Blast Furnace Live with Poem for Jack Foco

Painting by Jack Foco

The autumn issue of Blast Furnace has arrived; poems circle a posse of familiars from Morgan Le Fey, Pushkin, librarians, King Kong and St Francis to Icarus, Snow White, and Eve, all thanks to editor/publisher Rebecca Clever.

An additional poem for a painter I knew and loved in Iowa City joins this mostly immortal line-up; I’m pleased to have the poem “Nine days before he died, the crows came at dawn” for Jack, painter, appearing at the comet’s end of the issue as well.

This one goes out to those of us who knew and loved Jack all those Midwest afternoons out at the Art Farm…

Notes on Jack from an earlier post can be read here.

Since posting the above text, I've heard from a number of my Iowa City friends. I asked Laurie if I could post the poem she wrote about Jack as well. I would love to hear from anyone else from our heartland time--if you have any artwork or writing you'd like to post in tribute to Jack, please contact me.


Anticipating the Afterlife      by Laurie Klemme

In memory of Jack Foco
March 13, 1950-November 10, 1998


On a warm day, for the pleasure of watching a bird
spread his wings against an autumn sky, a warm day, a slight
breeze, not much, his easy glide, white on a blue field
deep as the moment we lived in this afternoon. Jack, Ali, and I, alive
in this one moment, alive in one another’s time,


For the privilege of watching the bird, feeling
the breeze, the new silage in even rows stretching the landscape
over one of the hills he’s painted. We go in
to see his paintings. He enjoys this, us
here, changing the light, picking the features we like
best, the paintings we like best.
They’ve begun to resemble each other---a new focus, things
have lost their meaning,


An emerging preoccupation
with the field,


The white bird, gliding above it,
gone.


... this morning. He thought it was going to be
this morning that the sides met, a moment lifted him
from him, if that’s what’s next. And we talked at
what is next, the dream about the Light, the meaning
of Honesty, the freedom it is, everything okay.

I thought of Dante and reality’s authority.

He held his daughter’s hand.




Other poems by Laurie Klemme can be read here.

Blast Furnace: Poem for Jack Foco

I wanted to celebrate this last day of August by announcing forthcoming work. "Nine days before he died the crows came at dawn", a poem for the late painter Jack Foco (March 1950-November 1998), will be up this fall, prior to Thanksgiving, at Blast Furnace; I will post the link once active.

For seven years I lived in the heartland--staying on past graduate school, "growing up" week after week (in the flounder after formal schooling) with humor and love thanks to a circle of serious, down-home assemblage artists, writers and musicians (including Jack's wife, Jill Foco: writer, artist, teacher, intuitive). Jack's artist statement, "Grateful for the Day" moved all of us to return to our medium day by day; helpless to help him, we could at least pay him tribute by using our time here wisely, working patiently, as he would have were he still here.

Of  his move to Iowa City and its effect on his process, Jack wrote, "I began to struggle with the challenge of painting a landscape that offers more horizontals than verticals. Looking up, the sky presented me with a solution, and I began to render more and more of the sky and its shifting patterns as a part of each painting..."  The painting at the top of this post, with its bouquet of snow-blues and lavendar sky, hangs on the wall in my writing cabin; I adore the range of blues. Here's to you Jack, surely continuing your inquiry into color and form in the afterlife with masters we have yet to name.

I hope you'll consider submitting to the Pittsburg based  Blast Furnace. Here's an excerpt from the site's Mission and Values statement: Our mission is to publish refined poetry by "poets of place,” with themes deeply rooted in place. We value refined poetry that is architecturally functional and distinctive on the page. We value poetry that is stripped—burnt down—to its purest state, in both form and context. We value brave poetry that takes risks and, therefore, resonates with a discriminating audience. We value soulful poetry from the core—recited or read aloud—as it was originally intended.

Look forward to reading your work there should the opportunity present itself.