Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell (New York Review Books Classics)
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell (New York Review Books Classics) Details
Review “Dime-Store Alchemy...is the most sustained literary response this far to Cornell’s boxes, montages, and films...incisive, freewheeling, dramatic—a mixture of evocation and observation, as lucid and shadowy as the imagination it celebrates...Dime-Store Alchemy is a meeting of kindred spirits that is itself a work of art.” —Edward Hirsch, The New Yorker “A beautiful book that evokes Cornell’s artistic spirit.” —Harper’s Bazaar "Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell, [is] a fascinating long-out-of-print book that explores the eccentric genius of the artist through the insightful and often obsessive lens of the poet Charles Simic, who examines eight of Cornell's most remarkable boxes. It is, more than anything, a meditation on beauty and the art of imagination. Simic's writing itself is a metaphor for Cornell's thoughtful collages, stitching together elements of texts by some of the artist's favorite poets and authors....What makes Dime-Store Alchemy most exceptional is the elegant parallel between the poetry of Cornell's work and that of Simic's narrative interpretation of it, at once an embodiment of and commentary on the power of remix in creation." -- The Atlantic Read more About the Author Charles Simic is a poet, essayist and translator. He has published twenty collections of his own poetry, five books of essays, a memoir, and numerous of books of translations. He has received many literary awards for his poems and his translations, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Griffin Prize and the MacArthur Fellowship. The Voice at 3 A.M., his selected later and new poems, was published in 2003 and a new book of poems My Noiseless Entourage came out in the spring of 2005. His new ebook from New York Review Books is titled Confessions of a Poet Laureate. Read more
Reviews
As a longtime admirer of both Charles Simic & Joseph Cornell, it was perhaps inevitable that I would love this little book. What I didn't expect was just how much I'd love it, for its dreamlike yet precisely detailed tone. The short passages are magical prose-poems, often focusing on one tiny thing that illuminates the universe of Cornell's art & imagination. The overall effect is that of stumbling upon a verbal equivalent of Cornell's famed boxes; the text adds new dimensions to the art, and the art provides a foundation for the jeweled text. Rarely have I come across such a perfect marriage of subject & commentator. Obviously best suited for similar admirers of Simic & Cornell … but also a fascinating introduction to the distinctive personal visions of both men. Thank you, NYRB, for making this exquisite volume available again!
