Bøger af Jim Thurber

Desaix Anderson's art is a personal philosophical exploration of the meaning of life. A career diplomat, focused on Asia, writer, and painter, the native Mississippian lived in New York, Washington, and Paris. Desaix shares with Asians a profound attachment to nature, the seasons, and cycles of decay and rebirth of both societies and individuals. Desaix's preference for minimalist composition reflects many years of living in Japan, but earthy peasant scenes and colors have appeared in his painting since his third residency in Vietnam (1995 to 1997). Rich color evokes his innate optimism, passion for life, and vivid recollections of ancient and contemporary Asia. Mountains, rivers, the sun, the moon, and the sea are recurrent themes. Attuned to the harmony and balance of life, Desaix paints with an energetic palette of color, using acrylics on canvas, embedding gold leaf and handmade Asian papers into collages, mingling hints of nature or philosophical ideas in golds, reds, and mustards and creating evocative and sensuous mosaics of pleasure, innuendo, and adventure. In 1962 Desaix shared a cottage in Berkeley with poet Jim Thurber. Jim Thurber arrived in San Francisco in the early 1960s during the height of the San Francisco Renaissance, a spontaneous gathering of poets from all over America who were writing a new poetry; rebellious, wild, and original. Jim believed that poetry is an expressed reflection of the realization of the ineffable. In his own practice of poetry, he believed that the shortest distance between two points is unavailable to the poet. The poet is just a passenger along for a ride in a vehicle that has no particular destination as it follows the unexpected twists and turns of words and language left to proceed by themselves. Desaix and Jim, the artist and poet, didn't meet again for 50 years. On a visit to Oregon in 2009, Desaix contacted Jim and within days the notion of this book of Jim's poems inspired by Desaix's paintings began to take shape.

Jim Thurber arrived in San Francisco in the early 1960s during the height of the San Francisco Renaissance and enrolled at San Francisco State. He described it as "a spontaneous gathering of poets from all over America who were writing a kind of new poetry--rebellious, wild, and original." In 1964 he co-founded an underground magazine and wrote improvised poetry for people on the streets of North Beach. Jim first read his poetry at the landmark Berkeley Poetry Conference in 1965.The themes of Jim's poetry move in several directions. One current celebrates nature, the environment, and wilderness. A poem such as "Yosemite Weekend" is of this type. A second, darker flow reveals a self-destructive and sinister current. See the poem dedicated to Lew Welch, "Walk Away From It," and "Why Aren't We Happy?" The third current is the acid-inspired joyous silliness of poems such as "Lecture on Modern Poetry" and "Peyote the Kid." Sometimes several themes come together, as in the powerful "Radio R.A.G.E."