it.
DoubleTake Special Edition Cover Photo by Kevin Bubriski: Top Right Photo by Peter Turnley, Bottom Right by Kevin Bubriski
OBITUARIES
These are no pages for the young, who are better off in one another’s arms,
nor for those who just need to know about the price of gold or a hurricane that is ripping up the Keys.
But eventually you may join the crowed who turn here first to see who has fallen in the night, who has left a shape of air walking in their place.
Here is where the final cards are shown, the age, the cause, the plaque of deeds, and sometimes an odd scrap of news – that she collected sugar bowls, that he played solitaire without and clothes.
And the end is where the survivors huddle under the tin roof of a paragraph, as if they had escaped the flame of death.
What better way to place a thin black frame around the things of the morning – the hand-painted cup, the hemispheres of a cut orange, the slant of sunlight on the table.
And often a most peculiar pair turns up, strange roommates lying there side by side on the page – Arthur Godfrey next to Man Ray, Bo Diddley by the side of Dale Evans.
It is enough to bring to mind an ark of death, not the couples of the animal kingdom, but rather pairs of men and women ascending the gangplank two by two,
Surgeon and model, balloonist and metalworker, an archaeologist and an authority on pain.
Arm in arm, they get on board then join the others leaning on the rails, all saved at last from the awful flood of life –
So many of them every day there would have to be many arks, an armada to ferry the dead over the heavy waters that roll beyond the world,
and many Noahs too, bearded and fiercely browed, vigilant up there at every prow.
— Billy Collins
CHILDREN’S EXPRESSIONS
“Yet again, as we considered what certain youngsters had to offer the eyes and ears of others, we recalled the words of a New Jersey pediatrician, William Carlos Williams, as recalled by his son, William Eric Williams, also a pediatrician of America’s Garden State, just south of the Manhattan skyline:
“Dad would come home from his house calls {to 9 Ridge Road, Rutherford, where both those does lived and practiced medicine} and he’d be excited, we could see — his face glowing with the light a kid had given him: something said, something drawn. He called those kids him teachers. ‘They don’t miss a trick, and there’s little that passes them by.’ We’d nod — glad to see and enjoy dad, the ever grateful student, saluting with all his heart the boys and girls, ‘the young writers and artists of America,’ he called them, who would always get him going so much.”
Sarah Himmel, fifth grade, Newman Elementary School, Needham, Massachusetts
Jasper, Alabama, 1987 — Photo by Sam Fentress in the September 1987 issue of “DoubleTake”
With the worsening crisis in the middle-east and oil prices well over $110 a barrel, I thought I would share this 1987 photo showing gas prices with the religious message above this Shell station sign. I’m not sure such messages help, but what the hell!
“Some passersby take exception to the mixing of spiritual and commercial messages, Fentress says, but he believes the signs were made with the best of intentions.”
“It reminds me of a joke I heard once about a guy who goes to confession and asks, ‘Father, is it OK if I smoke while I pray?’ And the priest says, ‘No, my son.’ But when the next guy comes in and asks, ‘Father, is it OK if I pray while I smoke?’ the priest says, ‘Sure, that’s fine.’ “
Saturday evening light
Flashback to yesteryear,
Listening to the radio
Reading to a musical background.
Pausing the reading,
Surfing radio frequencies
Listening to the words
Of one-note talk shows.
Turning the dial to the left
Searching for painted words
A spontaneous overflow
Streaming powerful feelings.
Hearing words of choice and form
Words expressing the unspoken
Evoking times past
With times present.
Connecting, but questioning,
Who is this poet?
Line after line
Words shared in time.
How could this be?
Do I know her?
Read her poetry?
Heard her read?
Who is she?
Continuing to listen
Who is she?
Words replaced by silence.
Listening carefully,
Who is she?
Loueva Smith –
That’s it, Loueva Smith!
Knowing her name,
Loueva Smith — Photoshop image by kenne from Google Images
Time to Google,
Generating 21 results
One, DoubleTake #13.
Now I know
A virtual illusion
Figment of imagination
Arising out of nothingness.
But, just maybe
She does exist
In the middle
Of nowhere else to go.
Searching through office shelves,
There it was, DoubleTake #13.
Found, but not lost,
Words “…she had learned to keep quiet.”
— Kenne
(Originally posted in 2008)
DoubleTake magazine was unique in American publishing, influencing the way other media began to use photography with writing. Originally published at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies between 1995-1999, before moving to Massachusetts, continuing to publish to 2003. I still have issues 8 – 30 from between 1997-2003, including a special edition on September 11, 2001. DoubleTake is a publication I will always treasure. From time to time, I will share some of its content.
kenne
“It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.”
“Who Reads Poetry/” — Image by kenne
Sadness of the Moon — Image by kenne
Edward Hopper’s Lighthouse Village, Cape Elizabeth (1929)
A Lyric by Woody Guthrie — from DoubleTake Spring 1999
Woody Guthrie in NYC’s old Irish tavern McSorley’s Old Ale House
Jasper, Alabama, 1987 — Photo by Sam Fentress in the September 1987 issue of “DoubleTake” 
