David Raskin ~Three Untitled Ekphrastic Poems on Sugimoto, Rubins, and Dashper

Hiroshi Sugimoto’s pho­to­graph, Sea of Japan, Hokkaido, frames the hori­zon dead cen­ter – wisps of gray clouds above slate and onyx rip­ples. It’s nei­ther night nor day. I asked my son what he remem­bered about our trip to Japan. He was thir­teen: Feeling like I couldn’t look every­where I want­ed to look. Seeing a black spi­der sculp­ture maybe twen­ty feet tall. Being amazed at how nor­mal the bul­let train felt whip­ping by the fields. The neon sign of swear words, over­whelm­ing­ly vul­gar. The green fleece I wore all the time. The muse­um exhib­it with the human imprints burned into con­crete. A few years ago, the Peace Memorial Museum’s cura­tors removed that dio­ra­ma, which Sugimoto had pho­tographed for his Chamber of Horrors series: more black, white, and gray. My son, now a young man, con­fused our next few stops. Miyajima is where we ate green tea ice cream.

 

Reference image: https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/art/collections/objects/16815

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The old friend won’t call or text except to say he won’t. Still, I framed a pho­to­graph from our last trip to the Boundary Waters, me sit­ting criss­cross in a yel­low canoe: Ray-Bans, com­pass, and bent-shaft pad­dle at the ready. After din­ner, we’d grab our life vests and float in the lily pads. Beneath the Milky Way, we had the entire lake to our­selves – and Peak Refuel fudge brown­ie bites for dessert. We could have stayed for­ev­er. Fifteen years lat­er, my son and I walked past Nancy Rubins’ sculp­ture Big Edge, a star­burst of canoes, kayaks, and dinghies beached on a traf­fic island in Vegas. It’s like my son’s tie-dye: blue and red with green rip­ples on the chest and splash­es of yel­low down his arms and neck. We couldn’t decide the mean­ing of two hun­dred boats bak­ing in the desert sun.

 

Reference image: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/big-edge

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Julian Dashper played his sculp­ture The Warriors, a/k/a drum set, that one time at Auckland’s Gus Fisher Gallery. Each beat sound­ed his faith in mod­ern art. The snare drum shout­ed Wassily Kandinsky, who thought orange was the Angelus prayer. The kick said Kenneth Noland: con­cen­tric rings in Robin’s egg, white, and yolk. The red dot and sil­ver-ringed tom – a bang for Jasper Johns. The Warriors was also Julian’s rug­by team. He would see them reach the Grand Finals in 2002 but not in 2011. Warriors’ super­star Ruben Wiki vis­it­ed him in hos­pice care. I hope he offered these words: “And at the hour of our death, Amen.” The last time I saw Julian, he sat on a red-and-blue striped couch in my liv­ing room, hold­ing forth like Barnett Newman. I nev­er heard The Warriors.

 

Reference image: https://michaellett.com/artist/julian-dashper/

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David Raskin teach­es art his­to­ry and ekphras­tic writ­ing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Kenyon Review Writers Workshops. His cre­ative writ­ing has appeared or is forth­com­ing in pub­li­ca­tions such as Birmingham Poetry Review, The Pinch, Air/Light, and JMWW. He also served as Guest Art Editor for Lana Turner: a Journal of Poetry & Opinion.