Poetry
Jeremy Sigler
How much does
a barking
tree overhear
in winter when
its leaves
disappear their
orange organics
grow brown
this town has
lots to say
but nothing
to mean I
mean everything
meanders all
at once the
snow is melting
back to brown
a few white
shapes withheld
from water
wonder what’s
up beyond the air
and this intensifying
season will
bring something
really new
when the seeds
crack back
through brown
down layers and
next time I
wont let the
dancer meander
too far from
the motion
Contributor
Jeremy SiglerJeremy Sigler is a poet, critic and teacher living in Brooklyn, New York. His long-awaited analysis of the poetry of Carl Andre is forthcoming from Sternberg Press.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
The Tree of Life
By Charlotte KentJUL-AUG 2020 | ArtSeen
Online exhibits provide a different viewing experience. If all these works were in the Lower East Side gallery, you might walk in, look around, occasionally watch one of the time-based works, perhaps put on headphones for sound, and meander to the next piece. The online configuration asks for greater engagement, something that surprises many by requiring a conscious commitment to the work.
Judah Schept’s Coal, Cages, Crisis
By Jarrod Shanahan and Abby CunniffSEPT 2022 | Field Notes
A crumbling strip of asphalt winds through the craggy countryside of eastern Kentucky, striated with power lines sagging in every direction. Wobbly pavement markings and errant skidmarks vanish at a hairpin bend buffered by low guard rails framing a rolling, sparsely tree-spotted expanse of hills. On one side of this road stands a roughly chiseled open coal seam, marking the remnants of a former mine. On the other, a bowed chain link fence capped in razor-wire announces the outer periphery of Otter Creek Correctional Facility. This remarkable image by photographer Jill Frank adorns the jacket of prison scholar Judah Schept’s Coal, Cages, Crisis (New York: NYU Press, 2022), confronting the reader with the book’s central preoccupations.
Shokoofeh Azar’s The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree
By John DominiAPRIL 2020 | Books
Which version counts as the truth? That dangerous term? Plainly, Azar would answer both, arguing that the Old Gods still hold value, “still alive and reacting,” even as she recognizes how “mysticism didn’t offer any simple solutions to murder, plunder, poverty, or human injustice.”
Assembly 1: Unstored
By Faye FlemingSEPT 2022 | ArtSeen
One of Sodi’s central ideas is to take out of storage artworks that have been languishing in crates unseen, raising the ghost of the old “if a tree falls in a forest” question of observation and perception: if an artwork lies unseen in a crate, is it still art? It is clear that this is underpinned by a deeply held belief in art’s power to quietly inspire hearts and minds, so long as it can be made visible enough to do so.
