I have neglected the discussion as it were, here, and surfacing from my subterfuge, must reiterate the treasure that is this work, Brushstrokes and glances by Djelloul Marbrook, and that it is my pleasure to publish this book from such a wonderful writer.
This post perhaps went unnoticed as it first appeared below the end of summer notes. Please look now to the text which follows praise for Far from Algiers by Lucy Bowditch.
Brushstrokes and glances by Djelloul Marbrook, is already in print and headed for market. The author is an exceptional writer from Germantown, NY, and has gotten attention for his first prize-winning book, Far from Algiers.
Here are some words of praise for Far from Algiers:
Praise for Djelloul Marbrook’s Far from Algiers (Kent State University Press, 2008), winner of the 2007 Stan and Tom Wick Prize and the 2010 International Book Award in poetry:
“ . . . I find some perfection of style, including images, in his verse.
One example is
Houses war to keep
what happens in them
from suck and blanch
of time.
This is as succinct as most stanzas by Dickinson. . . . an unusually mature, confidently composed first poetry collection.”
—Susanna Roxman, Prairie Schooner
“. . . honors a lifetime of hidden achievement.”
—Toi Derricotte
“. . . wise and flinty poems outfox the Furies of exile, prejudice,
and longing . . . a remarkable and distinctive debut.”
—Cyrus Cassells
“. . . brings together the energy of a young poet with the wisdom
of long experience.”
—Edward Hirsch
“. . . the kind of book you want to buy over and over—partly
so you can support such a fine emerging writer.”
—Rattle
“. . . so conceptually compelling that I stayed in my hotel room
to finish it, missing an event not too far from my hotel.”
—Deborah Poe, Linchpin
“Djelloul Marbrook sounds like no one else.”
—Barbara Louise Ungar, Celaan
I know that Djelloul Marbrook is an exceptional writer, as anyone can see that visits his blog and website. I cannot say anything better about the book than does Lucy Bowditch, author of the foreword to Brushstrokes and glances, which I will post here:
Djelloul Marbrook’s poems unflinchingly celebrate and chide. With his literary brushstrokes and glances, he insightfully considers artists, critics, curators, viewers, and the works themselves. Unlike the art historian who might analyze, dissect, and uncover meaning by deploying a legalistic claim, the poet surrenders to direct feeling uncovering experiential truths that parallel the truth of art itself. As Horace reminds us, ut pictura poesis.
The poems are kaleidoscopic: the narrator’s position constantly shifts, as does the time period considered. Sometimes we are looking at a painter’s process. Another moment, we are situated within a painting itself, a detail of the composition. Next, the style or the artist’s biography becomes a metaphor for a human condition or desire.
In Lucian Freud and my mother, Marbrook captures the opportunistic, ruthless quality of that particular bird of prey—the painter—for whom all is fair game. By contrast, Georges Seurat (Studies for A Sunday Afternoon on the Grande Jatte) is a gentle appreciation the artist’s fleeting Symbolist preparatory drawings for the large signature pointillist work now in the Art Institute of Chicago. Undersides of leaves, a poem evoking the late, photography-inspired work of Corot, describes the shimmering halation of moving leaves from the perspective of one of the leaves integrated in Corot’s largely monochromatic composition. In Shabtis (The Brooklyn Museum), Marbrook playfully identifies with an ancient Egyptian burial figurine that performs chores in the afterlife for Queen Nefertiti and escapes the burden of quotidian temporal existence.
Praise, admonishment, and acceptance inform Marbrook’s agile narrative voice. Making an unexpected analogy between an ineffectual government and Caravaggio’s force of character, Marbrook champions the artist in A government like Caravaggio. At times a poem takes on a reprimanding tone as in The critic speaks, which could refer to the poet’s view of the critic or the critic’s view of the world. A pale of words, a sweet description of a sixth century BCE grave stele representing a little girl and her youthful departed older brother, sadly reflects art’s limited but significant ability to withstand profound human loss.
Djelloul Marbrook’s poems unexpectedly animate the visual arts due to the multiple fanciful perspectives and succinct identifications of art- related realities. In My mother dying, Marbrook, at high personal cost no doubt, recognizes the desire of an artist to, on one hand, remain childlike and thus have access to all that primary process material, and, on the other, marshal skills to transform experience into art allowing one to live for a thousand years. After all, life is short. Art is long.
Brushstrokes and Glances is as well a welcome companion to anyone interested in poetry and its role as a sister art to a broad history of visual art. Marbrook ranges from contemporary artists to anonymous ancient Egyptian sculptors. His vision invokes the delight of promiscuous wandering in New York’s best museums, the Metropolitan, the Frick or the Brooklyn Museum. Nothing remains static in this merry-go-round of the senses where, “The eye is best that distrusts the mind.”
Lucy L. Bowditch
Associate Professor of Art History
The College of Saint Rose
Martin Steingesser has been active as usual reading with authors of the new book Maine in Four Seasons: 20 Poets Celebrate the Turning Year published by Down East Books, edited by Wesley McNair and with illustrations by Jan Owen. There have been readings in Belfast, Brunswick, and coming up on November 17th at the Portland Public Library, 12 noon. This spring Brothers of Morning appeared in the second edition, with revisions by the author. A new chapbook of love poems by Martin is in the works here at Deerbrook. Thank you to Longfellow Books and Gulf of Maine Books for ordering books.
There are two other Deerbrook poets in the Maine in Four Seasons collection, Carl Little and Stuart Kestenbaum (Prayers & Run-on Sentences, Deerbrook Editions 2007), and they along with others will be reading in Bangor at the Bangor Public library October 2nd. I believe this is part of the Bangor Festival and books will be available at or through The Briar Patch, 27 Central St. in Bangor, ME.
Carl Little also had his poem The Clearing appear on Ted Kooser’s web page American Life in Poetry , and subsequently by the New York Times page Learning Network for the poetry pairing column.
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In mulling over a recent post, going back into WordPress there are my followed blogs, I noticed the word Shabtis. This word struck me since Djelloul Marbrook leads off his book “Brushstrokes and glances” with a poem of that name.
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