Dialogues: 36 Photographs & 20 Poems is a new publication from 205-A and the first book in a series that explores the intersection between photography and poetry.
The publishers, Aaron Stern and Jordan Sullivan worked in collaboration with poets Tom Sleigh and Will Schutt to bring together these unique pairings. The book features the photography of Ed van der Elsken, Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, Alain Laboile, Emma Phillips, Mark Borthwick, Brian Merriam, Coley Brown, Jordan Sullivan and Aaron Stern.
The publishers worked to pair these images with the poetry of David Rivard, Tom Sleigh, Alan Shapiro, Roberto Bolaño, Jordan Sullivan, Will Schutt, Arseny Tarkovsky, Rose McLarney, Mark Borthwick, Michael Collier and David Wagoner.
Available at Dashwood Books in New York City - click HERE
SOLD OUT.
Photography by Rebecca Norris Webb & Poetry by Tom Sleigh
BEFORE RAIN
Whatever you do, there are rockets falling, and after the rockets, smoke climbing
up through walls that are exploding.
Trees grow up where there once were people, weeds
take over beds of lettuces and coddled flowers, uprearing mole hills unpopulate the fields.
The bricked-in hours of the human have all been knocked down.
No one lingers at lipstick counters, no one
stares into a screen to escape the digital mayhem
of heroes hurdling over the heads of monsters.
The old bones on the mountain that stand upright and shake when winds blow up from the shore,
old bones that shake when the winds roar
now dangle in the void of an unknown dimension. Forget all this, says Earth to the stars.
Photography by Alain Laboile & Poetry by David Rivard
Photography & Poetry by Jordan Sullivan
Photography by Alex Webb & Poetry by Will Schutt
A PICTURE OF PARADISE
That’s the life: the sun petting the swayback boat and the beach a pinch of turmeric. You can scan the bay for tension yet even the sail tucked into the mast looks like icing round the rounds of cakes they must be washing down with sparkling wine in white linen, or off-white linen, their legs straight as spars, their faces forward-facing, trian- gular flags minus the ping of pulleys being beaten by west-going winds. Like Dante, we get tongue-tied in heaven: Everyone surfs on waves of celestial music. They surf. Everyone is free, bound for nowhere.
Photography by Ed van der Elsken & Poetry by Roberto Bolaño
MY GIFT TO YOU
My gift to you will be an abyss, she said, but it will be so subtle you’ll perceive it only after many years have passed
and you are far from Mexico and me. You’ll find it when you need it most, and that won’t be
the happy ending,
but it will be an instant of emptiness and joy. And maybe then you’ll remember me,
if only just a little.
The New York Times T Magazine
