A Table of Content: Poems

by Dorothea Tanning

The extraordinary first poetry collection by the renowned painter and sculptor Dorothea Tanning Finally, on second, in bras. Bras swarming everywhere,
giant pink moths at rest, their empty cups clamoring, "Fill me."
-from "End of the Day on Second" Dorothea Tanning is an exceptional visual artist, and now, in her nineties, she has become an exceptional poet. In A Table of Content , we are made to see more clearly the city landscape, the creative impulse, and the worlds of potential disaster and sensual erotics with a vision that survives taste, trend, and time.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2004

About the author

Dorothea Tanning was an American painter, printmaker, sculptor and writer. She has also designed sets and costumes for ballet and theatre.

Reviews

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

My latest obsession. Found this book at Poet's House in New York, the amazing free poetry library along the Hudson. (If you're ever in New York, it's a NYC don't-miss for book lovers, 50,000 poetry books to read at random, a room full of light, and comfy chairs and couches whereon to read)... In the entry, a shelf of works by recently deceased poets beckoned--Szymborska, Adrienne Rich and this woman, Dorothea Tanning. I grabbed one and sat on a couch, started reading A Table of Contents.

Fantastic, clear, poignant, humorous, I just loved it, copied down line after line into my notebook. Wondered if it could possibly be the same Dorothea Tanning the surrealist artist I'd just seen in a big show at LACMA, "Women Surrealists in the U.S. and Mexico." I doubted it. Who could be that prominent an visual artist in the Forties, and also a poet with recent books?

Ordered the book when I got home--and what do you know. Dorothea Tanning, the surrealist painter, began writing poetry AT EIGHTY, and just died at 101! Now I'm completely obsessed.

Here's what I wrote in my notebook in that sunny room at Poet's House overlooking the water:


"Incontinent rains come
on their way south, delivering silver mail."

"Someone tosses a pebble--stone?
(every tour has its joker)--
down to where a gray cat
plays with her kitten--
little gray spot that
moves no more,
The cat uttering a cry
too small, too far away..."

"This morning's paste defines itself as rain,
tells me to stay home. I wish I could.

If only I didn't have to prove something
no one will believe until I've proved it.

Outside, habit eats the day, already stale
with future relics. I corner my resolve

as mind-tattered pieces of me splinter
off the intersection, roll under traffic--

naked bits of purpose smashed under
cars, fire trucks, busses..."

" below the
salt someone's career
sounds like glass "

"Some clown sewed up my eyes, he said
it wouldn't show..."

"With such a blaze to celebrate where centuries meet..."

"You were immense. You led me to the edge. I waved
and we went over. I held my happy breath.
We knew our raft would get us past
the mountain...
Some undertow had opened, pulled you from me
far beyond the beating of our wings...

"Slowly now, I move in another skin."

"It's always too late to keep in mind
who not to invite next time"

"To challenge the labyrinth's
veil-hung night..."

(Insomnia:)
"I lie haggard as you drag
your insane engine past
across the floor,
slamming doors
on all my four dimensions..."

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

What charms me in her prose (her novel, her memoir) - the elevated diction, the eccentric glamour and excess, the slightly elusive veiled swirliness - in her poems makes me cringe a bit, even induces a nausea that rises to the rear of my throat. Something similar occurs when I look at certain of her paintings; a memory of unpleasant fever, cloying fever and forced tapioca, wet hands in my stomach. Yet still deep beneath her art - her prose, her poetry, her painting - I see the homespun of her radiant originality and talent, but still... her poetry has something unsettlingly borrowed about it, something cloistered auntish about it, silk exotica pulled from mothballs.

I have returned this book to the library and will not revisit it. I will offer no further analysis of my response.