Abstract
The poems in The Pale Cinema of Color and Broken Conversation emerge from the writer’s perception of the glorious illogic of his own life. More than from a traditional canon of literature, these poems derive their form and style from, as the title suggests, film: specifically, but in no way limited to, the surreal personal and interpersonal multiplicity of Federico Fellini and Francois Truffaut; the raw-edged sentimentality of Ingmar Bergman; Woody Allen’s comical neuroses and sexual negotiation; and the harsh-but-hopeful emotional grit and experimentalism of the French New Wave. Recall, for instance, the grandiose scene at the close of Fellini’s 8 1/2 (1963): Guido’s various realities, all of his “characters,”--his acquaintances, his lovers, his muses--colliding at once, one final merging of selves and their respective phases, all poignantly, and literally, dancing with one another in a circle around him. And, not coincidentally, this is where the speaker in these poems stands: at the center of circles. He is at the center of sensuality. And cruelty. At the center of crudeness and subtle sweetness. On both sides of the joke and the gray in between. He tries to unhook the circles of Love and Sex. Then wants to tie Depression with Unbearable Happiness. He wants to be found. Accessed. Projected. All of his circles intersect, and some surround one another. And it is for these reasons that the only constant a reader may find in this manuscript is the perpetual I, dead center, standing at the core of all of life’s meandering and dream-illogic, at the heart of its inability to be fully understood, and most importantly, at the median of all the amusement and virgin beauty of that misunderstanding.
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