“Dark Fountain” – a poem … Jacques Rivette – in memoriam

 
Jacques Rivette – in memoriam, 29 January 2016

 
 
Rivette’s moving, powerful inward-journey of a film, La Belle Noiseuse, altered my own views on art, on the creative process. Strong performances throughout. My poem “Dark Fountain,” originally published in a special film issue of Big Muddy, and later included in Cinéma Vérité, poetry collection from A-Minor Press, finds its own connection with Rivette’s film.

 
 
“Dark Fountain”

            – after Jacques Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse

He’d let go ten years before.
Now, his charcoal stick scrapes
canvas – a line, a curve, soft

hollows of back and hip and
thigh. She stands, center room,
in the perfect moment inside

his head that will never find
its finished form, never give
itself away as though starved

or mad. His hand will ache
with its hours, his eye will
search for what it cannot see.
 
 
 
 
***
 
 
 
 

~ by samofthetenthousandthings on January 30, 2016.