Robyn Schiff’s Information Desk: An Epic was published yesterday by Penguin. The book-length poem is broken up into three sections, with the speaker telling us “I used to man the Information/Desk in the center of the Great Hall of that Metropolitan Museum of Art.” While the book is a fascinating look at the MoMA’s collections and previous exhibits, it is also about the self at that desk, her desires beyond art. Her introductory “Invocation” sets up the themes explored in the next three sections, the “information” readers will be given. When a memory of her betrayal to a friend enters her poem “To the Jewel Wasp,” Schiff writes “…Well, that// was unexpected…Poems/are as a good a place for the past as the grass/is for the wasp…”. Schiff’s mundane duties—like handing out maps and accepting packages from bicycle messengers—are infused by and rub up against great works of art—Steichen and Rodin’s studies of Balzac; the Rembrandt/Not Rembrandt exhibit; and Louis XV’s desk. Questions like “What time is it?” (asked by John Kennedy Jr.) and “Where’s the bathroom?” (asked by pretty much everyone, it seems) jut up against the harassment of “Are those your real breasts?” or a boss who pulls “Betsy’s skirt down inside the Desk// on the other side of which visitors were grabbing our brochures…” This speaks to women in a workplace, even a workplace as refined as the MoMA. This speaks to the artworld. Beauty, forgery, men (artists and patrons) behaving badly. Schiff asks her readers “What is your desk//made of? I’m just writing on my lap right/now, upon which I once rocked my son.” Information Desk: An Epic is a powerful meditation on art as the poet continues to make it.
Congratulations, Robyn!
Thanks, Denise. Looks intriguing, esp. to us former "museum professionals."
Posted by: Terence Winch | August 19, 2023 at 08:39 AM