Encore with Rectangle and Philosophy

Poetry. Art. "I figured there was time / but for what?"

ENCORE WITH A RECTANGLE AND PHILOSOPHY is the work of a seasoned duo--a meditation on beginnings and ends and what it's all been all about. Whatever gloominess we might expect from such ruminations is deflected by Padgett and Winkfield's characteristic playfulness and grace. It's as if every line of the poem is aware of itself as something that's being felt and written in the moment. Some parts deepen as the poem goes on; others find themselves deflated the next line down. Winkfield's clean, architectural drawings play variations on Padgett's nimbly shifting tones. Padgett says, "I built a house that had ideas in it," and Winkfield reifies the house's geometry, its contraptions, and the echo of departing footsteps. This genial adventure goes beyond the usual categorization of New York School collaboration and into that something known as real life.

Ron Padgett's How Long was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in poetry and his COLLECTED POEMS (Coffee House Press, 2013) won the LA Times Prize for the best poetry book of 2014 and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. His translations include Zone: Selected Poems of Guillaume Apollinaire, and, with Wang Ping, Yu Jian's Flash Cards. Padgett has collaborated with artists Trevor Winkfield, Jim Dine, George Schneeman, Joe Brainard, and Alex Katz. Seven of his poems were used in Jim Jarmusch's film, Paterson. His most recent collections are Big Cabin, ENCORE WITH RECTANGLE AND TRIANGLE (Cuneiform Press, 2019), MOTOR MAIDS ACROSS THE CONTINENT (The Song Cave, 2017), COLLECTED POEMS (Coffee House Press, 2013) and PROSE POEMS (Black Square Edictions, 2007).

Trevor Winkfield has collaborated with many New York School poets, including John Ashbery, Harry Mathews, Charles North and Larry Fagin. ENCORE WITH RECTANGLE AND TRIANGLE (Cuneiform, 2019) is his fourth collaboration with Ron Padgett. His work is in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Berkeley Museum, Erie Museum of Art and MoMA. He has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Art, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His paintings are represented by Tibor de Nagy Gallery. His books include TREVOR WINKFIELD'S DRAWINGS (Bamberger, 2004), and IN THE SCISSORS' COURTYARD:SELECTED WRITINGS, 1967-1975 (Bamberger, 1994).