Grey Scale / Zukofsky
John Taggart

1

 

 

To become aware of tones

 

 

beginner's problem in the mind of the beginner

 

 

visualization of white of whiteness

 

which is impossible

 

 

I saw an egret in a scraggly cedar above

 

Big Spring

 

 

 

 

Williams said no whiteness is so white as the memory of whiteness

 

 

in a cedar or motionless in water/the tall grasses.

 

                     2

 

 

Silver maple woods what Jennifer named

 

the scarey woods

 

scarey so dense and so dark

 

 

 

dense with undergrowth

 

with heaped-up multiflora rose with jewelweed

 

 

 

 

 

 

damselfly

 

 

 

a or the or neither and darker than

 

dark

 

 

 

 

black wings at rest on jewelweed blackness without dots or density.

 

 

 

 

 

                     3

 

 

Middle grey

 

 

 

 

 

 

sledge-hammer

 

 

 

to break up cast-iron machines

 

bow saw to cut down weedy box elders shot up around the machines

 

time

 

 

 

in which to make a cleared space to find limestone/middle grey

 

 

 

Pound said wind is part of the process

 

 

 

rain part of the process.

 

 

 

 

 

 

                     4

 

Three tones + other tones

 

 

 

glaring surface of snow in flat sunlight it's a white world wilful travelers

 

without colored and coloring glasses

 

long gone/lost

 

 

 

snow in full shade

 

white with delicate textures sand dune ripples any Bach fugue

 

 

 

average snow

 

 

 

average white skin the shadow of your smile

 

 

 

leaves of trees their shadows

 

no snow

 

 

 

dark material dark fur dark grey cat named "Friendly."

 

 

                     5

 

Three tones + other tones + two tones

 

 

 

 

 

Richard Avedon's 1958 photograph of Pound a postcard a bookmark

 

darker closed

 

eyes wrinkled texture of sagging skin around eyes

 

 

and darker closed lips no texture almost no-tone tone

 

 

 

"but shall have his sorrow for

 

seafare"

 

 

 

two tones

 

 

 

first suggestions/thresholds of his sorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                     6

 

 

 

 

the great photographs are black and white and middle grey

 

 

 

Weston's camera

 

on Point Lobos reclining shadow of eroded

 

rock

 

 

 

Ansel Adams at Yosemite and

 

elsewhere morning star aspen leaves

 

 

 

Stieglitz portraits of Georgia O'Keefe not simply not necessarily great

 

 

 

not because of subject matter this is the American

 

 

 

earth and personages.

 

 

 

 

 

                     7

 

 

The great

 

 

 

result of reduction and the composition of reductions

 

 

 

resulting in intensity Williams

 

said the only human value = intense

 

 

 

 

 

intense face of sorrow

 

on a postcard

 

 

 

although there are other emotions and although there are other

 

 

 

faces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                     8

 

And so I come

 

to this

 

to the one/only photograph on my wall

 

 

 

and am I not one of those travellers wilful or merely stubborn

 

still an isolato still

 

 

 

 

 

come

 

 

 

home to Ralph Eugene Meatyard's 1968 photograph

 

 

 

on my wall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                     9

 

No eyes/closed eyes

 

 

 

behind large dark glasses darker than leaves of trees their shadows

 

made larger/darker by wings/rock eyebrows

 

 

 

the mouth is also closed

 

 

 

unsmiling

 

 

 

 

 

face

 

to shadow face

 

large on a neck of average white skin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                     10

 

No face = no image = no memory

 

 

 

eyes + mouth + what's been overlooked/unremembered

 

beginner's error

 

 

 

+ an ear for instance

 

 

 

 

 

image of intense attention

 

 

 

what I remember = "only song matters"

 

 

 

not one song only but one/only photograph

 

on my wall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                     11

 

 

Call it a cadenza/some travelling music

 

 

 

off the scale

 

 

 

and beyond the question of who's the fairest of them all

 

 

 

of them all watching over me

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

after a or the or

 

 

 

neither.