Myself Painting: Poems [Paperback]

the best way to gain rewards from major's book is to approach each poem as though a sketch pad were in hand, a sketch pad or a canvas, paintbrush and easel and to walk along the lines as walking along some littoral of some foreign city, behind you a boardwalk of restaurants and small shops, and you're constantly on the lookout for the scene you will draw or paint. this is how these poems unfold. well, most of them. there are also some bucolic settings unexpectedly joined to the chaotic, the jeering crowd, the riot, the off beaten path in the tourist town leading to where the natives live.

major's reputation for being an abstract expressionist doesn't follow him in myself, painting. even when expressionistic these poems are very accessible and far from being as abstract as, say, any poem by john ashbery. when major writes:

`outside, your red pony chews blue grass.'

is there any doubt he's in kentucky, or even that his red pony evokes the steinbeck title?

clarence major has become the poet of the matter of fact, some poems fit a day book, a daily journal chronicling the everyday experience of nothing in particular . this is his offering to reader, the artist as anyone who happens to be in different cities for no particular reason, but once there wherever he happens to be, be it rome or san francisco, on some beachfront, some shore, or seated at a table in some restaurant where he looks at the scenery, maybe, he imagines, some picture will come out of it. how he imagines is what makes him who he is, clarence major, poet musing on the visible for artistic inspiration and motivation. of the poems directly concerned with artistic inspiration `in search of a motif for expressive female figuration' is the best poem in the collection, and may just be the best poem major's written; `in search of a motif...' is a montage of women, the first three words

`she, the many...'

guiding the reader through numerous guises of one woman or many women.

the final poems in the book `copying', `bad nudes',

we are a roundtable of painters.
we're talking about how to get around
the usual perception of common objects.

`difficult pose', `open session', and `when the model does not show' describe the artist in community with other artists and models.

selections from major's paintings are found on his webpage. major favored blended colors, black edged greens, smoky cranberry reds, mustard yellows, and caramel browns sheened in iridescence, set aglow by sunlight. the cover of myself painting is of one major's beach landscapes, colors of a different palette, the greens are milky, the browns beige, his blues culled from cornflowers and his red cut from a silk red dress.

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