Yellow Melting Like a Firework Petal, from Space Poem #7 (Color Without Objects: Intra-Active May-Words)
Renée Green
2020
800px × 610px JPEG
also, 42″ × 32″ Double-Sided Banner. Part of a Series of 28 Banners
One Reply to “Yellow Melting Like a Firework Petal”
I have some FOMO about not discussing Renée Green’s Space Poems in my book Absence of Clutter: Minimal Writing as Art and Literature. Green’s short fragments of language are in dialogue both with poets and artists, and are comparable to, yet distinct from, the text works of artists such as Glenn Ligon, Allen Ruppersberg, Eve Fowler, and Kay Rosen. Space Poem #1, the work I know best from the series, is a two-sided banner that ingeniously references On Kawara, Glenn Ligon and the Pan-African flag.
These poems inhabit the space of the gallery and allude too to the outer and inner spaces of Afro-Futurism. Yellow Melting Like a Firework Petal, from Space Poem #7 (Color Without Objects: Intra-Active May-Words) is one side of a double-sided banner whose text is taken from May Swenson. The yellow text refers to its own yellowness, but do the colors green and pink convey meaning? Though only six words long, the poem contains at least three metaphors: yellow melting; the simile “like a firework”; and the additional metaphor of firework-as-petal. A color is compared to a liquid, which is compared to an explosion or the blooming of a flower. This banner, according to the description, would hang above a viewer in a gallery, and would be elevated like the firework of which it speaks. As one of twenty-eight banners, it would be merely one liquid or flower or firework raining from above. I hope to see them in person.
I have some FOMO about not discussing Renée Green’s Space Poems in my book Absence of Clutter: Minimal Writing as Art and Literature. Green’s short fragments of language are in dialogue both with poets and artists, and are comparable to, yet distinct from, the text works of artists such as Glenn Ligon, Allen Ruppersberg, Eve Fowler, and Kay Rosen. Space Poem #1, the work I know best from the series, is a two-sided banner that ingeniously references On Kawara, Glenn Ligon and the Pan-African flag.
These poems inhabit the space of the gallery and allude too to the outer and inner spaces of Afro-Futurism. Yellow Melting Like a Firework Petal, from Space Poem #7 (Color Without Objects: Intra-Active May-Words) is one side of a double-sided banner whose text is taken from May Swenson. The yellow text refers to its own yellowness, but do the colors green and pink convey meaning? Though only six words long, the poem contains at least three metaphors: yellow melting; the simile “like a firework”; and the additional metaphor of firework-as-petal. A color is compared to a liquid, which is compared to an explosion or the blooming of a flower. This banner, according to the description, would hang above a viewer in a gallery, and would be elevated like the firework of which it speaks. As one of twenty-eight banners, it would be merely one liquid or flower or firework raining from above. I hope to see them in person.