Volume 10:1, Winter 2009
THE MUSEUM ISSUE
Introduction by Guest Editor, Maureen Thorson
Museums have a strange and sordid history. Religious institutions and
the very wealthy have always made use of art and curiosities, though
not necessarily for educational or civic purposes. It was not until
the advent of the eighteenth century’s benevolent despots that
the idea of collecting and arranging things (whether beautiful, historic,
or simply strange) as a public service came into vogue. That was the
age of the kunstkamera—the art room, a mini-museum covering
everything that came into the collector’s grasp. (Peter the Great’s
kunstkamera maintained a live dwarf, an assortment of odd rocks, and
jars of preserved babies’ heads). Soon museums were everywhere—the
British Museum, the Vatican Museums, the Uffizi Gallery, and the Louvre
all opened within the space of fifty years.
This fad did not fail to grab the attention of our founding fathers
and mothers. The Age of Reason became, in America, the Age of Collection.
Strange and beautiful items from all over the world were funneled back
into the United States. Once here, those items often found their way
to Washington, DC, thanks to the combined influence of the Library of
Congress and the last will and testament of one James Smithson. Washington
is a city of museums.
This fact has impressed itself on Washington’s poets, and in this
spirit, Kim Roberts and I have gathered together our own kunstkamera
of poems dealing with museums—their collections, their
workers, and the many ways in which they fulfill their founders’
hopes of enlarging the scope of civic life. In these poems, poets engage
in conversations with artists, their subjects, and with art itself.
They stand in witness to the forces of history. They create and they
arrange. And each poem—in its words and images—forms
its own collection. I hope you are inspired.
Maureen Thorson is
the editor and publisher of Big Game Books, and author of two chapbooks,
Mayport (Poetry Society of America, 2006), and Novelty
Act (Ugly Ducking Presse, 2004). She co-curates the In Your Ear
reading series at the DC Art Center with Cathy Eisenhower. Thorson works
as an attorney and lives in Washington, DC.
Read more by this author:
Maureen Thorson
Maureen
Thorson: Tenth Anniversary Issue
Volume 10:1, Winter 2009
THE MUSEUM ISSUE
Table of Contents
I. Portrait Gallery
Cheryl
Snell, "Guarding Ginevra"
Kendra
Kopelke, "Woman in the Sun"
Anne
Becker, "Not a Ghazal: Snapshots from the Museum
of Life"
Lalita
Noronha, "Sisterhood"
Saundra
Rose Maley, "Walking Toward King Tutankhamun"
Edna
Small, "Queens in the Garden"
II. Among Masters
Stephen
Cushman, "Woman with the Arrow"
Jody
Bolz, "Details from a Pair of Sixfold Screens"
Parris
Garnier, "Still Life with Bivalve"
Ann
Rayburn, "Seduction"
Dan
Brady, "Molly Sees Saturn Devouring His Sons"
Linda
Pastan, "Three Skulls on an Oriental Rug"
Marcela
Sulak, "Rubens' House"
III. Behind the Scenes
David
Gewanter, "Leopard Man"
M.A.
Schaffner, "Wayward Docents"
Rose
Marie Berger, "Architectural Detail"
Amani
Elkassabany, "At the South Wall"
IV. How We Lived
Margaret
Yocom, "Donation"
Katherine
E. Young, "Lermontov's Room"
Barbara
Lefcowitz, "At the Emplekpont Remembrance Museum"
Mary
Ann Larkin, "Farmer Plowing"
Sarah
Browning, "The Walton Mountain Museum"
M.C.
Allan, "Evolution"
Kyle
Dargan, "After Visiting the Newseum"
V. The Modern Wing
Reginald
Harris, "The Knockout"
Alan
King, "The Lovers"
Martin
Galvin, "Gallery at the Tate"
Carolyn
Kreiter-Foronda, "Nude Descending in All Directions"
Mel
Belin, "At the Exhibit"
Melissa
Tuckey, "Time's Arrow"
Andrew
Haley, "Rauschenberg's Prints"
Francisco
Aragón, "Arttalk"
Rosemary
Klein, "In the Museum of My Own Being"