The Glass Age

by Cole Swensen

The post-impressionist Pierre Bonnard painted, among other things, dozens of paintings of windows. Starting there, this extended poem—part art criticism, part history—considers the phenomenon of glass, revealing the strength and fragility of our age in the minimalist style that has won Cole Swensen such acclaim.

Genres: Poetry

71 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Cole Swensen (b. 1955— ) in Kentfield near San Francisco, Swensen was awarded a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship and is the author of over ten poetry collections and as many translations of works from the French. A translator, editor, copywriter, and teacher, she received her B.A. and M.A. from San Francisco State University and a Ph. D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz before going on to become the now-Previous Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Denver. Her work is considered Postmodern and post-Language school, though she maintains close ties with many of the original authors from that group (such as Lyn Hejinian, Carla Harryman, Barrett Watten, Charles Bernstein,) as well as poets from all over the US and Europe. In fact, her work is hybrid in nature, sometimes called lyric-Language poetry emerging from a strong background in the poetic and visual art traditions of both the USA and France and adding to them her own vision.

Reviews

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I grew a lemon from a forest of thieves. I grieve / still for the infinitesimal / difference between / what you see and what you cannot see."

[Elizabeth Metzger · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book you talk to. A book you read fast all the way through, and then continue to pick up and thumb through for who knows how long. More and more, like the windows within window throughout the book. Wonderful.

[Lightsey]

Actually I just finished my once-through. Compelling, rather odd, sleepy, surprising--part of the school of research art, but with charming breaks in the erudition, in which figures glide half-seen across the field of vision--not to sound too British, but it's rather nice. Despite being research-y, it's not pretentious. And Swensen invokes the Crystal Palace, which is one of my own touchstones, so I love that.

[Krzysztof · Rating 3 out of 5]

When a light flickers on
in a window at night
I think of my grandmother
and all her lonesome peers
entering a room in the dark
never entirely sure
whether the light will come on at all.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Glass Age is divided into three parts: "The Open Window", "The Glass Act", and "Glazier, Glazier"...

From "The Open Window"...

Pierre Bonnard, 1867-1947, painted next to a north-facing window. The battle over just what constitutes realism was at that moment particularly acute - an emotional thing, such as a cardinal out my window. Could streak away and shatter the composition of the world into a vivid wind in which the world goes astray.

- pg. 3

* * *

A painting always has a model on its outside; it is always a window.

- Gilles Deleuze

When Leon Alberti published his De Pictura in 1435, he proposed the picture plane as an open window "through which I regard the scene..." through which the painting opens a world that was not there just seconds before.

And his carefully ruled and drafted pavimenti, in ways so like the paned window, now unattainable, to reach

is not necessarily to touch, and so on.

- pg.

From "The Glass Act"...

Vilhelm Hammershøi, 1864-1916, obsessively painted windows looking out on windows.

And painted through repeating glass doors that opened into rooms with nothing in them. Pale green on pale grey. The doors are often. They look into other rooms also open. He also painted women, often from the back, and often leaning over something in their laps,
but he tended not to mix them with the windows.

"I see no difference," he said, "I have a nervous habit

of tracing a heart in his palm with his thumb.

- pg. 35

* * *

In 1898, in the apartment of Claude Terrasse, Bonnard helped Alfred Jarry set up his Théâtre des Pantins and made him over three hundred marionettes for the revival of Ubu Roi. The Lumière brothers' early movies were still very much on his mind, in which the shadows on the walls, in which the gesture leaves a life. He worked a little more on the lights. He hand-carved their strings from ice. Jarry's 'Pataphysical masterpiece The Exploits & Opinions of Dr. Faustroll includes a chapter dedicated to Bonnard and titled "How One Obtained Canvas." In it, everything turns to gold including the eye and all seeing is seeing as
if there were enough light.

- pg. 44

From "Glazier, Glazier"...

While in France, they built whole mansions of glass;
called orangeries or serres or vies, a conservatory can be

made, paned, claimed

I grew a lemon from a forest of thieves. I grieve

still for the infinitesimal

difference between
what you can see and what you cannot see.

- pg. 53

* * *

There is nothing more said Baudelaire, and here
inserted
numerous
adjectives
than a window lighted by a single candle. The flame at that distance resembles a face, which glances out, then turns away. The profile cuts the light in half. As the face, now only half in this world, builds a half-world on the other side, claimed Bonnard, any face is half a world away. And waits.

- pg. 66

[M · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I was a child, I had a glass kite. Said the child staring out the window of the speeding train.

[Debs · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Laurie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm reminded of Thylias Moss' poems in Tokyo Butter about image, seeing, not seeing, disappearance, abduction, representation, photographs, etc. Swensen just happens to be much more linear & properly-historical (?) in her account of past artists who represented these themes. Moss is decidedly un-linear & historical in a different sense.

[Megan]

slippery surface of a read...satisfying in its way.