This is a test
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
Who Seemed Alive & Altogether Real
Book details
Book preview
Table of contents
Citations
About This Book
Padraig Regan's poems delight in the sensual and the visual: this pamphlet is alive with the textures of paint, sweat, sugar and overripe fruit. Regan riffs on art history in a way which is playful and inquisitive – Johann Zoffany drinks mojitos with David Hockney; Caravaggio outrages and compels; Queen Elizabeth I is effortfully glorious. Many poems focus on the representation of the human body, discovering alternative histories in responses to paintings where the gaze of the male artist is directed towards the male figure in queerly erotic ways.
Frequently asked questions
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
Both plans give you full access to the library and all of Perlego’s features. The only differences are the price and subscription period: With the annual plan you’ll save around 30% compared to 12 months on the monthly plan.
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, we’ve got you covered! Learn more here.
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Yes, you can access Who Seemed Alive & Altogether Real by Padraig Regan, Rachel Piercey in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Poetry. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Who Seemed Alive & Altogether Real
after Caravaggio’s pictures of Mario Minniti
BOY WITH A BASKET OF FRUIT
A boy instead of table: Mario hitching the joist
of his collarbone to his shoulder, & holding up
this outlook of swollen fruit. A peach & an apple
imitate the rose-on-yellow complexion of Mario’s face;
his eyes seem punched into the wrong place,
his mouth redder than appropriate.
That pomegranate can’t wait to escape itself.
The leaves turn patched & lacy. I forget the convention
was not yet established:
no one even thought of tables then.
THE LUTE PLAYER: BADMINTON HOUSE VERSION
It is a question of gloss. Mario’s hair, so jauntily bunched
with that swatch of white silk, flaunts the wonder
of a good conditioner: some natural oil, linseed perhaps.
& the white standards of the irises — which appear so proud
of themselves at the apex of that bouquet
whose crux of stems seems to hover in the crisp reflections
skimming over the glass jug — what do they correspond to,
the silk, the pages, Mario’s hand as it pins the strings?
THE FORTUNE TELLER: CAPITOLINE VERSION
Mario told this story to the young painter,
how he went to see a woman once.
Though he didn’t quite believe what he’d been told
about her gifts, he did believe the rumours
which circled around her unconventional dress.
She asked for his hand & he woke hours later
with his head heavy as a wet sponge, the feathers
in his cap bent, his ring missing but his clothes intact.
THE MUSICIANS
At the unveiling party the cardinal served pheasant,
& insisted the musicians arrange themselves exactly
as the young painter had arranged them on his canvas.
It was a neat trick. Their song jumped out the window
& ran through the hot streets of Rome
just as the young painter had, until late,
run naked through the streets of Rome — as the story goes —
‘with nothing but a few brushes & a knife’.
The cardinal asked each of his guests in turn for their opinion.
One praised the expression on the central figure’s face,
the textural accuracy of the half-peeled peaches.
He did not mention that the self-portrait
the young painter has sneaked into the back
unbalances the whole;
that the foreshortened fingerboard of the violin sticking
straight out is rather a crude joke.
BOY BITTEN BY A LIZARD: FLORENCE VERSION
Mario’s shoulder again, thrust up like a mound,
& his hands making such elaborate shapes.
His face grotesque with shock, but not so grotesque
as the lizard — not really a lizard but more a salamander —
dangling like a catkin from his middle finger
& sucking the colour from his skin. It took all day
for the young painter to coax Mario’s body
into these strange angles. Mario swayed like a mast;
all his joints protes...
Table of contents
- Cover
- Other Titles From The Emma Press
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Introduction
- Contents
- Glory
- Johann Zoffany Paints Himself as David with the Head of Goliath
- Johann Zoffany & Howard Hodgkin in a Hotel Room in Venice
- Johann Zoffany Goes for a Swim with David Hockney
- Johann Zoffany has Dinner with Hans von Marées & Adolf Hildebrand
- Johann Zoffany Paints Himself as Johann Zoffany
- Viande
- Rose Garden with Men
- Aubade
- Hibiscus
- Who Seemed Alive & Altogether Real
- Glory
- Acknowledgements
- About the poet
- The Emma Press
- Other Emma Press Poetry Pamphlets