Vyt Bakaitis
A Few Words for George Quasha and poetry is (Speaking Portraits)
For more than half a century now, George Quasha has been an original, pedigreed multi-tasker as poet, musician, visual artist, mind-bending anthologist, and hands-on physical Tai Chi tactician − in short, a magus to unlock and lift a guiding presence out of the passing moment.
When I think of the work that Quasha is doing, balancing comes to mind, again and again, and in abundance: the kind of balance I can find, without stressing too hard, or reaching too far, in the name itself, at a glance, face value, syllabically and numerically in balance. The first name is singular, George, but the two strokes combined in Quasha immediately suggest, by an added beat, three. George Qua-sha. The sequence is simple in its progression, and familiar in the ordinary way that a thought will stir itself to a pronouncement, a micro-model in countering, buttressing dialogue. Even if kept to oneself, or playfully reversed, Magyar style, into Quasha George, the triangulation swiftly evokes the voilà of an ongoing dialectic.
To be adept in managing each instance into such balance wills the spine and skeleton under the full weight of a living person to get to stay in balance and advance, though hobbled by the necessity, step by step over the preordained course of three common human stages young Oedipus once guessed at.
Key watchwords are interlinked: axial/liminal/configurative.
All form the kind of balance that aligns rather than limits, that allows for movement but does not restrict it, is not pivotal but axial, and stays expansive in the way we may accept each definition as one of the reference lines within a flexible, immutably coordinated system. But no, forget system; make that network. And the evidence tells us, in this occasion of essays on George Quasha’s achievement, it is a live network of responsive contributions: clear-eyed, wide-eyed, spanning.
Quasha works in language as well as in body-language, and he has worked the latter into a texture that announces itself as variously in words as in music, and without words or sounds into an expanding portfolio of sure-handed drawings. Moreover, the prolific, stacked instances of his chosen axial stones show their basic weight and brunt raised from timeworn primordial anonymity, since all stone in its settled natural state, no matter the scale, whether volcanic or sea-scoured, survives as detritus of dead inorganic matter. So his axial handling hints at an upsurge that, with each shaping guiding compassionate touch, comes to signal a coherent, consummate wholeness. In each attempt, the spell is immediate, a supple, improvised performance, with stunning energy uncoiled into a balance.
As an essential poetry, Quasha’s books speak beyond volume: Magic Spell for the Far Journey, from 1971; Somapoetics, 1973; Word-Yum, 1974. And lately the open-ended exploratory series of "preverbs,” starting with Verbal Paradise, 2011, has each volume rise to axiomatic gravitas from a commonplace field of riddling paroxysms. He also collaborated on putting together two substantial, that to this day remain monumental, anthologies: Open Poetry with Ronald Gross, and America: A Prophecy with Jerome Rothenberg; both appeared in 1973. In the first he made the case for a meta-poetry, in principles that apply in his work to this day; in the second he allied himself into a marvelously venturesome bond of community with fellow poets that continues to hold. In 1974, almost as if to attest a staying power to poetry’s timely, intimate agency, George co-edited An Active Anthology with Susan Quasha, the photographer who was then and still remains his wife. Ainu Dreams, first published in 1999, grew out of a collaboration on original poems with artist Chie Hasegawa.
Balance may be brought to any point at which you find yourself. Even while standing stock-still you stay alert to the possibility of movement, if only to see ahead how you will fit in with what you see around you, if only to be gauging a distance before you. I am here, but then who am I? And, rather than prompt a fixed definition, the moment invites movement, a surging advance into attention that calls on the instant for re-definition, a fleeting glance to the measure of extended breathing.
For a long time, this has been the case. Descartes once made a reasonable proposal that caught on. His cogito posed the idea that thinking makes me what I am. Later that took a drastic turn when the Romantics invoked feeling. The re-consideration was all-encompassing, overwhelming, an exponential explosion. Witness the French Revolution. At the time, William Blake posted the turbulence of the phenomenon between the poles of Reason and Energy. And William Blake is where George Quasha started.
Further to resolve each disturbance into what had been long held to be an evolving process, the focus ever since has stayed on consciousness, bringing it to light as suitably individual yet varyingly kaleidoscopic. And the means engaged to achieve this, in the arts at least, dwells in renewed elaboration, customized collaboration, each a specific renegotiation at the taproot that aims to sidestep and avert approximation.
In undertaking the immense task, Quasha has come up with an achievement in proportion and scale equal to his venture. As I consider it, I can also reflect: one size fits all, a subatomic nucleus as intricately configured as the cosmos.
The theme for today is the dailiness of all coincidence. Poetry Is. George Quasha.
(This note was first prepared for the presentation of poetry is (Speaking Portraits) at Anthology Film Archives, New York City, on June 6, 2015. The full program for the event, co-organized by Kimberly Lyons and the present writer, included screenings and panels with poets, but due to time-constraints this introduction was not delivered on that occasion. The complete poetry is (Speaking Portraits) Vol. II is now available for viewing online at https://vimeo.com/129744982.)
For more than half a century now, George Quasha has been an original, pedigreed multi-tasker as poet, musician, visual artist, mind-bending anthologist, and hands-on physical Tai Chi tactician − in short, a magus to unlock and lift a guiding presence out of the passing moment.
When I think of the work that Quasha is doing, balancing comes to mind, again and again, and in abundance: the kind of balance I can find, without stressing too hard, or reaching too far, in the name itself, at a glance, face value, syllabically and numerically in balance. The first name is singular, George, but the two strokes combined in Quasha immediately suggest, by an added beat, three. George Qua-sha. The sequence is simple in its progression, and familiar in the ordinary way that a thought will stir itself to a pronouncement, a micro-model in countering, buttressing dialogue. Even if kept to oneself, or playfully reversed, Magyar style, into Quasha George, the triangulation swiftly evokes the voilà of an ongoing dialectic.
To be adept in managing each instance into such balance wills the spine and skeleton under the full weight of a living person to get to stay in balance and advance, though hobbled by the necessity, step by step over the preordained course of three common human stages young Oedipus once guessed at.
Key watchwords are interlinked: axial/liminal/configurative.
All form the kind of balance that aligns rather than limits, that allows for movement but does not restrict it, is not pivotal but axial, and stays expansive in the way we may accept each definition as one of the reference lines within a flexible, immutably coordinated system. But no, forget system; make that network. And the evidence tells us, in this occasion of essays on George Quasha’s achievement, it is a live network of responsive contributions: clear-eyed, wide-eyed, spanning.
Quasha works in language as well as in body-language, and he has worked the latter into a texture that announces itself as variously in words as in music, and without words or sounds into an expanding portfolio of sure-handed drawings. Moreover, the prolific, stacked instances of his chosen axial stones show their basic weight and brunt raised from timeworn primordial anonymity, since all stone in its settled natural state, no matter the scale, whether volcanic or sea-scoured, survives as detritus of dead inorganic matter. So his axial handling hints at an upsurge that, with each shaping guiding compassionate touch, comes to signal a coherent, consummate wholeness. In each attempt, the spell is immediate, a supple, improvised performance, with stunning energy uncoiled into a balance.
As an essential poetry, Quasha’s books speak beyond volume: Magic Spell for the Far Journey, from 1971; Somapoetics, 1973; Word-Yum, 1974. And lately the open-ended exploratory series of "preverbs,” starting with Verbal Paradise, 2011, has each volume rise to axiomatic gravitas from a commonplace field of riddling paroxysms. He also collaborated on putting together two substantial, that to this day remain monumental, anthologies: Open Poetry with Ronald Gross, and America: A Prophecy with Jerome Rothenberg; both appeared in 1973. In the first he made the case for a meta-poetry, in principles that apply in his work to this day; in the second he allied himself into a marvelously venturesome bond of community with fellow poets that continues to hold. In 1974, almost as if to attest a staying power to poetry’s timely, intimate agency, George co-edited An Active Anthology with Susan Quasha, the photographer who was then and still remains his wife. Ainu Dreams, first published in 1999, grew out of a collaboration on original poems with artist Chie Hasegawa.
Balance may be brought to any point at which you find yourself. Even while standing stock-still you stay alert to the possibility of movement, if only to see ahead how you will fit in with what you see around you, if only to be gauging a distance before you. I am here, but then who am I? And, rather than prompt a fixed definition, the moment invites movement, a surging advance into attention that calls on the instant for re-definition, a fleeting glance to the measure of extended breathing.
For a long time, this has been the case. Descartes once made a reasonable proposal that caught on. His cogito posed the idea that thinking makes me what I am. Later that took a drastic turn when the Romantics invoked feeling. The re-consideration was all-encompassing, overwhelming, an exponential explosion. Witness the French Revolution. At the time, William Blake posted the turbulence of the phenomenon between the poles of Reason and Energy. And William Blake is where George Quasha started.
Further to resolve each disturbance into what had been long held to be an evolving process, the focus ever since has stayed on consciousness, bringing it to light as suitably individual yet varyingly kaleidoscopic. And the means engaged to achieve this, in the arts at least, dwells in renewed elaboration, customized collaboration, each a specific renegotiation at the taproot that aims to sidestep and avert approximation.
In undertaking the immense task, Quasha has come up with an achievement in proportion and scale equal to his venture. As I consider it, I can also reflect: one size fits all, a subatomic nucleus as intricately configured as the cosmos.
The theme for today is the dailiness of all coincidence. Poetry Is. George Quasha.
(This note was first prepared for the presentation of poetry is (Speaking Portraits) at Anthology Film Archives, New York City, on June 6, 2015. The full program for the event, co-organized by Kimberly Lyons and the present writer, included screenings and panels with poets, but due to time-constraints this introduction was not delivered on that occasion. The complete poetry is (Speaking Portraits) Vol. II is now available for viewing online at https://vimeo.com/129744982.)