Spotlight series #114 : Geoffrey Young
Curated by Canadian writer, editor and publisher rob mclennan, the “spotlight” series appears the first Monday of every month.
Author’s statement
I don’t believe that “Words give us the world by taking it away.”
A writer’s words neither take the world away or yield it on a platter.
The spinning blue ball in space where it is said we live doesn’t even know we’re here.
Is that why the young Samuel Beckett’s ambition was to “drill one hole after another” into language “until that which lurks behind, be it something or nothing, starts seeping through?” You tell me.
Of all the words we know and use, only the next one chosen contributes to the poem. Necessity, or accident, is the mother of selection. But it is good to know that a revving engine of desire never fails to put in its two-bits.
TWO POEMS
FOR CHARLES IVES, 6:20 PM
Entertaining the siren of a fire truck heading east
And the rumble of a silver jet flying north
In otherwise empty space
I relish the curious miss-match of their sounds
As they intersect briefly in ear. Rhonda
The black cat and I are both listening
Perched on the plastic of white lawn chairs
In the backyard at dusk. Four crows cavort in air
As a waxing moon rises behind
The neighbor’s copper beech.
The glass may be empty but the Bic has ink.
A few dawdling neighbors walk their dogs
Up the street, not ten feet from the electric
Red-orange chorus of Liz’s scarlet dahlias.
THE MENU
George Oppen arches the fingers
Of his bony hands
Simulating a Gothic cathedral
Then sets them down
On Carl Rakosi’s dear pink head.
Louis Zukofsky peels Oppen’s
Thumbs back to open the doors,
Saying, “Look! Here’s a slice of celery,
Perfect for an Objectivist lunch.”
Time’s job is to pass without existing.
Leave your homage here, dear reader,
Lean as a palm, round as a super moon.
The objectivist focuses on this & that,
Mind wearing its favorite old hat.
Geoffrey Young [photo credit: Dennis Kardon; artwork in background by Elena Sisto] was born in Los Angeles in 1944, and grew up in San Diego.
Before settling in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in 1982, Young spent student years in Santa Barbara (UCSB), and Albuquerque (UNM), then lived for two years in Paris (a Fulbright year followed by a six-month stint working for La Galerie Sonnabend). Married for many years to Laura Chester, they lived for seven of them in Berkeley (two sons born). Their small press, The Figures (1975–2005), published more than 135 books of poetry, art writing, and fiction.
He has taught literature and art at San Francisco State, Columbia’s General Studies Program, Vassar, and the University at Albany, NY. From 1992–2018 he ran the Geoffrey Young Gallery, where he presented hundreds of contemporary art shows.
Nadia Szold’s 80 minute film, The Figures (2023), features Young in the context of art and writing friends.
Recent chapbooks of poetry and drawings include LOOK WHO’S TALKING (2024); At Stake (2024); Monk’s Mood (2023); Money (2022); & Habit (2021).
