Wojnarowicz likely copied the image from the cover of the New Directions edition of Illuminations. In this portrait, one of the few photographs that exists of the French Decadent poet, the seventeen-year-old looks away from us at something we cannot see [ . . . ] The forever young Rimbaud appears wise beyond his years. He looks both to the future and to the past where infinite possibility meets a condensation of time, where what has not yet happened converges with what already has. [ . . . ] But Rimbaud will be a poet and, for many of us who identify with the New York Downtown scene, Rimbaud will have felt like our poet. And he, whoever he is, has been representing us, whoever we are, for a long time.
Our Rimbaud Mask follows the early publication history of David Wojnarowicz’s “Arthur Rimbaud in New York” photographic series in order to show that our identification with Rimbaud, and with any artist, must remain a site of inquiry and curiosity rather than an obvious source of similitude. What forms of identification are sustainable and which ones are destructive? How do we know the difference? This essay draws together archival research, psychoanalytic theory, and impassioned close readings to lay claim to one of the most taboo fantasies staged in the series: suicide. The Rimbaud mask, different from the image of Rimbaud, invites us to become compassionate witnesses to those whose lives feel unsurvivable without assuming the experience can be shared.
About the Author
Anna Vitale is a poet-writer and host to the freeform radio show The Tenderness Junction on WGXC 90.7 FM. She is the author of Detroit Detroit (Roof Books), Our Rimbaud Mask (Ugly Duckling Presse), and other works including Different Worlds (Troll Thread) and Unknown Pleasures (Perfect Lovers). She teaches writing at New York University and Bard College’s Language and Thinking Program. Anna lives with her husband in Tivoli, NY.
Praise
Under special conditions of ritual and imagination a mask can reveal as well as conceal. With his Arthur Rimbaud mask, David Wojnarowicz showed us the strange and terrifying power of that, and now a poet by the name of Vitale encourages us to take stock of that precious achievement.
Michael Taussig
Vitale's text cleaves so beautifully around the ‘we’ and ‘him.’ It gave me so much to think about—propelling in lived intellection.
Douglas A. Martin
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Publication Details
ISBN: 978-1-946433-20-6
Pamphlet
staple-bound. 40 pp, 5.25 x 8 in
Publication Date: October 01 2018
Distribution: Asterism Books (US)