The Pictures

by Max Winter

Poetry. Distinct, clear, and free of flourishes, Max Winter's debut collection of poems, THE PICTURES, examines war, boredom, death, love, decay, happiness, and worship through a series of moving and still images. In one poem, from a group of "moving" pictures, three soldiers bide their time in a barren landscape, awaiting destruction; in a "still" picture, a group of stonesinvite us to pay closer attention to them; in another still picture, a woman stands with her mouth open, fists clenched, words unimportant. Sight is unmysterious but wondrous in this book; the poems demonstrate that to look at something or to read it is to experience it, along with its attendant sadness or joy. The "pictures" collected here are communicative andprofound, quick to read but long to develop.

Genres: Poetry

76 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2007

About the author

Max Winter is a graduate of UC Irvine’s MFA program, and a recipient of two Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellowships in Fiction. He has been published in Day One, Diner Journal, and elsewhere. His debut novel, EXES , is forthcoming from Catapult in 2017. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island with his wife and son.

Reviews

[Paula Koneazny · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Pictures is divided into two parts, “Still” and “Moving,” a series of still photographs or paintings followed by a series of moving pictures. This distinction may be arbitrary, however, since the movement of the eye regarding the still pictures and movement of the moving picture across the eye, if you will, create the same flat, affectless impression. The titles in the first section, dimensions such as 5 x 7, and more unusually, 7 x 24, create the impression that the pictures under scrutiny here are photographs. For although we rarely, if ever, refer to a painting in terms of its width and length, we commonly refer to photos that way. The titles in the second section are quantities of time, such as 4 minutes or 16 minutes.
Some of the pictures are described in color, others in black and white. However, the color in the color pictures seems to wash out in the mind; a certain whitewashing takes place so that all “feel” like they are black and white. On second thought, some of the “stills” do appear to be glossy magazine ads, two-page color spreads perhaps, ads that incorporate expensive automobiles. Some of the moving pictures may be home movies or amateur videos; others, clips from commercial films.
These are ekphrastic poems, straying away from description only in very subtle ways. Too subtle perhaps? Whether these are descriptions of actual photos, paintings and films remains unclear. They may all well be imagined. Many of the still poems move infinitesimally beyond description as they close, evoking a kind of thought bubble or illumination. For example, “8 ½ by 11”: "In five minutes it will rain./ Thought will be no more necessary/ and no less essential." The moving pictures, on the other hand, are mostly lacking in such moments and are, in my opinion, less satisfying. The poem “7 Minutes” is an exception. Describing a bizarre Japanese film clip involving a baby who unzips his head to pull out a jumble of miscellaneous objects, this poem throws the reader pleasingly off balance in a way that none of the other poems does. It ends evocatively: “and at this point/ the film breaks/ and the lights come up, and we realize/ we may have stopped breathing/ for a moment or two.” I only wish more such poems had been included in the book.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really, really dry. The idea behind the book was much more interesting than what the book ultimately became. The problem with poems about pictures is that the poem should bring out what we cannot see in the picture, but if the pictures are unknown and never seen by the reader, it comes off like someone trying to describe the Grand Canyon: interesting, but it can never be adequate.

[Arlene Ang · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice, trim collection of poems working around a central theme: Pictures (still and moving). That said, it does get a bit repetitive. Some favorite lines:

Every sound
only predicts
the silence that follows it.

from "7 by 10"

And these seem to give the idea about the whole book:

It rains.
Rains for the next few days, in fact,
though we see but a fraction of the rainfall
here, in the auditorium.
The film ends too soon to reveal anything else.

from "8 Minutes (Rain)"