Ladies and Gentlemen, in this corner, wearing the emerald trunks, the woman who made David the 2nd most famous Byrne from RISD, I give you Mairéad, the Dublin Goblin (Pangolin? Javelin? Mescaline?)!
Byrne’s no-holds ars (rim-shot) is:
If it looks like a poem, it is a poem
If it associates with poems, it is a poem
If it has even one drop of poetry, it is a poem.
If it joins with another genre to form a new genre that genre will be poetry
& all its products will be poems.
That’s “One Drop” from her most recent book, The Best Of (What’s Left Of) Heaven (Publishing Genius Press). When he was a Head that other Byrne sang, “Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.” His heaven is not her heaven. MB’s heaven is a busy place—over 200-pages of prose poems, verse poems, playlets, list poems, found poems, poems about war, Providence, family, and everyday lunacy. I adore the book’s title, but everyday lunacy, the title of her first section, is an apt definition of its enterprise.
Many of the pieces are small—a few lines:
PARKING IN FRONT OF SOMEONE ELSE’S HOUSE
After a while it feels like home.
girl
on a side-street
late for school
stepping up
on a short wall
to sway
a few steps
alone.
The great children’s book writer Ruth Krauss (I’ll Be You and You Be Me, illustrated by some cat named Sendak) would have adored those two poems.
One of my favorites of Byrne's a prose poem that begins, “If a cow eats a fridge a bulky object is lodged in its neck which is also broad and oblong like a fridge.” Like William James moshing with Russell Edson.
But my choice is:
SPRING
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
March
April
There you go. The Waste Land in 32 words.
For our kids’ version, one word per page, right? What kind of art? Collage, I think, wind-blown detritus, newspapers and leaves and blossoms and raindrops and bowler hats.
Illustrator?
The great Sarah Sze. She’s representing America at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Sze is best known for her site-specific sculptures and installations, but this book needs her hand with space and light and the everyday objects that percolate her art.
