Negatives (Poetic Developments)
in Peter Sanger’s Lightfield: The Photography of Thaddeus Holownia
We have not found out where we live and what we live for. …
But even shadows have biographies.
—Peter Sanger
Sean Howard
Preface
Art & Nature: the compact
world. (Not easy! Going light
on words.) God forbid, ‘the
Art Gallery of Nova Scotia…’
Hidden by plain sight: ‘the
nature of nature is meta-
phorical…’ (To subject
the camera.) Just ‘the
couple of moments’?
When light is the
frame
A Note on Title & Names
Beached
light. Polish
rain.
Lightfield
Lord, no! ‘The photographer’s super-
vision…’ (Art at least our own undo-
ing!) Barn, marsh swallows… (‘Harsh
reality’? War’s Great Escapism…) The
little we knew? Yes, pictures getting the
best of him! ‘Great photographers’? Act-
ual people! (‘Walter Benjamin’ an
object now?) ‘Developed world’ –
Keats’ negatives… ‘The
visibly,’ up-
set!
War games, Poland to
Siberia… (Otherfuckers.) ‘Canada,’ can-
did camera? ‘The valley through the
eye…’ Silent rhythms, light only ever
quite possible. Dante developing
Virgil
Art: you don’t say! (My life & death
partners?) Light & space, ‘immediate
family.’ Moving pictures (the dead king-
fisher): bees by truck, horizons by rail
… Theology, the outgrown body. The
eagle’s attention span. (Old-growth
moments.) Shorebard John –
low sun, backwash
stilts
October Sea, marsh grass-
es. (The uncoloured mind?)
School, drilling for children…
Faith, hope to clarity.
(The many pre-
luminaries
.)
Tantramar grammar. (Solitary, Thompson
coupling…) The familiar estranger. (Whole
sail Art?) The eye’s rigging. ‘Eagle’ landing,
eggshell moon. (The naked mechanics.) Car
Rex. (Tarmac Adam?) Watching people, ser-
vice stations… (Light’s hinge.) The lines
of the vanished. Billions: Hollywood
Tutor… ‘Behind’ the picture? Blue
sky, brown horsepond. ‘Fed-
up’? The banqueting cam-
era
Irresistible? Pipeline
prose... (Grids: the land
surveyed?) ‘Logging’ –
PB2227… Golden heel
in the mud. The Name’s
many bones. (‘Modern
Art’: Monet in Hiros-
hima, The Bridge
After The Rain.)
Light, Blake
wading
Walden, snow taking attendance. (2001: 600,000,
flock to a shadow!) Pond’s translations. O, volum-
inous! The unsplit screen? (Death (bark or ring?), the
moment time healed.) ‘Lichen beard,’ Merlin’s head
stone? (The Cloud over Versailles…) The page half
mast? (A touch of horizon.) The pencil harp. Grail,
the moon goes begging. (9/11, skyscapers…) Text,
God’s -ex! The run-thru life. To speak of Art in
Love’s Bower? ‘Working’ in the dark; the
discarded rhubarb dress… The unholy
human ghost. Salmon, carved
eye… People framing
devices?
Thought spawning rivers? (‘Countless
hours,’ unpacking photographs…) ‘Time’
for poetry? Coleridge inviting Donne… (To
begin what God finished.) To point the way
woods… Operating on the Theatre? (‘Yes,
scrub that!’) Sam: “John,
‘facts’ the bones of
Truth!”
Faust’s terminal flare. (The dead warblers’
society.) Birds (small fry), landscape paint-
ing… Belsen: wonder ceasing. (1919, statues
staring at the trees.) Pilgrimagery. Words, bit
coins? (‘Quick!’ Writing the ship…) Silence,
light on form. (Noh more?) Thoreau moved
by the heron. God all hands? (‘Harvesting’
the Great Mother.) ‘Listen!’ Reading
water… Every photo, ‘the entrance
to a courtyard’? Eggs: dark
room
Sources
Jung dreams
reflections…
Donne’s
pottery
Selective Chronology
Headlit dyke-
lands. (Pond –
tree studies…)
Ghost an-
atom-
y
Acknowledgements
‘My’ books: but no one
owns their brothers! ‘First
blush,’ the facts of light…
‘Mary’s eyes,’ the
following
poems
Sean Howard is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently The Photographer’s Last Picture (Gaspereau Press, 2016) and Ghost Estates (Gaspereau, 2918). His poetry has been widely published in Canada and elsewhere and featured in The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in English (Tightrope Books, 2017).
