When I thought I’d become a poet my head was as empty as a young male’s under-developed frontal lobe can be. In hindsight I can see it now. It was hiding in plain sight, the poetry, waiting for me to catch up decades later.
Three Catalan workmen, a slab of membrillo, a crusty loaf of bread, a jug of vino blanco del país. Me, my Spanish fiancée and her parents on excursion to the monastery of Montserrat. The workmen sat near our outdoor cafe table chowing down, savoring a simple merienda in each other’s company. I followed their motions, registered their patter, with no conscious interest. The tableau they embodied was etching itself unawares onto whatever surface I retrieve it from now.
I’m wary of appeals to encoded symbolism, gestures towards nebulous profundities, which stud a certain strain of discourse around poetry. Precise detail speaks louder. The cracked yellow handle of the little knife one man used to cut the guava paste he smeared on his hunk of bread. How he wiped its blade on his trouser leg before passing it to the next man. The ceremonious flourish with which they poured rounds into their drained glasses. Their laughter eliciting a prim cluck from my mother-in-law to be.
Wiry laborers at rest, scarfing their fare hungrily, with zest inhabiting their moment fully as I eyed them sidelong from mine. I was constructing the poetry from it subliminally; didn’t know it at the time, much less how to write it. Still don’t. It’s not that it’s too late now; it’s that it’s always too late. At that very dawning, and perhaps when you find someone to love, is when poetry starts to make sense, if ever.
(c) 2025 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
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Mel Leipzig, the ‘Chekhov of Trenton’
[Detail] Mr. Leipzig in 2010 in his home studio with his painting “Francesca at the Door,” depicting his younger self and his daughter. Credit… Susan Smith & Gallery Henoch. [New York Times caption and illustration]
The acrylic canvases of Mel Leipzig, a painter christened by Peter Schjeldahl as the “Chekhov of Trenton,” reach me as analogs to the loudest arena-rock virtuoso guitar hero solos you can think of. They are an ostentation of look-what-I-can-do. They blow your skirt up over your head if you’re wearing one. That’s a mixed bag and stirs up the cliché phrased as embarrassment of riches.
Yes, and Van Gogh arrived at a luminously generalized mode of depiction, as well, which may have helped him cope for longer.
May Mr. Leipzig rest in peace. He was clearly a master of his métiér. These are general thoughts about his art not meant disrespectfully. Is it fair to think of the style of painting he consummately unleashed as more re-creation than creation? Is that a distinction without a difference? (I love that phrase.)
I’ve done something underhanded, and put here only detail from his paintings. See them in full in the article, it’s worth a visit. Leipzig had a long, productive life (dead at 90), and said some really interesting things.
[Detail] Mr. Leipzig was so devoted to verisimilitude that his favorite work was a 1991 acrylic on canvas view of his son, Joshua, sitting insouciantly in a bedroom festooned with graffiti and dirty laundry while three musician friends sprawl on the floor. Credit… via Gallery Henoch [New York Times caption and illustration]
[He said] his art had to feature a person, “no matter what the painting is about… The main thing that interests me is not just the figure… It’s the way the figure related to the background… It’s mainly the composition of the painting that really excites me, but I must have a person. It’s an essential part of my being.”
[Detail] Mr. Leipzig’s 1996 painting “Joshua’s Tattoos,” a portrait of his son. His work contained what an art critic called “an almost hallucinogenic intensity of detail.” Credit… via Leipzig Family. [New York Times caption and illustration]
(c) 2025 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved