Attributed to the Harrow Painter reckons with fatherhood, the violence of nostalgia, poetry, and the commodity world of visual art as the poems here frantically cycle through responses to the speaker鈥檚 son鈥檚 remark on a painting by Julian Schnabel that it 鈥渓ooks like garbage.鈥 What does it mean to be a minor artist, the poems wonder, like the Greek pot painter named in the book鈥檚 title, who is described by one critic as 鈥渋ndeed a minor talent, not withstanding the undeniable charm of some of his works鈥? What structures must be destroyed to clear the way for all the 鈥渕inor鈥 voices that litter the discourse of Western civilization? This is a mangled, tattered guide to transcendence through art in an age when such a thing seems nearly impossible.
鈥淢eandering around the edges of the beginning of someone鈥檚 mid-life, Attributed to the Harrow Painter dips back to lost teenage friends, traumas, accommodations, pleasures and losses and forward as the father of a young child, to the inevitable future. There鈥檚 the New York diaspora, and there are the blue jays and backyards of skull-fuck cold Kansas. Where are you most alive? Like Dana Ward and Ariana Reines, Nick Twemlow writes brainy poetry that鈥檚 as dispersed as real life without losing heart. I found the book very moving, and will read it again.鈥濃擟hris Kraus, author, I Love Dick and Summer of Hate
from 鈥ㄢ淟ooking at Schnabel鈥檚 The Death of Fashion with my son鈥
Sacha looks at
The Death of Fashion
Hanging against this
Well-lit wall &
Says, 鈥淭his looks like
Garbage.鈥 The only word
That matches his mouth
Is the end of everything. No one goes out
Like this
