Partial Objects

by George Pitts

Master of the long line and the line break; known for technical perfection and emotional depth; an award-winning photographer, cherished professor, and accomplished essayist - George Pitts delivers here five poems written and published over the course of his prestigious 40+ year career as an artist, intellectual, and thinking-feeling person. The title poem is published in full here for the first time - a sweeping historical-sexual narrative about gender in the 20th century.



"It is a remarkable poem, shimmering and shifting with an ease of movement and transformation worthy of its subject. The shift between genders and all the subsets of behavior, imagery, and meaning that lie within that huge subject, is exhilaratingly mercurial, like consciousness itself."
Ted Mooney


"I've been reading in your long poem "Partial Objects," and think it's truly extraordinary."
John Ashbery



George Pitts is an Assistant Professor at Parsons The New School For Design. He was the Director of Photography at Vibe Magazine, and LIFE Magazine. In 2006 he received the Lucie Award for Picture Editor of the Year. He is a photographer, painter, and writer. This is his first book of poetry.

62 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[dimwig · Rating 3 out of 5]

i don't know what i thought—familiarizing myself a bit with his photography & reading his profile of ryan mcginley illuminated the milieu: glamorous sexy cool nyc, gender bending & performativity, struggle for power & agency between those seeing & those being seen. what of the poetry itself? treads the same territory, eloquently mixes some aristocratic diction with vernacular sayings, truisms; there's something almost elemental at work at the beginning of the long final titular poem that lends a gravitas to the story (at times i thought essayistic as much as poetic) as much about subjective emotion & affect as the abstract themes of gaze, gender, etc. tho i should say that i've only read it once & that is not a good way of doing things. but am i just supposed to read fmoten and walexander over & over again??

[George]

My first book of Literature.