Synopses & Reviews
Jackson Pollock: Memories Arrested in Space is Martin Grays remarkable biographical poem on the life of the dynamic and controversial American painter. The narrative chronicles the reckless, adventurous, and often desperate life of the twentieth centurys most pivotal American artist, from his beginnings in the American northwest through his pioneering of a revolutionary new painting technique that came to be known as Abstract Expressionism to his death at the wheel of a car on Long Island when he was only 44 years old.
Written entirely in iambic trimeter (the same meter that Gray used to write about Charlie Parkers life and work in his internationally acclaimed Blues for Bird), Grays biographical poem runs more than 3,000 lines.
In Jackson Pollock: Memories Arrested in Space, Gray captures the essence of the brilliant yet tortured artist in language that reflects a Pollock painting: spontaneous, beautiful, and haunting, with bursts of energy that touch the soul and make it soar. Art and poetry lovers alike will rejoice in Grays homage to a true American icon.
Synopsis
A verse biography of one of the 20th century's most pivotal artists
About the Author
Martin Gray is the author of the internationally acclaimed Blues for Bird, an epic biographical poem on the life of jazz great Charlie Parker. Gray is also recognized as one of the worlds foremost scholars of Alfred Lord Tennysons poetry and is the editor of the Penguin Classic annotated edition of Tennysons Idylls of the King. Gray has published poems on Charlie Parker, Gilles Villeneuve, Amedeo Modigliani, Osip Mandelstam, and Caesar Vallejo, and has taught at several major universities across Canada. He lives in Victoria, British Columbia.