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| Victor Willing Place with a Red Thing 1980 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Frank-Stella I 1980 screenprint and lithograph Tate Gallery |
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| Frank Stella II 1980 screenprint and lithograph Tate Gallery |
Zoo Prepares to Adopt Metric System
Obvious Steps:
First off, the lions will have to be exchanged
for metric lions.
This will be a major expense,
but there is no alternative.
Also, distances between cage bars
must be adjusted zoo-wide.
Fear of Special Hardship:
It is incontrovertible the coyotes
will suffer in the changeover,
as there is no naturally metric coyote.
They may all have to be replaced
with African dingoes.
Unpleasant Contingency:
The sea otters face extinction
if we continue unable to locate a supply
of metric clams.
Bright Note:
The porcupines indicate complete willingness
to bring their quills into conformity
with the new standards before the deadline.
For Immediate Action:
Ground Squirrel requests an extension
stating he cannot sleep his requisite seven months
if obliged to convert at once
to metric from his Babylonian scale.
He accepts the necessity of four months
inconvenience and uneasy sleep this year.
We believe that, with counselling,
the benefits of metric dreaming
will become apparent by his second
metric hibernation. Application granted.
– Alice Wirth Gray (1980)
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| Hans Landsaat Blue Still Life 1980 screenprint Tate Gallery |
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| Hans Landsaat Red Still Life 1980 screenprint Tate Gallery |
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| Stephen McKenna Venus and Adonis 1981 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Nan Goldin Greer and Robert on the bed, NYC 1982 cibachrome print Tate Gallery |
Report
All winter I stared at my hands.
Sometimes I made a telescope of them
through which I viewed the world.
There was a window where a still life
of waves said nothing of my future but
again, again. There was a man
whose hunger was a hard red jewel.
Everything we felt we had to test
like ants who extend antennae to probe
the earth, a crumb, the feelers
of a stranger ant discovered in some dark
tunnel. Such curiosity
disappoints at the end of love stories
though tenderness endures. That's the secret,
tenderness: one tiny message drawn by a fingernail
on the palm of someone sleeping.
– Mary Karr (1982)
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| Rodrigo Moynihan The Shelf: Objects and Shadows - Front View 1982-83 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| John Lessore Sunday 1985-89 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Thomas Ruff Portrait 1986 (Stoya) 1986 photograph Tate Gallery |
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| Thomas Struth Hannah Erdrich Hartmann and Jana Maria Hartmann, Düsseldorf 1987 1987 photograph Tate Gallery |
The Spell
The job in certain lives has been to find A
way to live with feeling – for just to B
the selves they are requires them to C
things they were forbidden to. All the D
structive or delicious forces became inE
luctable vapors inside the inF
able houses of personal traits the wee G
board wishes of their parents built. But their nH
tures were folded under, not destroyed. I
have this job in my life, of course, the J-
hook of things not to say, not to know, not risK
things, but life threatening ones, the deep wL
of being unloved and unforgiven. M
pathy was my way out; my mother wouldn't evN
feel anything, she actually unlearned how to (thO
feeling what everyone else felt was also P
nal servitude). Generations got this Q
from generations: Don't say what you feel, you R
not you. Generations of liars in a mS
one got the next one into became a T
leology of undoing. You are not U,
you do not hide what you feel. Behind your V
nial mask you hide, you as a W,
as spelling masks meaning, a kind of hX
on the alphabet, folded to cover Y,
not to destroy it, but to make it haZ.
– Molly Peacock (1987)
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| Thomas Struth The Late Giles Robertson (with Book), Edinburgh 1987 1987 photograph Tate Gallery |
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| Thomas Struth The Smith Family, Fife, Scotland, 1989 1989 photograph Tate Gallery |
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| Thomas Struth National Gallery I, London 1989 1989 photograph Tate Gallery |
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| Paul Graham Television Portrait (Cathy, London) 1989 photograph Tate Gallery |
from Stars
Heraclitus said
stars are bowls of inverted fire.
In Delos, yes, where they hang from ropes
or Kyparissia, holding up the soft-backed black
like buttons in a love seat. Here
the world's infection makes them dim.
– Alice Friman (1989)
Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)