Mantis 22 (Summer 2024)
()bservations
James Ph. Kotsybar
The There There
Able to blend the oils of Matisse with the vinegar of Picasso
Gertrude Stein was like some leafy-green of the art world,
from her salad days on, but she was no Iceberg
nor, let us say, bland.
Maybe she was more of an artichoke.
While ghost-written Toklas played the hostess,
Stein was “Subject With Intrinsic Background,”
who blurred the lines of relational importance,
and allowed all of the art
and all the arts to mix, harmoniously or not.
Though the imp in her could offend even Hemingway
with one word, the color of banana,
he was still more ape for her in admiration
than his gorilla machismo could ever admit.
If not for her,
drunken Joyce might have thrown “Moore” of Magritte’s apples at Duchamp,
while aloof Man Ray just clicked pictures
at quite nearly metronomic pace,
but Stein quickly stepped in to
cube up the rest to send home
with Cézanne from the Salon,
before things got “Wilder.”
This regular nexus
of cultivated creativity
that arose
was the rose
(I propose)
in Gertrude’s garden, lush with achievements
(and probably artichokes).
JAMES PH. KOTSYBAR, published in six countries, is the first poet (honored by NASA to be) published to another planet. His verse orbits Mars (at NASA’s request and www voting), became part of Hubble Space Telescope’s Mission Log, and was awarded and featured at NASA’s Centaur’s 50th Anniversary Art Challenge. Other honors include State Poetry Society of Michigan (awarded while Joseph Gordon-Levitt serendipitously workshopped this one-page poem into a short screenplay). He has read at the Los Angeles Performing Arts Center and for Troubadours, (Europe’s oldest literary institution) in their founding city of Toulouse, France, at EuroScience Open Forum, Europe’s largest interdisciplinary science event, earning a standing return invitation. He also once sang the poetry of William Blake with Allen Ginsberg at Santa Barbara’s Old Vic Theater.