The Best American Poetry

Film Still Series #124 [by Bill Hayward]

From the forthcoming film by Bill Hayward, Asphalt, Muscle and Bone, about a man at risk, the persistence of imagination and the impossibility of love. Produced by Bill Hayward and Anna Elman. Follow Bill's blog here.

Film Still Series # 137 [by Bill Hayward]

From the forthcoming film by Bill Hayward, Asphalt, Muscle and Bone, about a man at risk, the persistence of imagination and the impossibility of love. Produced by Bill Hayward and Anna Elman. Follow Bill's blog here.

Film Still Series #120 [by Bill Hayward]

From the forthcoming film by Bill Hayward, Asphalt, Muscle and Bone, about a man at risk, the persistence of imagination and the impossibility of love. Produced by Bill Hayward and Anna Elman.

Bill Hayward's American Memory Project: Jason Shinder on Howl

For more on this extraordinary project, go here.

--sdh

Bits and Bobs

Congratulations to Moira Egan, our Rome-based correspondent, who received much deserved good news lately:  Her Bar Napkin Sonnets won the  The Ledge 2008 Chapbook Competition and will be published later this year.   Her second full-length collection, SPIN, will be published in spring 2010 by Entasis Press. Read more about Moira Egan here.

Bill Hayward, our resident filmmaker/photographer can now be found blogging here.  He promises to keep sending material our way, but bookmark and subscribe to his blog for regular updates on his many works in progress. 

Happy Mothers Day

Sharon Olds (c) Bill Hayward

Mother of All Muses [by Bill Hayward]

Gerald Stern (c) Bill Hayward

Intimacies 2 - Vulnerability [by Stacey Harwood]

 Last Saturday night, at photographer/filmmaker Bill Hayward’s Flatiron studio, the performance duo of Billy Blanken and Jordan Marinov explored in twenty-two minutes of dance the inevitable push-pull of lovers as they struggle to overcome overwhelming feelings of vulnerability. Intimacies 2 is part of an ongoing collaboration between Marinov Dance and Red Dress Films, producer of the Hayward and Anna Elman film “Asphalt, Muscle, and Bone.” Those of you who have been following this space know we have been watching eagerly the progress of this daring project.

The audience of roughly twenty bordered the stage, created against a makeshift backdrop of photographer’s canvas to which Hayward pinned a dramatic abstract painting of Marilyn Monroe. As the performance begins, Blanken is alone. He reclines bare-chested on the floor, one knee bent and arms outstretched, in a languid pose reminiscent of the young Edward Villella in the opening of Jerome Robbins’ “Afternoon of a Faun,” a ballet about a fleeting encounter between a man and woman. The similarity ends there, however.  In the Robbins piece, the young man is absorbed by his reflection; the encounter with the woman is a momentary interruption of his narcissistic reverie.  In Intimacies 2, there are no mirrors.  The would-be lovers can only look inward or at each other.  Blanken’s movements are tight and controlled and the space he inhabits seems claustrophobic, the space of one too long alone with one’s own thoughts.  When he is joined by Marinov -- who choreographed the piece --  their pas de deux of approach-avoidance begins in earnest. Here they dance a stiff waltz, barely touching, he gazing at her while she looks away, frightened.  There they collide in a passionate embrace, her impossibly long legs in full extension.  When they are fully engaged, it seems that the tiny space will not contain them.  Marinov is an especially compelling artist, with sharp features, raven hair, and lithe body dressed in a simple sheath.  Together, the dancing is energetic, at times bordering on violent.  At other times the duo expresses an animal tenderness.  In a striking fluid move, Marinov rolls backward over Blanken’s torso. The audience, seated so close to the action, can see and hear the dancers working, their quickening breath, their glistening bodies. 

The soundtrack combined original music by Collin Couvillion, poems by Mary Ruefle (Concerning Essential Existence and The Refrigerator), and fragments from Virginia Woolf’s Waves. In an especially inspired moment, the crackling sounds of a police radio intrude during a sustained sequence of particularly intense and concentrated dance. I found myself struggling to stay present and focused on the lovers before me, a reminder that the quotidian threatens during life’s most sublime experiences. 

--sdh

Film Still Series - Intimacies #7 [by Bill Hayward]

From the forthcoming film by Bill Hayward, Asphalt, Muscle and Bone, about a man at risk, the persistence of imagination and the impossibility of love. Produced by Bill Hayward and Anna Elman.

See more of Bill Hayward's work here.

Film Still Series - Intimacies # 5 [by Bill Hayward]

From the forthcoming film by Bill Hayward, Asphalt, Muscle and Bone, about a man at risk, the persistence of imagination and the impossibility of love. Produced by Bill Hayward and Anna Elman.

See more of Bill Hayward's work here.