Hyperallergic Reviews Boundaries, Where Poems & Photographs Run Parallel

At Hyperallergic, Carl Little visits a collaborative project called Boundaries, in which poet Richard Blanco and photographer Jacob Hessler "address the subject from a range of angles, using handsome large-scale color prints and poignant words." On view at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, the show "consists of nine photograph-poem pairings. For the most part, Blanco’s poems were prompted by Hessler’s photographs, but they are not ekphrastic." More:

There are no direct descriptive references to the images, although here and there the connection is made tangible. Rather, the poems run parallel to the photographs, often adding a narrative to what is a wide-open image.

A fine-art photographer based in Camden, Maine, Hessler explains in a video on the CMCA website that he favors “emptiness” and “vastness” in his imagery; the sky, for example, takes up most of “Hallandale Beach, Florida.” Only a thin strip of ocean and small wedge of beach along the bottom interrupt this skyscape — and without the photograph’s subtitle, “Where many Cuban refugees make landfall in the U.S.,” you’d never know the scenic view could be the site of turbulent arrivals.

The image has personal resonance for Blanco: the Bethel, Maine-based poet is the son of Cuban immigrants who came to Miami via Spain soon after he was born. “What We Didn’t Know about Cuba,” the poem he wrote to accompany Hessler’s image, recounts a cab ride from Havana to the north shore city of Mantanzas with a friend to give a poetry reading. On the way back to the capitol, the driver, a “macho cubano,” breaks down in tears after a phone call alerts him that his wife is headed, on a raft, to Florida. “Why you don’t write/a damn poem about this? Why?” he yells at his passengers.

Find the full review of Boundaries here. If you're in Maine, the show runs until May 27.