Corpse and Mirror

by John Yau

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Summary

The poetry of John Yau radically explores the relationship between postmodern painting and poetry. He has written voluminously on postmodern artists ranging from Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol to Jane Freilicher and Fairfield Porter. His creative work continues in myriad fascinating ways the mingling of painting and poetry found in the output of seminal figures such as Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery. His poetry constitutes a long meditation on the nature of representation, particularly as it impacts self-portraits in words. His later persona poems on Peter Lorre are perhaps the most complex painterly word-canvases in contemporary poetry and are dependent on the lessons Yau learned from painters. His early work displays a powerful attraction to the work of Jasper Johns, with his second collection being a direct confrontation with Johns's work. Indeed, his struggle to understand Johns's work marks a turning point in his career that one can almost see in photographs from this period.

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