Preface
CARMODY: The painter spoke long before; he’s over and done with.
BLIGHT: Would he mind, do you suppose, if I tried to lure the music out?
the eye remembers
till it looks away, the details
unfixed, nameless, small
I can see the presence there, the viewer’s dark silhouette and the brightly
colored painting;
where the yellow bar, lying
across the top weighs down
the distance thick with looking, the canvas, wholly muted, strains against the
air;
a man’s afraid to look
away and tries to pound at least
the blue into his dreams
if he could walk in, go right through the surface of blue and yellow paint,
he’d find it.
the air is tense, leaden
the moment justly frozen
Ocean Park #116
(1979)
Ocean Park #116 (1979)1
Painting, oil and charcoal on canvas (81"x72")
Copyrighted © by The Richard Diebenkorn Foundation
CARMODY: Let me take a stab at this one. I’ll tell you what I think he was up to.
BLIGHT: A tapestry...and maybe an airfield...and...did you see, the top, the curve
partly erased?
call this the “Blue One”
a fallen patch of sky, but not
If he made six good original lines with a ruler he could have divided up the whole
canvas.
really. On inspection
In desperation he would have matched this with that to reach up into the two-toned
yellow bar.
a blue wash spread over lines
delineating nothing now
Like a bird calling faintly across the lake at crepuscule; you’re wondering
if you really heard it.
if you were to try
to describe Van Gogh’s Starry Night
This picture is a composition of geometric shapes, a student’s notebook, filled
with erasures.
brush stroke by brush stroke
When your thoughts are determined to find the subject, the sky or the town, they stop
and surrender.
and could not take refuge in
the idea of a tree or stone
Just lines, angles, colors, textures, and frustration, over and over.
two lines of order
at the stop, the first things drawn
You can see readily each rectangular form is different from the others, like ears or
noses would be in portraiture, or leaves on a tree.
obliterated
radius of a circle
The lines and boxes, the colors alternating make a visible metaphysics, an ontology of
whimsy.
the large fields watery, opaque
Ocean Park #118
(1980)
Ocean Park #118 (1980)2
Painting, oil and charcoal on canvas (93"x81")
Copyrighted © by The Richard Diebenkorn Foundation
CARMODY: Each one is really different, of course, but they’re also just the same.
BLIGHT: The same notes can be played in a lot of different ways.
you wouldn’t describe
the shapes of all the letters
interpreting a poem
If I say there’s an orange and black needle entering top left, splitting the picture like a wedge
you have to enter behind
the surface marks, go deeper
between the brightly layered bands at the top and ever larger polygons in pale colors
for all the balancing
none of this means anything
not the light, not joy
a faded purple belt with black lines fits under it and then mistakes just showing through.
you might imagine your way
through to his true state of mind
—First published in Haibun Today (Volume 9, Number 2, June 2015);
republished here with Tarlton’s permission from his full-length collection,
Touching Fire: New and Selected Ekphrastic Prosimetra
(KYSO Flash Press,
December 2018)
Bio: Charles D. Tarlton
⚡
Saying Good-bye to
Diebenkorn by John Seed in The Huffington Post (5 June 2012;
updated 5 August 2012)
