On being generously invited by Ann McCoy to contribute a brief essay to the June issue of The Brooklyn Rail that she edited on the topic of the unconscious in contemporary art, I chose to write about how the Epicurean conception of the unconscious, via the work of the Roman poet and philosopher, Lucretius, can […]
Category Archives: Christopher Stackhouse
The poem ‘Latina’ in poet & artist Christopher Stackhouse’s recent collection Plural (Counterpath press) opens with the following perplexing stanza: Vis-à-vis curricula per – pro forma, mere gesticulationto reverb, to chorus – I know that is it not fair on either the author of a poem, the poem itself or its readers to […]
My Father was accustomed to say, “we must begin by the beginning.” So, I must begin this lecture about the subject of art by its beginning. But, what is this beginning? I think we have to begin with the oldest question—the question of being, the question of being as being, of being qua being. What […]