A Tall Story, in Photos and Words
The allure of obelisks captures the interest of Colby scholars Gary Green and Gianluca Rizzo
Photographer Gary Green and poet Gianluca Rizzo collaborated across disciplines and time to create the book Obelisks. Published by the Italian press Danila Montanari Editore, the book explores in quiet black-and-white photographs and layered text the enduring intrigue of obelisks as markers of time, history, and human activity.
Tall and narrow like its subject, the softcover monograph presents two dozen images of various Roman monuments and a series of poems about uniquely American monuments. Green, a Colby professor of art, includes entire monuments in some of his images, while focusing on details and surrounding neighborhoods in others. All made with film, the photographs lead viewers to ponder the relationship between Rome, the monoliths, and neighborhoods they occupy. Rizzo, the Paul D. and Marilyn Paganucci Associate Professor of Italian Language and Literature, wrote a series of poems, in English, based on such American monuments as Bunker Hill near Boston, San Jacinto in Texas, and the recently destroyed Georgia Guidestones. Rizzo’s poems reflect and interpret the words carved into stone, the people who carved them, and the stories they tell.
Obelisks opens with the Latin phrase Nec Ventos Nec Hiemem, which translates as “neither wind nor winter.” Taken from one of the obelisks pictured in the book, the phrase suggests the permanent nature of monuments. Noting that history is always up for debate, one reviewer said of the book, “… This beautiful little, physically unimposing volume functions as a guidebook not so much to specific places or even eras, but as a guide to ways of thinking about and questioning history, the histories that surround us, which we move through every day, whether in a foreign land or closer to home.”
AMERICAN OBELISK NO. 5
(Bunker Hill Monument)
this most unnatural rebellion
of Quincey granite
standing on union
in the shape of a spoon
or a half-buried egg
a kind of small pocket dagger
furnished with knives, although
they were soon proved useless
for anything but cooking
they desired, therefore, to substitute
an instrument of more general utility
for the bullet is foolish,
the bayonette wise
and the doctrine was largely based
around the concept of reach
and a Boston ship rigger
built a special hoisting apparatus
and the first commercial railway
in America was born
farmers, tradespeople, and merchants
from every level of society
—as they are wont to do—
and General Gage found his army
encircled for the first time
in pitched battle
and built an earthen fort
to avoid further harassment
they set the town on fire
struggled to control their own destiny
countless scores of individuals
interested in our nation’s founding
solicited from the public
properly, a glacial drumlin
open and easy of ascent,
and, in short, would be easily carried
a fish, a pine tree
and a quiver of arrows
like a bunch of asparagus
and Admiral Graves awoke
irritated by the gunfire
and John Tyler was present
and Daniel Webster
his face like a Maine lobster
and the stone wall on the Mystic River
at the rail fence
the statue of William Prescott
with his new hat
e le du’ dita de romoletto
and yet, to set forth Particulars
of his conduct would be tedious
the largest highway
construction project in the U.S.
I wish we could sell them
another hill at the same price
and the cables evoke
imagery of the riggings
the white of their eyes
and two additional lanes
are cantilevered outside
fourteen elephants
crossed the new bridge
for it is widely believed
that these animals
have uncanny instincts
and will not cross unsafe structures
that they might erect upon it
within their imperishable obelisk
this model to be inserted
with the appropriate ceremonies
(e non perché son pesanti)
AMERICAN BODIES
(Coda)
I want you to write me a letter
a series of abductions
with a great deal of composure
an exhortation to forgetfulness
an echo of lesser talent
a less hazardous pursuit
as you enter the cathedral
you are at the bottom of the ocean:
growing like exogenous plants
standing beneath these serene skies
measuring with their bodies
the breath of vast empires
built on piles
of their own driving
to them, a man has not two arms
he has eight, he has sixteen,
he has twenty, he is pierced
all over with arms
luminous circumferences,
flowers, forces like the postcards
they sell in India
our molting season
must be a crisis
easily quieted by a naked thief
no better than wooden horses
the ally of tyranny
the opponent of material prosperity
the foe of thrift
the enemy of the railroad,
the caucus, and the school
approving that our bodies
of a stony nature
are positive hinderances
to the elevation of mankind
hunted down
and caught
and carried back
but I bite my lip and keep quiet
a tedious low-water trip
on a steam boat
from Louisville to St. Louis
our progress in degeneracy
appears to be rapid
if my facts were false
my words were wrong-
but were my facts false?
with a task greater than that
who can go with me
and remain with you down
to the last period
of recorded time
but in a larger sense
pretty much all the ingredients
and trappings
of domestic dementia
and prudence
pity us who always battle
on the frontier of the boundless
new hands will grow
new doors will sprout
for the savage stands
on the unelastic plank
of famine
For information about the book and to order a copy, visit Photo-Eye Bookstore.
