Before the Borderless: Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly

By Dean Rader and Cy Twombly

• Rader: Winner of the 2010 T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize for debut Works & Days 

• Finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award and Northern California Book Award

• Worked closely with the Cy Twombly Foundation regarding the reproduction of the Twombly images

• Includes 50 color images of Cy Twombly's art

• Twombly often quoted poets such as Stéphane Mallarmé, Rainer Maria Rilke, and John Keats in his works

• Wide readership that spans across genres and fields, including academic circles and book reviewing circles

• Potential audiences: fans of poetry that engages with (abstract) art; museums, art galleries, and art curators; fans of hybrid literature, collaborative writing. and epic literature (referenced) 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
• Release date: Apr 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781619322707

Book preview

Cover: Before the Borderless, Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly by Dean Rader

Before the Borderless

Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly

DEAN RADER

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Thank you. We hope you enjoy these poems.

This e-book edition was created through a special grant provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.

This book is in memory of my parents:

Gary Dean Rader (1946–2017)

Ginger Rader (1947–2022)

Contents

Title Page

Note to the Reader

I

Troubled by Thoughts about Infinity and Oblivion, I Exit the Twombly Retrospective at Dusk and Walk the High Line with the Ghost of My Father

In Which Twombly and Rader Consider the Letter

Meditation on Comprehension

Meditation on Absolution

System

Meditation on Instruction

Meditation on Circulation

Sonnet: The Inscrutability of Influence

Unending Octet

Meditation on Revision

Meditation on Motion

Studies for Excursus

Elegies (Variations)

II

Meditation on Mimesis

The Fire That Consumes All before It

Meditation on Communication

Letter of Resignation

III

Octet

Meditation on Inspiration

Meditation on Revolution

Self-Portrait in the Dark

This Is No Time for Poetry,

Meditation on Direction

Unfinished Unending Journey

Meditation on Remembering

Unfinished Sonnet

Eternal Return

Meditation on Creation

In Advance of All Parting

Meditation on Inscription

Once Again in Thought about Rilke, Twombly’s Orpheus Paintings, and Fatherhood, I Consider the Inevitability of Creation and Loss

IV

Pentimento

Notes

Art Credits

About the Author

Books by Dean Rader

Acknowledgments

Copyright

Special Thanks

I

I never really separated painting and literature.

Cy Twombly

Orpheus, 1979

Troubled by Thoughts about Infinity and Oblivion, I Exit the Twombly Retrospective at Dusk and Walk the High Line with the Ghost of My Father

This evening, the unknown waves its wand,

and a beam of light disappears into the sky’s black hat.

The moon has never known its true home.

The stars do not remember when they began their journey.

Out of that forgetting,

they begin their own making.

Just like us.

Soon