Two more ancient VN disparate sightings (were they not related
to photography or to light, with a pinch of Nabokov)...
There are rather amusing touches to be read in poet Billy
Collins' review. I wonder how a New Wye journalistic cyber-edition would
read today: the type and content of its headlines, its betweenlines, Prof.
Hurley's articles, snipets of John Shade's poems, Nabokov's "The
Snapshot," or an annoucement of Prof. Pnin reading a selection of
Pushkin in John Shade Hall on his 85th birthday...
July 30, 2010: Collins draws parallels between
photography, poetry
"Billy Collins cast an ekphrastic gaze on his own
photography and poetry as well as that of others Friday, closing Week Five’s
morning lecture series on photography in a flourish worthy of the former poet
laureate of the land....Much to the delight of the crowd, he read some poems
that, while they involved images in his mind’s eye, proved utterly unrelated to
photography...Anthony Bannon, Ron and Donna Fielding Director of the George
Eastman House, interviewed Collins before the poet’s reading....Collins credited
George Eastman and his Brownie cameras with “democratizing” photography. Just as
people “think that anyone can pick up a pen and write a poem — or think they
can,” folks also imagine themselves photographers. Photography...appeals to
the “hurry sickness” prevalent in society, while poems “are really about the
romance of time — time is running out.”... He called poetry “held stillness” and
said, “One of the powers of photography is silence … whereas poetry wants to
talk... Charles Baudelaire, the 19th-century French poet, critic and translator,
had voiced fear that photography would replace painting, debasing art with
mechanism in the way of the era’s industrialization. On the other hand, Walt
Whitman, “wanted to photograph America in words,” Collins said...He also
read Vladimir Nabokov’s “The Snapshot,” which explores the “accidental spy” who
shows up in a family’s vacation photo, and Sharon Olds’ “I Go Back to May 1937”
before reading his own “Look at the Birdie.”..Collins joked that pictures of
himself taken in his childhood capture an “expression … of bewilderment and mild
dismay” as he looked into the “empty, bird-less air” after his father would say
the outmoded expression before he would snap a photo. The poem begins, “It is
almost enough to inspire me/ to take a snapshot of something around here/ first
thing in the morning,/ maybe the little bakery down the street/ where I often go
for coffee and a muffin/ and the big city paper/ and the French girls behind the
counter.” The snickering audience liked that final image of the girls.
"
Attracted to Light : Doug Starn and Mike
Starn
Editorial Reviews :"Perhaps Nabokov prefigured Attracted to Light in his
fictional four-volume set called The Butterflies and Moths of the Russian Empire
in Father’s Butterflies: “The illustrations are still more perfect—the downy,
velvety texture, the blurry translucence of various families of moths are
rendered so delicately you would be afraid to run your finger across the
paper....” A sumptuously oversized and exquisitely produced book, Attracted to
Light showcases the Starns’ extensive conceptual portrait series of the
nocturnal moths’ mysterious journey and the seeming gravitational force that
light has over them, “captured” in photographs and filmic video footage. "
Amazon.com: Attracted to Light (9781576871898):