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Before the Borderless: Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly
Winner of the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize Dean Rader reaches beyond artistic description to engage Twombly’s work in conversation.
In 2018, just a few weeks after his father’s death, Dean Rader made a pilgrimage to the Gagosian Gallery in New York to see a retrospective of Cy Twombly’s work, In Beauty It is Drawings 1951-2008. The exhibit led to a poem that would become the genesis of this book — from loss and fear to regret and beauty, Before the The Cy Twombly Cycle reaches for the embodiment of emotion and the aesthetics of possibility.
Through a range of experimental forms, including a series of octets, Rader writes to decode the gestures and energies in Twombly’s drawings and paintings. He reaches past observation and admiration to create a game of echolocation, reflecting Twombly’s infinite scrawls as “saddle stitch, spaghetti curl, white whirl.” Even as Rader searches for proximity, examining the gaps between symbols and what they signify, the collection remains unmistakably autobiographical. From the wheatfields of his Western Oklahoma upbringing to questions of loss—first his father and then his mother, who passed only weeks after Rader finished the manuscript for this book—the poems in Before the Borderless are both elegy and prayer, for Rader’s parents, for his children, for the world.
Blurring the distinction between canvas and page, Twombly’s work often includes lines of poetry from many of the authors who shaped Rader’s work — John Keats, Sappho, Federico García Lorca, and Rainer Maria Rilke. As Rader’s poems are paired with 50 color images of Twombly’s paintings and drawings, the line between looking and reading is blurred. Before the Borderless awakens in the space between language and silence to pose provocative questions about art and its power to heal.
In 2018, just a few weeks after his father’s death, Dean Rader made a pilgrimage to the Gagosian Gallery in New York to see a retrospective of Cy Twombly’s work, In Beauty It is Drawings 1951-2008. The exhibit led to a poem that would become the genesis of this book — from loss and fear to regret and beauty, Before the The Cy Twombly Cycle reaches for the embodiment of emotion and the aesthetics of possibility.
Through a range of experimental forms, including a series of octets, Rader writes to decode the gestures and energies in Twombly’s drawings and paintings. He reaches past observation and admiration to create a game of echolocation, reflecting Twombly’s infinite scrawls as “saddle stitch, spaghetti curl, white whirl.” Even as Rader searches for proximity, examining the gaps between symbols and what they signify, the collection remains unmistakably autobiographical. From the wheatfields of his Western Oklahoma upbringing to questions of loss—first his father and then his mother, who passed only weeks after Rader finished the manuscript for this book—the poems in Before the Borderless are both elegy and prayer, for Rader’s parents, for his children, for the world.
Blurring the distinction between canvas and page, Twombly’s work often includes lines of poetry from many of the authors who shaped Rader’s work — John Keats, Sappho, Federico García Lorca, and Rainer Maria Rilke. As Rader’s poems are paired with 50 color images of Twombly’s paintings and drawings, the line between looking and reading is blurred. Before the Borderless awakens in the space between language and silence to pose provocative questions about art and its power to heal.
- GenresPoetry
122 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 25, 2023
29 people want to read
About the author
Dean Rader
27 books30 followersDean Rader has authored or co-authored thirteen books. His debut collection of poems, Works & Days, won the 2010 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize. His 2014 collection Landscape Portrait Figure Form was named by The Barnes & Noble Review as a Best Poetry Book. Other titles include the poetry collection Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry and the anthologies Native Voices: Contemporary Indigenous Poetry, Craft, and Conversations and Bullets into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence.
Rader writes and reviews regularly for The San Francisco Chronicle, The Huffington Post, BOMB, Ploughshares, Artforum, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, where he co-authors a poetry column with Victoria Chang. In 2020, he was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Balakian Award. In 2022, he began the popular video series, "Poems that Changed Me."
His most recent collection of poems, Before the Borderless: Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly, was named by Bookriot as one of ten “mesmerizing” books of modern poetry. Rader’s writing has been supported by fellowships from Princeton University, Harvard University, the MacDowell Foundation, Art Omi, and The Headlands Center for the Arts. He is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow in poetry and a professor at the University of San Francisco.
Rader writes and reviews regularly for The San Francisco Chronicle, The Huffington Post, BOMB, Ploughshares, Artforum, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, where he co-authors a poetry column with Victoria Chang. In 2020, he was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Balakian Award. In 2022, he began the popular video series, "Poems that Changed Me."
His most recent collection of poems, Before the Borderless: Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly, was named by Bookriot as one of ten “mesmerizing” books of modern poetry. Rader’s writing has been supported by fellowships from Princeton University, Harvard University, the MacDowell Foundation, Art Omi, and The Headlands Center for the Arts. He is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow in poetry and a professor at the University of San Francisco.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 3, 2024
ok i was typing out a long thing and then the app quit, so maybe ill just journal about this book instead lol. the gist is, this felt kinda shallow and cloying — not the whole time, but frequently. i might just be bitter cause im working on a series of similar poems, but i think rader could have dug in deeper. also the fact that he was able to get permission from twomblys estate to use all of these beautiful images feels deeply suspect, like a testament to how he didn’t go nearly as deep into the work and into twombly as he could have, given how hush hush nicola del roscio is about twombly, himself, and their relationship. anyways, three stars cause it’s a beautiful book and i found things to appreciate within it
June 1, 2023
I picked up this beautiful, slim collection at the Whitney in April. I did not know Dean Radar's work; I am not overly familiar with Cy Tombly's art. I'm overjoyed to be steeped in both through this collection.
Because Radar visited a retrospective that inspired these poems, understanding Twombly's arc helped anchor my understanding (or viewing?) of the works selected in conversation with Radar's poems. I had to read up on both the poet and the artist, which led me to look up words like ekphrasis - it's times like this that my lack of knowledge of poetic terms is truly embarrassing. (Ekphrasis: "“Description” in Greek. An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning. A notable example is “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” in which the poet John Keats speculates on the identity of the lovers who appear to dance and play music, simultaneously frozen in time and in perpetual motion" (Poetry Foundation).
This discussion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-nJN...) from Sotheby's demystified how some of his pieces are viewed. It was especially helpful looking at the images while listening to the narration. The expert also went over Twombly's artistic timeline and how socio-political events informed and showed up in his paintings.
Radar's poems are quiet and contain the feeling of Twombly's art -- scratch outs, space, spareness that is bursting.
"Despite erasure/the canvas is never blank" (5);
"Will I swing/or will I sing..." (17);
"A pencil lifts a hand" (21);
"I used to know what the pencil wanted./I felt I knew what the hand needed from the brush./I felt I thought the way birds know air -- / everything is transference:" (91)
The poems respond to Twombly but are steeped in Radar's mourning/grief for his father. They are intertwined, inseparable. I loved it.
Because Radar visited a retrospective that inspired these poems, understanding Twombly's arc helped anchor my understanding (or viewing?) of the works selected in conversation with Radar's poems. I had to read up on both the poet and the artist, which led me to look up words like ekphrasis - it's times like this that my lack of knowledge of poetic terms is truly embarrassing. (Ekphrasis: "“Description” in Greek. An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning. A notable example is “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” in which the poet John Keats speculates on the identity of the lovers who appear to dance and play music, simultaneously frozen in time and in perpetual motion" (Poetry Foundation).
This discussion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-nJN...) from Sotheby's demystified how some of his pieces are viewed. It was especially helpful looking at the images while listening to the narration. The expert also went over Twombly's artistic timeline and how socio-political events informed and showed up in his paintings.
Radar's poems are quiet and contain the feeling of Twombly's art -- scratch outs, space, spareness that is bursting.
"Despite erasure/the canvas is never blank" (5);
"Will I swing/or will I sing..." (17);
"A pencil lifts a hand" (21);
"I used to know what the pencil wanted./I felt I knew what the hand needed from the brush./I felt I thought the way birds know air -- / everything is transference:" (91)
The poems respond to Twombly but are steeped in Radar's mourning/grief for his father. They are intertwined, inseparable. I loved it.
April 27, 2024
A lovely collection of Twombly's visuals with side commentary by Radar. Each page an exploration into swirls, colors, and shapes. Both Twombly's and Radar's work tend to be repetitive and it's clear from the epilogue that this work served as a salve for Radar. Still, a wonderful production and mash-up to wander through.
December 23, 2023
Beautiful
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews