Photo of Abandoned House in Poetry, Texas by Noel Kerns

Look at this beautiful thing–there’s a place called Poetry, Texas. Anyone ever been?

Noel Kerns has.

One of my coworkers just reminded me that Poetry, Texas is included in a slide show of poetry in the landscape that we have on the site.

In Yanagi’s digital photos, Elevator Girls are clothed identically in highly saturated blue (occasionally red or white) uniforms and pose in groups in a futuristic mall complex, whose interior strikes a viewer as surrealistically cold and sleek. The beautiful, young Japanese woman stare blankly, as models always do. Their emotionless faces echo the mall’s interior, so that a fluid experience of sterility is suggested between the women’s psychic space and one in which they are contextualized.


Except for one photograph in which the models are lined like mannequins behind a display glass along both sides of a mechanized walk-way, one is not clear if the women are consumers or merchandise themselves to be visually consumed by us as viewers, much like in-store displays. What is unmistakable is that the women’s homogeneity is Yanagi’s feminist critique of consumer culture and the role of women in Japanese society.

The Chelsea Museum also exhibited Yanagi’s My Grandmother series of photographs, which featured striking, expressionistic photos of aged women and wall-text (poems? dramatic monologues?) which sought to capture and recreate conversations Yanagi conducted with elderly Japanese women about their lives.
I invite us to consider the Yanagi’s photos as an occasion to think about form and poetry. One should attempt to compose poems that are as rich and expressive as Yanagi’s My Grandmother series. Any poem that feels like her Elevator Girls series, eerily germ-free, glossy, and artificial, should be avoided at all costs.
Below is one of the wall-texts that accompanied the above picture.

YAB is powered by a hundreds-large gang of anonymous visual artists that install the same three-word poem—”YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL”—on abandoned buildings, street posts, and, sometimes with the cooperation of the gov, in large-scale roadside installations. If you want to do it yourself, stickers are available for you to put someplace and add to the worldwide campaign to MAKE PEOPLE FEEL BETTER FOR ONE SECOND.
The next “poem” will be published at the third annual Printers’ Ball in Chicago, at the Zhou B. Art Center in Bridgeport. The Printers’ Ball is a yearly celebration of print literature, hosted by Poetry magazine and the Poetry Foundation.
For the past month, a handful of Chicago’s most dynamic reading series presented evenings in collaboration with local print publications. The festival wraps up this Friday at the Printers’ Ball party, where literary organizations of all kinds gather under one roof for a spree of the city’s reading scene. That means free admission, magazines (yes, free magazines from virtually all the independent and university publishers in the city), live music, and much, much more.
Some highlights include a demonstration of the Gnoetry poetry machine, a Haunting Machine (as in ghosts) built by Terry Plumming, magazine installation by Chicago Underground Library, bands selected by Punk Planet and Venus Zine, a DVD screening from Shortpants Press (comics), and Reading Under the Influence. You’ll see a lot of familiar logos (ACM, Court Green, In These Times, LVNG, TriQuarterly) and then some ninety more.
If you’re in Chicago this Friday, do stop by:
The Printers’ Ball
Friday, July 20, 2007 8pm
Zhou B. Art Center
1029 West 35th Street
Chicago
But back to YAB…