by Stephen Bett (January 2028)
—— —— These three poems are from my new work in progress, a serial poem titled Ekphrastic Marcel: Poems on Duchamp.
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Inflection Point: Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912)
That famous and infamous painting—look it up, nuff said
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1913 Armory Show—— the first significant event
I learned in school—— — an inflection point
kicked in—— 60 years off the frock of the clock
such hopeless succès de scandale, el reverso
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Twenty odd lines, planes, dots through space…
A trip down stairs—— from sterile veneration
to sheer malice
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This skeletal babe’s post-cubist (not Futurist)
could never be proto-fascista, Senore
No cinematic effects pls, said Marcel
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Reduce, reduce, reduce was my thought
(non Il Duce…—eh turista porco?)
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Marionettes clatter, decompose before our very lies
Slab-like forms cut across canvas
Severe wood colors (hah) make for brown-out
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Duchamp had peeled away the nude’s beauty,
—————— its carnality, and even its sex
Just a slip of a thing—— na’kid fling
down this flight of stairs
(Shout-out to 21st century trans wars…—whoopsie)
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Nude the First (No. 1) stuffed away somewhere? maybe
descendent No. 3 fell off Marcel’s train to Munich?
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Definitive version:—–Explosion in a Shingle Factory
suits just fine, what could be
better?
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Our ‘Narrative’: The Passage from Virgin to Bride (1912)
This painting imagines “the human body as a mechanical contraption—in this case an apparatus of cylindrical and funnel-shaped internal organs on articulated tubes and wires…[a] dynamism with repeated overlapping forms that represent the figure’s movement through a shadowy, frieze-like space…[a] ”passage” [from] innocence to loss of virginity.”
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Just a tad longer now…
hang in there Pab, we’re sure you can
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Nothing too challenging (post-descent)
———————funnels, tubes, wires…
We’re on board, motif & motive
(reads like a basement ICU)
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But incandescent skeleton for a Bride?
(Pab’s was too many real young ones, botoxed or not)
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That guy at the bar, closing time, mouthing off…
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Marcel was just getting going, pardner
off the retinal train
quintessential ideas man
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Our longtime pathfinder, Octavio, reckons
Pablo superstitious nihilist, Marcel skeptic &
meta-ironist—— one huge irony of affirmation
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Suits our ‘narrative’ for sure
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That After-Grinder Glow: Chocolate Grinder, No. 2 (1914)
Common in its day, a home-use industrial cocoa grinder. MD’s painting shows “three drum-like rollers arranged around a vertical shaft that he called the Bayonet, which is itself reinforced by a flat disc called the ‘Necktie’. The grinder sits atop a round chassis with delicate cabriole legs reminiscent of Loius XV firniture, which in turn rests on a lit surface…” NB: Version No.1 was done in 1913; No.2, here, was later transferred to the Large Glass.
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Sienna’s a nice word for the chocolate grinder
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Hard to grind in one go, so make two for one
Burnt sienna, the after-grinder glow
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Unremarkable object, mechanic of the haha, that ol’ Duch
Trade mark industrial, graphite & thread
applied direct to canvas (inartistic, for sure!)
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A Cubist palette, a.k.a. assorted chocolate colours (colors?)
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But wait…—this is the Bachelor glass zone
Frustrated desire, erotic yearning, endless churning
Grinder whispers bittersweet Nothings
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Onanistic heartbreak,—for one
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I wanted to go back to a completely dry drawing…
mechanical drawing…—a dry conception of art
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Mimics engineering diagrams
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But full tri-dimensional / sculptural / straight
Illusionism
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Trompe l’œil—–with or without Bayonet, Necktie,
& Louie Louīē
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The erotics of mechanical courtship
Bachelor sans Bride
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Table of Contents
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Stephen Bett is a widely and internationally published Canadian poet with 22 books and 6 chapbooks in print from BlazeVOX Books, Chax Press, Spuyten Duyvil, Ekstasis Editions, Thistledown Press, & others. His personal papers are archived in the “Contemporary Literature Collection” at Simon Fraser University. His website is stephenbett.com.
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