Description
Book SynopsisLey lines mark alignments of sacred sites such as ridgetops and ancient megaliths and create pathways between them. This book too marks alignments and creates pathways, but its sacred sites are not monuments, they're artworks and poems. Its various forms of exchange between writers and artists offer unique access to contemporary art, poetry, and the creative process. In this unique anthology, working poets respond to questions about their recent books, painters and other artists offer statements about their work, and writers respond to artworks. These offerings and exchanges are juxtaposed so as to speak to one another in a capacious, resonant dialogue. The result is a broad-minded and inclusive poetics, a vision of creative work as a constituent of personal and civic life. Anyone who nurtures the creative impulse will enjoy Ley Lines and return to it again and again. Writing students, art students, and any reader engaged in artistic practice will find in Ley Lines not a how-to manual or step-by-step instruction but an inexhaustible vein of instructive reflection on imaginative work and the creative life.
Trade Review"Hix assembles an array of contemporary poets and visual artists into a single conversation that is at once deeply philosophical, literary, and often times politically subversive. Ultimately, this compilation reminds readers how closely the act of creating art is linked to the art of listening. director, Thacher Gallery, University of San Francisco
"In 'Ley Lines', H. L. Hix assembles an array of contemporary poets and visual artists into a single conversation that is at once deeply philosophical, literary, and often times politically subversive. From dialogues on poetics to meditations on how one continues to create in a country (world) of non-stop war, these elegantly curated triads reverberate with collective insights. Ultimately, this compilation reminds readers how closely the act of creating art--written and visual--is linked to the art of listening." -- Glori Simmons, director, Thacher Gallery, University of San Francisco
"H. L. Hix's generative, generous anthology renews the poetics of listening. The dialogues between poets and artists seem to ask, in the words of Brian Teare, what kind of language 'offers clarity sufficient to pain'? One of the most fascinating questions Hix returns to, with a refreshing and buoyant inter-criticality, is whether language adapts consciousness or perception to it or vice versa. 'Capacious' is a word he is fond of, and his wide arc of collaborative inquiry into eternity, war, responsiveness and responsibility delivers an expansive one-pointedness. Hix is an able, engaging curator whose book takes time and enriches it." -- Cherry Smyth, poet and curator
Table of ContentsTable of Contents for Ley Lines H.L. Hix About This Book Rationale Process Participants Elements and Pattern Mystery Ways of Dialogue Capacious Enlivened Sense, Complex Daily Ardor Between: Paisley Rekdal | Anne Lindberg | Renée Ashley Balance: Zach Savich | Vera Scekic | Jericho Brown Representation: Johanna Skibsrud | Ien Dobbelaar | Michelle Boisseau Most Importantly I Have My Library Archive: Brian Teare | Thomas Lyon Mills | Evie Shockley Scan: Matthew Cooperman | Bruce Checefsky | Mary Quade Things: Lia Purpura | Jason Dodge | Philip Metres Only Rearrange the Stones Repetition: Jon Woodward | Doug Russell | Andrew Joron Pattern: Scott King | Gerry Trilling | Nin Andrews Spacing: Gillian Conoley | Phillip Michael Hook | Alex Stein Here Long Enough to Disappear Complexity: Lily Brown | Sreshta Rit Premnath | Debra Di Blasi Complexity: Veronica Golos | Alisa Henriquez | Caleb Klaces Opposition: Catherine Taylor | Jane Lackey | Carol Moldaw Each Begun With a Stain Voices: Jacqueline Jones LaMon | Murat Germen | Nina Foxx Particulate: Laurie Saurborn Young | China Marks | Denise Duhamel Connections: Valerie MartÃ-nez | Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann | Anis Shivani Alive in a Strange Region Response: Kristi Maxwell | Aviva Rahmani | Rupert Loydell Language: Jill Magi | Brian Dupont | Rita Wong Words: Jena Osman | Sarah Walko | Bin Ramke To Invent a Method Beauty: Kathleen Wakefield | Anne Devaney | Jonathan Weinert Aura: Sue Sinclair | Anna Von Mertens | Afaa Michael Weaver Space: Dan Beachy-Quick | Cassandra Hooper | Alyson Hagy This and Other Labor-Intensive Techniques Attention: Julie Hanson | Adriane Herman | Laura Mullen Confrontation: Sandra Simonds | Jim Sajovic | Susan Aizenberg The Real: Lisa Fishman | Leeah Joo | Jennifer Atkinson The World to Me Event: Paige Ackerson-Kiely | Christine Drake | Cynthia Atkins Moments: Warren Heiti | Susan Moldenhauer | Bruce Bond Setting: Juliana Spahr | Leah Hardy | Christine Gelineau And Their Shadows At the Same Time Failure: Kirsten Kaschock | Daniel Dove | Ann McCutchan Uncertain: Barbara Maloutas | Christopher Leitch | Supriya Bhatnagar Disappearance: Jared Carter | Shelby Shadwell | Alison Calder Works About Which Interview Questions Are Posed Artworks Reproduced Acknowledgements About the Curator About the Contributors
