In 2004 his very long poem WESTERN MOTEL was published in Rattle #22. Blickstein based this piece on a painting with the same name produced by Edward Hopper and dedicated this poem to him.
J.J. Blickstein, the poet, to this day continues to interest me though we have never met in the flesh nor conversed in any way. Yesterday I performed another google search to see if he still was out there writing poetry and came up with more prolific evidence that at one time he somewhat thrived. In 2004 his very long poem WESTERN MOTEL was published in Rattle #22. Blickstein based this piece on a painting with the same name produced by Edward Hopper and dedicated this poem to him. Note that instead of pilfering from another person’s text Blickstein chose a painting in which to reinterpret or deconstruct and make a poem out of his process.
WESTERN MOTEL
—for Edward Hopper
Red chair. The human sacrifice, a perfect desert, outside the window
(window the leash on the decay of the dream) is the entire world.
Woman in a red dress on the edge of the bed ready to go or to stay forever—suitcase on the floor, same color as the undamaged road, green sedan at the edge of the window leaves no knowledge but assumption.
Death in the shadows of a room without dusk—everything wreaks of
“just passing through.” The bones in your mind can’t be found anywhere, thin skin of civilization torn between the open curtains just the way you like it. You amuse yourself with the idea of the girl as automobile, automobile as girl but you paint her pensive, and relaxed, cross her legs to maintain the tension—
she falls back from shapes and tones when you question the composition. Your tongue, the silent tongue, silences the perfect pitch in the colored palette—Blonde in a red dress, red shoes, green automobile, deep stain on the wall, red sheets washed a pale carmine by the bent light we can’t call the sun—Simple lamp is simple math, that’s why you included it, the shape of the headlamp,
color of sand to balance the weight of the room.
Your attention to detail, your will for the stark exposes your creation to
the impossibility of
chance, of occasion because your real gift is design—
She’s in a poem that looks and smells like real life (No, it’s not a poem, it’s poetry with nothing to do, never anything to do…)
It’s important how she looks at you, through you, past you—she still looks
for your signal,
lives for you, with you, without you, and you are both still alone. She paints you,
makes you a
landscape (in her mind) as a small rebellion and this is why she must despise you,
for the
vision (she too has become herself). You know, the dullness, the repression,
the squashing
of giddiness, the discipline to stare long enough to see
almost everything and the discipline to pause just before it and you crack and tear.
Her back is to the view because there is nothing more to understand. Yep,
she’s smart and
pretty but who wants to surrender expectation and the belief that something’s coming—
(You could show us longing but you don’t have to because she’s already there.) The road is the thing that’s really American—there’s nothing on it and you
can see it right
outside the window, and the funny thing is that we are always looking at it
all the time—But,
maybe she is too because everything here and here after all is just an idea.
__J.J. Blickstein —from Rattle #22, Winter 2004
This painting, Western Motel by Edward Hopper, “alludes to the fact that modern travel is often a collection of picture postcards and snapshots that lamely attempt to prove that one has gone outside the constraints of everyday life.” Blickstein again rambles on in his poem to the point of saying too much. A writer cannot expect to keep a reader’s attention when the rhetoric extends itself too far. However, there are always a few Blickstein words or a couple lines that manage to get my attention. However, I am constantly struck by his need to use so many words. It is obvious to me that J.J. needs a good tyrannical editor. I am reminded of Gordon Lish and his service (or disservice) to Raymond Carver. An argument could be made for whether or not the accepted and published short stories of Raymond Carver’s, the ones that Lish severely cut and often changed the words and endings, are literally the finished work of Lish or the original writer Carver? Raymond Carver was certainly a talented scribe who preferred being verbose over succinct. Gordon Lish was eventually dismissed as his editor and Carver’s later works do revert back to his original long-style. Both he and spouse Tess Gallagher subsequently discounted the severity of Lish’s earlier edits. Given that bit of fact, the question begs again whether or not these early (and now infamous) severely rewritten and edited versions of now-classic short stories are actually Raymond Carver’s? Today I am of the opinion that on his own Carver could not have written those early short stories published by Gordon Lish. So whose are they?
Gordon Lish is without a doubt the best editor I could have had for my development as a writer. Early on in our relationship he often circled a word and demanded I “beat it.” There were a couple occasions when he actually offered a word or two in the margins as possible changes I might want to consider. But he never rewrote my poems. Instead he made me see where I was going wrong and how I could make my poems even stronger and come at you with more force. Rarely did Lish do anything to the poems I sent him for consideration and perhaps accept as if he were still the managing editor of The Quarterly lit mag. He simply would mark each poem with a “yes” or he added a check mark meaning they were accepted as written. If they were returned to me without a check mark or a “yes” then they contained either a “no” or a quick word or two stating they needed more work.
And if I seem to be picking on J.J. Blickstein please understand that I am only using his poems as examples of what can be done to make a stronger artifact. No other fellow minor poet has gotten the attention from me like J.J. Blickstein, so it is more a celebration and respect for his raw talent that I use him as an instrument. Yesterday I took that long poem of Blickstein’s above titled Western Motel about the Hopper painting and composed the following, which again does not resemble his original work at all, and the meaning surely has been altered to fit my own needs, and has nothing to do with Hopper’s painting.
Modern Travel
Decay rests on the edge.
Her bones cannot be
found anywhere. Just
thin skin torn the way
you like it. You paint her
anyway: pensive, relaxed,
and crossing her legs.
To maintain the tension
she falls back into the
bent light where attention
to detail exposes the
impossibility of this poem.
That is why she must
despise you. And remain
outside your window.
for J. J. Blickstein
___M Sarki
Thanks for the restack