Tuesday, July 20, 2010

At the Bowery Poetry Club NYC

I got back from NYC last week after being invited by John Sims to participate in the “Mathematical Graffiti Wall” at the Bowery Poetry Club. I scrawled out my proportional poem titled “Afghanistan” on the wall as well as giving a short lecture intended to impart the necessary tools to access the piece. Below is an (poor quality)image of me delivering my lecture -- you can see Poet/Historian Richard Kostelanetz underneath me and mathematical / visual poet Bob Grumman to his right. I am not sure who was wearing the white hat.
After the gig myself, Richard Kostelanetz, Geof Huth, Bob Grumman, JoAnne Growney, and others went for coffee and discussion – I think we all had a great time - I certainly did.


Here is a photo of the wall taken from the stage.


Here is my poem Afghanistan


And you can see it here inked onto the wall.


Speaking of graffiti – here is a photo I shot in the men’s room at the bowery poetry club.



On another note the day before I gave my lecture I went to MOMA to see my old friends (The Tanguy, Magritte, Ernst, Dali, and De Chirico paintings) - I went up to pay my twenty dollars when the man behind the counter told me if I waited twenty minutes I could get in free. He said that I just need to wait in line outside. It was quite a long line and as we were coming in I noticed Bob Grumman about seven people up in front of me. So as fate turned out, I ended up hanging out with him as we viewed the art work. I had a nice chat with him as we covered a lot of territory in our discussions. Below is a photo of him and me in front of the De Chirico Painting “Gare Montparnasse” (The Melancholy of Departure).

1 comment:

Kaz Maslanka said...

Interesting that the De Chirico painting was titled "The Melancholy of Departure" for this was the last time I saw Bob before he died.

I wish he were alive today for many reasons but I also would be curious to see if he would have continued growing and modifying his understanding of mathematical poetry. I certainly have grown and modified my beliefs and understanding of it as well as developing better ways to judge the quality of the work.

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