John Perlman's Self Portrait contains poems based on paintings by Cezanne, Dubuffet, Vermeer, Corot, Toulouse-Lautrec, Klee, Sloan, Eakins and other artists; Chinese scroll paintings; photographs by Lissella, Heyman, and Tice; artifacts/exhibits at The Natural History Museum; and other "objects" that deftly become subjects, one artform transformed into another. Perlman's writing is a good fit with painting, his spare, clear brushstrokes draw less attention to themselves than the composition as a whole. The poems, too, show a poet/painter's eye, focusing on the most telling detail, grading the background to point to the highlights. Here's one poem:
"The Beard of Computations"
Jean Dubuffet
it would be rock
a
weathered limestone, such
silts
the figure for survival,
or
not rock,
neither man.
the weights, say, of n
shells
signify a residue
of one sea's
deaths, a
sum --
two eyes, a
mouth,
if man, then,
the stone displaced
by soul
one thought
turned forward into terror
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