DARREN BADER

Like so many things contemporary, contemporary poetry is extensive. Myriad writers can turn a phrase, stagger a sentence, respire the muse, talk in truth. Will a reader ever find/select a poet’s volume (or, perhaps more saliently, that (temporarily) salient poem within it) in the brick-and-mortar POETRY section or ‘in’/‘at’ online libraries as endless as Google and Amazon? (Not to mention all the poetry not claiming to be such but clearly such to the eye-ear-mind of its percipient.) So goes the poetry.

Like so many other contemporary poets(/makers), I aspire to write(/make) meaningful language(/stuff). Some words(/stuff) I write(/make) make(s) it into public view. This upcoming show @ Andrew Kreps Gallery will be the most contemporary instance of that. As an alternative to in-many-ways-anonymous books/ content, I’ll add more potential anonymity to the world of too many goods and meanings.

A question that remains for me: If given the opportunity to publish these poems in/as a traditional book after publishing them as I do in the show, would I?

I frequently aim to entertain
In game and name (and sometimes in shame) I’ve kept up/at my apparent vocation
That Pop and Concept are near in kind in my mind
That I feel for things as if they can truly and never be kept
My eye and spirit feast, and again turn enfeebled soon after
The world’s harrowed laughter, intransigent glee
If you were me, how often would you reckon with reason?

Darren Bader is an aging sculpture/literature brand working in AR, elision, found object, humour, permutation/chance, poem, rhetoric, and video.