The Brooklyn Rail

A Tribute to Rudolph Burckhardt

"One morning, a black kitten wandered in from next door, and turned out to belong to Bill de Kooning. Bill played Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Flamenco music, and Louis Armstrong very loud on his phonograph and talked about Picasso.

TRACEY EMIN Love Is What You Want

The first piece I saw of Tracey Emin’s was “Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995”, a tent with names appliquéd inside. I remember noticing the dates and figuring there was something more to this than shagging, though shagging and being shagged was the primary tone.

MISSIVE TO FRANK O’HARA from Vincent Katz

Now that I am off the coast of Venezuela and can think—but I better be quick about it, I’m about to cross into Guiana, skirting Suriname, and also Raphael needs this quickly, well, not that he needs it exactly, but quickly, yes!—now I can write to you.

The Persistence of Art Criticism

Criticism is autobiography; we can only write from what we know, and are. The dancer cannot dissemble, claimed Graham. Much less the critic. Though he or she can be namby-pamby, noncommittal, or sloppy. These sins are to be avoided.

TRACEY EMIN
Love Is What You Want

The first piece I saw of Tracey Emin’s was “Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995,” a tent with names appliquéd inside. I remember noticing the dates and figuring there was something more to this than shagging (Emin was born in 1963), though shagging and being shagged was the primary tone.

JANET FISH Recent Paintings

We have come to expect something from a Janet Fish exhibition, and we are happy when we get it. We do not go to a Fish exhibition to be confounded, befuddled, or made to re-think what art or society may be. We go to delight in the surfaces she makes and the textures and qualities of light her paintings evoke.

MARSDEN HARTLEY Soliloquy in Dogtown

clouds over land / land filled form / flows floods scratches / Boulder and Brake

VICTOR MATTHEWS

New work from a painter who’s been showing since the ’80s but may not be on your radar. He should.

Filling the Emptiness

I once began a poem by asking “Is art a way / of denying emptiness?” I believe in some sense it is. Not in the sense of denying that emptiness exists but in denying it its power to submerge us in a vast sea of namelessness.

In Conversation

VIVIEN BITTENCOURT with Vincent Katz

Vivien Bittencourt grew up in São Paulo, Brazil, receiving a degree in history from the University of São Paulo. She moved to New York City in 1986, where she decided to pursue her interest in filmmaking.

In Conversation

VINCENT KATZ & CARTER RATCLIFF

Both Vincent Katz and Carter Ratcliff have recently published new books: Katz’s Swimming Home (Nightboat Books) in May, and Ratcliff’s Tequila Mockingbird (Barrytown/Station Hill Press) in June. The two interviewed one another for the Rail on the subjects of poetry, novels, the audience, and the point of writing in the first place.

Blaise Memories 1-4

OSRAM Bellalux

THIS TIME WE ARE EVERYTHING
Reflections On Clark Coolidge

Beginning, for the sake of argument, with Pound, or for sake of argument, with Apollinaire, or with Stein, linearity was exploded. We have lived all our lives with this, and Clark Coolidge is one of our stellar exemplars. In an astounding number of books published since his first in 1966, Coolidge has proven to be restless, consistent, and prolific.

Four

Vincent Katz is a poet, critic, and translator. He is the author of eleven books of poetry, including Alcuni Telefonini, a collaboration with painter Francesco Clemente published in 2008 by Granary Books. He is the publisher of the poetry and arts journal VANITAS and of Libellum books. With Yasmil Raymond, he co-curates the Readings in Contemporary Poetry series at Dia:Chelsea.

Unbewusste Orte, Feuilles Tourbillonnantes

One likes to dance,/another needs to/tighten her wheel.

five

Vincent Katz is a poet and translator. He is the author of the poetry collections Swimming Home and Southness and the book of translations The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius. His next book of poems, Broadway for Paul, comes out in March.

Gary Lenhart & Vincent Katz

Gary’s poems have long intrigued me, beginning when I first encountered them, way back when. They were tough objects, chiseled, colloquial, and also literary. You got the feeling he worked on them a long time to get them just right. They were often in simple forms, couplets or quatrains. You could feel a conscious approach guiding the proceedings

Seven

Vincent Katz is a poet, translator, and critic. He is the author of the poetry collections Southness (Lunar Chandelier Press, 2016) and Swimming Home (Nightboat Books, 2015). Fantastic Caryatids, just out from BlazeVOX Books, features a collaborative poem and conversation with Anne Waldman. Katz lives in New York City, where he curates Readings in Contemporary Poetry at Dia Art Foundation. Raphael Rubinstein has characterized Katz as “A 21st-century flâneur whose wanderings range from the sidewalks and subways of New York City to the crowded beaches of Rio de Janeiro.”

For Lewis

Vincent Katz is a poet and translator whose most recent book of poetry is Broadway for Paul.

A Tribute to Steve Dalachinsky

Steve was a force of Nature, driven by compassion & curiosity. He was opened to everything & everyone. He was naked inside & outside with no boundary between.