Issue No. 1, 2007-08. The Geometry of Hope

The Geometry of Hope Creative Writing Prize competition, co-organized by New York University’s Creative Writing Program and Grey Art Gallery, awarded $500 last fall for the best poem or short prose piece written by an NYU undergraduate in response to the exhibition, The Geometry of Hope: Latin American Abstract Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, which was on view at the Grey Art Gallery from September 12 through December 8, 2007. This prize was supported by a generous grant from the Fundación Cisneros. Entries were due on Friday, October 26, 2007, and Creative Writing Program faculty served as judges. A prize reading was held at the Grey Art Gallery on Wednesday, November 28, 2007.

Special thanks to Edward J. Sullivan, Dean for the Humanities and Professor of Fine Arts, and, at the Grey Art Gallery, Lynn Gumpert, Director, and Lucy Oakley, Head of Education and Programs, for making this program possible.

Contents:

Mutual Appreciation

 by Nick Micheletti (Winner)

“Eh, you’re just a cynic,” Carlos replied. “Altruism is possible, I can prove it.” He had the insistent tone of someone who knew he was wrong but desperately hoped he wasn’t.

His interlocutor, Jésus, responded with a shrug, a condescending go ahead and try.

“Mutual appreciation.” Carlos stated flatly.

Jésus raised an eyebrow.

“There’s no other explanation besides altruism.”

“Uh—”

“No wait, hold on. You see I know what you’re going to say. Like that my wanting to share my work with you is only to serve my own ego, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the desire to share the beauty of some random person’s art with you, for the sole purpose of allowing you to take part in a new pleasure. What do I gain from that?”

Jésus bit back immediately. “You are really underestimating the bounds of the human ego, pally. The desire to share your favorite song, book, painting, or whatever with me, or the rest of the world for that matter, is merely a desire to confirm your own belief that you have a cultivated taste. There’s no accounting for taste, but we all want ours counted best. It’s a need to feel special, like everything else we do.”

Carlos clenched his jaw, noticeably. Like all philosophical discussions with his friend, this one had turned into an argument, and he was losing as usual, simply because he could not match Jésus cold, disinterested manner. He said, “No, I’ll show you. Come over here.” Carlos stalked off to his side of the studio, motioning for Jésus to follow.

Carlos led Jésus to what seemed to Jésus to be a great, solid red mural. Jésus had seen him working on this over the last week but could not quite see what was taking so long, what with its seeming simplicity.

Jésus stopped short of a fully frontal view of the mural. With a petulant shrug he said, “So what’s this have to do with anything. It’s just red.”

Carlos grasped Jésus’ shoulders and shuffled him directly in front of his work. Jésus quickly lost his haughty scowl and forgot the recent contention. He remembered what was so attractive about Carlos. He could manufacture a real-life dream, the kind you had when you were young. As he had stepped in front of the mural, the red gave way to a wonderful spectrum of pastels.

He continued to walk along the mural and the spectrum of soft colors followed him like a reflection. Carlos’ mural made it seem that he himself was a giant glass prism and only through him could the light reveal all the lovely colors hidden beneath the oppressive, violent red. He was moved.

“This is beautiful,” was all he said.

Carlos spoke. “You see, though, people are like this. When you look at them from all the bent angles of pessimism, all you see is a solid color of vulgar self-interest. But when you take the time to look closer, at the true nature a person, you’ll see there is a surprising depth of generosity and concern for others. A colorful goodness about them.”

Jésus was pensive, and then said, “You may be right. I admit that you have, eh, redirected my train of thought. But I concede nothing. I have to do some work first.”

* * *

A day later Jésus called Carlos over to his latest project. As Carlos approached, Jésus said, “Now stop right there, what do you see?”

“I see that you have gotten into our wiring again. Now I know why the toaster didn’t work this morning.” Indeed, Jésus had hung short lengths of wire in front of a black screen.

Jésus was enthusiastic. “Yes, exactly! Now stand in front of it.”

Carlos did so. And he saw that Jésus had actually made a nightmarish optical illusion. Viewed head on, the distance between the wires and the screen behind them vanished. His eyes could not seem to comprehend any depth. They were crossing and uncrossing constantly, starting to water. He could not tell whether or not the wires were actually there. He knew they were, but his eyes were only registering wire-sized holes in the black screen. But they were black holes in black. It was incomprehensible, and was giving him vertigo. He knew that Jésus’ wires had, without a doubt, refuted the optimism of his pastels.

Jésus prompted, “Now what do you see?”

And Carlos replied blankly, “Nothing at all.”

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Geometry of Hope

 by Patrick Blagrave (Finalist)

In art there are no longer observers but participants. The artist does not have the final word.
 — Jesús Rafael Soto

Hope takes shape
by the artist’s hands,
bounded by framework
on gallery walls and on pages of canvas.

By the artist’s hands
working shapes like poetry
on gallery walls like on pages, canvas—
engendered—turns tangible. (It’s

working!) Shapes like poetry,
alive, lifted above abstract lines, illusions, all the ink’s
engendered turns. Palpable: its
concrete geometry,

bounding out from framework; Hope
takes shape.

On White, In Nothing

 by Jessamine Molli (Finalist)

(inspired by Alfredo Hilto’s Estructura Lineal)

The sun falls away;
it tumbles
 not down, but back.
And as it ebbs, the sun
escapes me.
The horizon is broken;
 even the
 vertical
 lines
 are allowed, such is the chaos.
The world fades as it leaves,
becoming nothing, as white
 is not a color but
its absence,
 which means nothing.
And in its wake,
 which points back at me,
I am here, bereft
without the horizon as a guide.
And the sun looks like little
more than a
blood-orange speck
on white, in nothing.

Hacia la luz

 by Alexa Wejko (Finalist)

all we have to create
are the remains of what has
been left behind
    from before,
all raped and broken,

a walking burlap sack
is beautiful

¿que es la realidad?

these shapes, they haunt me like
bony ghosts of what could have
been, our starved patria

is fallen, puedo ver
todos los colores, the colors
(our own blood stains the streets)

hacia la luz, miramos
we can see it
the future has a face

hacia la luz, caminamos
it has a body we can
touch through these bars

hacia la luz, corremos
vertical lines are
no longer our prison

hacia la luz, crecemos
black and white, red, purple
everything is changed

We are renewal and We are
metal workers, who else could
turn scrap into a three-dimensional
eruption of life,

    la Vida y el
Triunfo.