Chris Vannoy

Twenty Poems Against Love and a Song for the Air Chris Vannoy Firsttion edition

Everyone knows that words are not to be trusted, especially the words of a lover. That is why we pay them so much attention. But we still need to remind ourselves that photographs, too, are imaginary. How, then, can a photograph be wedded to a poem? Like man and woman, they are complete in themselves, perfect expressions of their own circumference. They can never understand each other. They can never explain each other. But when words and glances are exchanged between them something happens, something ineffable, something that can never be taken back. "Twenty Poems Against Love and a Song for the Air" is a Chimæra, a seemingly heterogeneous child of poem and picture that yet lives, and breathes fire. Chris Vannoy's photographs are delightfully eclectic and strangely evocative, with beautiful touches of the occult and the otherworldly. Gabriela Anaya Valdepeña's responses in verse are romantic, witty, and biting at once. Like the poetry of Baudelaire, her work is partial, passionate, and political. And, like Baudelaire, her poetry reveals a naiveté (a personal temperament), which leads us towards the intimate, the spiritual, and the sublime.