Paintings and Sculptures

Bob Lincoln is Director of Acquisitions at the University of Manitoba
Libraries.

There are many collections of poetry similar to Wind’s Paintings and
Sculptures. They are earnestly written, at times clever, and often
opinionated in a direct way. These are easy poems to read, because the
poet, with little hesitation, tells the reader what to think about the
poem. The poet wears his heart on his sleeve and points to it many
times. There is little in these poems that encourages one to go back
into the poem itself and weigh its language and emotion. In Paintings
and Sculptures there is also little emotion.

Wind begins this collection with a series of poems about known events.
He may be viewing a painting of these events as well: The Last Supper,
American Gothic, Venus of San Francisco, or Luncheon on the Grass. Wind
then takes several liberties with the original; he reverses gender,
seeing a male object where a female was in the original. He
reconstructs. This technique is interesting at first, but later becomes
tiring and repetitious. Hindering the impact of the poems is their
sentimentality and lack of direction. With little effort, Wind
juxtaposes a Big Mac, a Mars bar, a Molson Golden, and a gun in one
12-line poem about the creation of Adam. The effect is like switching
channels while watching commercials on TV.

The section “Balls”—which describes sculptures of a bag of
marbles, golf balls, tennis balls, and similar objects—would be better
without the didactic messages on what the images mean. This collection
does not encourage thought, only reactions. Compare these poems with
“Nude Descending a Staircase,” which is also about art; one lets the
reader into the subject, and one doesn’t. Paintings and Sculptures is
really about the thoughts of Chris Wind, and little else.