I Am Writing a Book On Stuckism

Stuckist painters meeting at Edgeworth Johnstone studio, March 8, 2024.
Emma Pugmire, Eamon Everall, Ron Throop, Charles Thomson.

Last week I received a New York State grant offering me a very light wage while writing Making Friends With Wild Dogs: Reflections On Stuckism for Its 25th Anniversary. I’ve been in full painting and writing mode for the last 8 days, and I’m beginning to feel the drain. In honor of a poet friend of mine, Robert Okaji, who is struggling with advanced lung cancer, I will use a poem-letter he sent to me a couple years ago as a Forward to the book. He is an amazing writer. His blog is called O at the Edges. A must peruse for poetry lovers. I believe Robert (Bob) should be Poet Laureate of the United States. (The poem copied out of my manuscript strangely onto Blurt HTML. Hope it reads well.)
This book will be more creative than academic. I’ll post parts of chapters here from time to time.

Letter to Throop from the Imperfect Stuckist Sky

Dear Ron: I no longer hope for brilliance; a slight

reflection would suffice, or a semi-polished glint

of the dew lingering in a cactus flower’s cup, just

enough to cause the border patrolman to blink and miss

what’s slyly hotfooted past the corner of his eye,

which is where I feel most comfortable these days:

at the edges. But really, at this stage all I can do

is keep plugging away, word by line, ache by poem,

submission to bruise, night after week after year after

decade. This is the point at which wax melts and feathers

flutter through their lonely plummets to someone’s

murky Aegean nightmare. Or should I just embrace

my ineptitudes? Those long, ragged nights and unraveled

days? The emptied glasses? What I love about your

painting is: it ain’t pretty. But goddamn it’s beautiful

and true. Each color, every brushstroke vibrates with

genius, with passion and honesty and a wit I can only

strive for. You pull the perimeters up close, push the

insides out. But enough about you. This is MY poem,

and I need to whine, to explain. What do I miss most

about Texas? The black vultures. The way they’ll

loop above a rotting corpse with nary a collision

or even a close call, sans radar or air traffic controllers.

Of course this sort of perfection eludes me. I’d be

the bird at the root of the pileup, the one that flew clock

instead of counter, while staring towards yonder horizon

rather than at the scrumptious, maggoty morsel below.

I guess that’s what sets us apart. Why follow instinct

when we can overthink and screw up? Just hand me

another slice of that imperfection pie. And a glass of the

bitterest, homemade, moan-inducing ale. I hope to someday

stumble into Oswego to cast an illegal vote or read a

poem, or maybe you’ll parachute into the middle of

flyover country and join us for gyoza or breakfast tacos

and a few bottles of bubbly Spanish wine. Meanwhile,

keep cruising against the grain, and observe those far away

edges. That lone stick figure where the corn dwindles out

at field’s end might be me. I’ll be sure to wave. Bob