muse of light
Muse of Light
by Bob Phillips
at the National Museum of Light
launch photons against your screens
the varieties of reflection and bent
energies of bindiness, bendiness
a line of abandoned machines of capture
held away from touch and reflex
on display
Stieglitz of NYC, no clouds
some few of Ray
sample so small
of so many reflexes, focii
interferences
no backyard of Victor Hugo
so I know I must be missing
something photos without names
of the millions of reflexes
taking the world with them
leaving it behind
echoes light echoes
muse of light
2/22/2010
This is the kind of poetry that is ‘plucked thoughts’ interpreted in a telegraph start/stop voice that is virgin lowest common denomenator delivered at its rawest form. Often the scribing of such impressions on the brain come out as sentence fragments which some may frown upon with its sheer disdain for the strict adherence to grammar etc. but i think there are a lot of merits to this style and its trance-like seance of ideas give us a stripped-down nakedness of truth that is Minimalist in a way which gets to the heart of the matter albeit perhaps somewhat abstractly.
Here’s what i found on Stieglitz: “Alfred Stieglitz (January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946) was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz is known for the New York art galleries that he ran in the early part of the 20th century, where he introduced many avant-garde European artists to the U.S. He was married to painter Georgia O’Keeffe.”
I found nothing on the ‘National Museum of Light’ so i imagine that to be an institution of the poet’s creation and put to good use here at the poem’s beginning to make an ‘air of official’ or scientific ouerve.
I enjoyed so much in reading this poem, particularly how it focuses on light which is a sensation to sight/vision and then the ending with its converse reference to hearing via ‘echoes’: ” photos without names of the millions of reflexes taking the world with them
leaving it behind echoes light echoes muse of light.” Nice touch.
The ‘Muse of Light’ must be that inner ‘say-so’ and lightbulb of discernment which gives a photographer his/her abilities to appreciate the beauties we see and behold and can preserve that beauty through the camera. So i would say the ‘your’ mentioned in poem addresses the Muse of Light thru a personification of sort. thx for sharing!
the National Museum of Photography in Florence, Italy was in proximity, before I wrote the poem. Didn’t like to get more specific.
muse composed of reflexes, reflections