Nick Piombino
Encyclopedia
Nick Piombino is an American poet, essayist, artist and psychotherapist. He has been associated with poets from both the New York School
of the 1960s and the Language Poets of the 1970s, though his work is not easily classified
Piombino became an active participant in the thriving poetry scene in New York in the 1960s. He studied poetry in writing workshops with William S. Burroughs
at City College in 1965 and at the Poetry Project
with New York School poet Ted Berrigan
in 1967 and Bernadette Mayer
in 1973. Mayer in particular was a major influence on Piombino's writing. Encouraged by Berrigan and Mayer, Piombino gave his first poetry reading with singer-songwriter Patti Smith
, at The Kitchen
, in 1973.
Piombino's writing is informed by his psychoanalytical training. Finding that "early psychoanalytic theory is breathtakingly poetic,", at the same time that he was discovering poetry and fiction, the two disciplines became irrevocably intertwined in his work. Piombino discusses the relationship at length in his third volume of poetry, Theoretical Objects, where he states "psychoanalysis and literature are more interrelated than is apparent.
On a year-long trip to Italy and Morocco in 1968, Piombino began to experiment with another art form. Inspired by the "cut-up" techniques that Berrigan and Burroughs used in their writing workshops and the Merz Pictures of German artist Kurt Schwitters
, he constructed collage
s using found materials.
Piombino began a private psychotherapy practice in 1976 and has held a number of staff positions as a social worker or psychotherapist in the New York City school system. He became a faculty supervisor at the Psychoanalytic Institute New York Counseling and Guidance Services in 1987. His experience as a practicing psychotherapist his use of psychoanalytical theory have greatly influenced his poetry.
Following the advent of weblogging, Piombino also began to make use the Internet, and began a blog, fait accompli.
His first volume of poetry, titled simply Poems, was published by the Sun & Moon Press in 1988 and won an Author's Recognition Award from the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health in 1992. His second chapbook, Light Street, did not appear until 1996. It was followed by Theoretical Objects (1999), a collection of manifestos, aphorism
s, essays, and seemingly autobiographical prose poems.
Piombino's poetry took a different turn with Hegelian Honeymoon (2004), in which he moved away from the conventions of Language poetry to explore more traditional forms. Inspired by the poetry that accompanied an exhibition of Japanese calligraphy, the poems are a cross between haiku
and aphorism. The poems were originally published on the SUNY/Buffalo poetics list-serve before being published in chapbook form by Chax Press.
, which served as a forum for the Language poetry movement between 1978 and 1982. Charles Bernstein
, one of the editors of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, describes Piombino's essays as the poetic heart of the magazine.Language Poets Similarly, poet Ron Silliman
describes Piombino's essays on poetics as "one of the journal's most important attributes. Many of these essays have been reprinted in The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book (1984) and The Boundary of Blur (1993).
Inspired by the literary journals of writers such as Cesare Pavese
and Paul Valéry
, Piombino began experimenting with the related forms of the manifesto and the aphorism in the 1980s. He included examples of both forms in Boundary of Blur and Theoretical Objects. Piombino's manifestos were published annually from 1993 to 2003 in the journal Ribot, edited by poet Paul Vengelisti.
In recent years, Piombino has developed a form of aphorism that he calls "contradicta": paired aphorisms that are both true but nonetheless contradictory. A collection of these aphorisms, with illustrations by Toni Simon, was published by Green Integer Press in 2010 under the title Contradicta: Aphorisms.
, and Robert Smithson
.
Piombino's earliest collages were created using old magazines and other found materials. In the 1980s he moved from working with found materials to photocollages. In his more recent collages, such as his photocollage "novel" Free Fall, Piombino has returned to the use of found materials, which he photocopies, then cuts and pastes. Photos of his early collages can be found on his blog, fait accompli.
His works were exhibited in group shows at the arts center PS122 in 1980 and 2006, at the Maryann Boesky Gallery in 2001, and at the Harvard Dudley House in 2005. Free Fall was exhibited as part of the Analogous Series curated by Tim Peterson in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2005 and was published by Otholiths Press in 2007. Collages from Free Fall have subsequently been incorporated into a video of the same name by artist Mike Burakoff.
New York School
The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s, 1960s in New York City...
of the 1960s and the Language Poets of the 1970s, though his work is not easily classified
Biography
Piombino was born in New York City. He received his BA with honors in English from the City College of New York in 1964 and a Masters degree in social work from Fordham University in 1971. He was certified in adult psychoanalysis and psychotherapy at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health in New York in 1982.Piombino became an active participant in the thriving poetry scene in New York in the 1960s. He studied poetry in writing workshops with William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
at City College in 1965 and at the Poetry Project
St. Mark's Poetry Project
The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church was founded in 1966 in the East Village of Manhattan by the poet and translator Paul Blackburn, it has been a crucial venue for new and experimental poetries for over four decades....
with New York School poet Ted Berrigan
Ted Berrigan
-Early life:Berrigan was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 15, 1934. After high school, he spent a year at Providence College before joining the U.S. Army in 1954 to serve in the Korean War. After three years in the Army, he finished his college studies at the University of Tulsa in...
in 1967 and Bernadette Mayer
Bernadette Mayer
Bernadette Mayer is a poet and prose writer. In 1967 she received a BA from New School for Social Research. She has since edited the journal 0 TO 9 with Vito Acconci and the United Artists Press with Lewis Warsh...
in 1973. Mayer in particular was a major influence on Piombino's writing. Encouraged by Berrigan and Mayer, Piombino gave his first poetry reading with singer-songwriter Patti Smith
Patti Smith
Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses....
, at The Kitchen
The Kitchen
The Kitchen is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary art and performance space located at at 512 West 19th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City...
, in 1973.
Piombino's writing is informed by his psychoanalytical training. Finding that "early psychoanalytic theory is breathtakingly poetic,", at the same time that he was discovering poetry and fiction, the two disciplines became irrevocably intertwined in his work. Piombino discusses the relationship at length in his third volume of poetry, Theoretical Objects, where he states "psychoanalysis and literature are more interrelated than is apparent.
On a year-long trip to Italy and Morocco in 1968, Piombino began to experiment with another art form. Inspired by the "cut-up" techniques that Berrigan and Burroughs used in their writing workshops and the Merz Pictures of German artist Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters was a German painter who was born in Hanover, Germany. Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography and what came to be known as...
, he constructed collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
s using found materials.
Piombino began a private psychotherapy practice in 1976 and has held a number of staff positions as a social worker or psychotherapist in the New York City school system. He became a faculty supervisor at the Psychoanalytic Institute New York Counseling and Guidance Services in 1987. His experience as a practicing psychotherapist his use of psychoanalytical theory have greatly influenced his poetry.
Following the advent of weblogging, Piombino also began to make use the Internet, and began a blog, fait accompli.
Poetry
Piombino's first published poems appeared in 1965 in American Weave Literary Journal. Throughout the 1970s, he continued to publish in small literary journals, such as The World, Dodgems, Telephone, and Roof.His first volume of poetry, titled simply Poems, was published by the Sun & Moon Press in 1988 and won an Author's Recognition Award from the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health in 1992. His second chapbook, Light Street, did not appear until 1996. It was followed by Theoretical Objects (1999), a collection of manifestos, aphorism
Aphorism
An aphorism is an original thought, spoken or written in a laconic and memorable form.The term was first used in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates...
s, essays, and seemingly autobiographical prose poems.
Piombino's poetry took a different turn with Hegelian Honeymoon (2004), in which he moved away from the conventions of Language poetry to explore more traditional forms. Inspired by the poetry that accompanied an exhibition of Japanese calligraphy, the poems are a cross between haiku
Haiku
' , plural haiku, is a very short form of Japanese poetry typically characterised by three qualities:* The essence of haiku is "cutting"...
and aphorism. The poems were originally published on the SUNY/Buffalo poetics list-serve before being published in chapbook form by Chax Press.
Essays, Manifestos and Aphorism
Piombino initially made his literary reputation not as a poet, but as a theorist of experimental poetics. Piombino's essays use the discourse of psychoanalysis to discuss the role of memory, history, and narrative in the construction of a style of poetry that strives to be both non-narrative and non-referential. He was a regular contributor to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=EL=A=N=G=U=A=G=E (magazine)
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E was an avant garde poetry magazine edited by Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews that ran thirteen issues from 1978 to 1981...
, which served as a forum for the Language poetry movement between 1978 and 1982. Charles Bernstein
Charles Bernstein
Charles Bernstein is an American poet, theorist, editor, and literary scholar. Bernstein holds the Donald T. Regan Chair in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He is one of the most prominent members of the Language poets . In 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the American...
, one of the editors of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, describes Piombino's essays as the poetic heart of the magazine.Language Poets Similarly, poet Ron Silliman
Ron Silliman
Ron Silliman is an American poet. He has written and edited over 30 books, and has had his poetry and criticism translated into 12 languages. He is often associated with language poetry. Between 1979 and 2004, Silliman wrote a single poem, The Alphabet...
describes Piombino's essays on poetics as "one of the journal's most important attributes. Many of these essays have been reprinted in The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book (1984) and The Boundary of Blur (1993).
Inspired by the literary journals of writers such as Cesare Pavese
Cesare Pavese
Cesare Pavese was an Italian poet, novelist, literary critic and translator; he is widely considered among the major authors of the 20th century in his home country.- Early life and education :...
and Paul Valéry
Paul Valéry
Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath...
, Piombino began experimenting with the related forms of the manifesto and the aphorism in the 1980s. He included examples of both forms in Boundary of Blur and Theoretical Objects. Piombino's manifestos were published annually from 1993 to 2003 in the journal Ribot, edited by poet Paul Vengelisti.
In recent years, Piombino has developed a form of aphorism that he calls "contradicta": paired aphorisms that are both true but nonetheless contradictory. A collection of these aphorisms, with illustrations by Toni Simon, was published by Green Integer Press in 2010 under the title Contradicta: Aphorisms.
Collages
After his return from Italy and Morocco, Piombino continued to create collages, which he describes as "visual poetry", inspired by his exposure to the conceptual art movement through the work of Bernadette Mayer, Vito AcconciVito Acconci
Vito Hannibal Acconci is a Bronx, New York-born, Brooklyn-based designer, landscape architect, performance and installation artist.-Education:...
, and Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson was an American artist famous for his land art.-Background and education:Smithson was born in Passaic, New Jersey and studied painting and drawing in New York City at the Art Students League of New York....
.
Piombino's earliest collages were created using old magazines and other found materials. In the 1980s he moved from working with found materials to photocollages. In his more recent collages, such as his photocollage "novel" Free Fall, Piombino has returned to the use of found materials, which he photocopies, then cuts and pastes. Photos of his early collages can be found on his blog, fait accompli.
His works were exhibited in group shows at the arts center PS122 in 1980 and 2006, at the Maryann Boesky Gallery in 2001, and at the Harvard Dudley House in 2005. Free Fall was exhibited as part of the Analogous Series curated by Tim Peterson in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2005 and was published by Otholiths Press in 2007. Collages from Free Fall have subsequently been incorporated into a video of the same name by artist Mike Burakoff.
Books
- Poems. Sun & Moon Press. 1988.
- "Two Essays. Leave Books. 1992
- The Boundary of Blur. Roof Books. 1993.
- Light Street. Zasterle Press. 1996.
- Theoretical Objects. Green Integer Press. 1999.
- The Boundary of Theory. Cuneiform Press. 2001.
- Hegelian Honeymoon. Chax Press. 2004.
- Fait accompli. Factory School. Heretical Text series. 2007.
- Free Fall. Otoliths Press. 2007
- Contradicta: Aphorisms. Green Integer. 2010
Anthologies
- Bernstein, Charles and Bruce Andrews, ed. The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book. [Southern Illinois.] 1984
- Silliman, Ron, ed. In The American Tree. National Poetry Foundation, University of Maine at Orono. 1986.
- Bernstein, Charles, ed. The Politics of Poetic Form. Roof Books 1990.
- Messerli, Douglas, ed. From the Other Side of the Century: A New American PoetryFrom the Other Side of the CenturyFrom the Other Side of the Century: "A New American Poetry, 1960-1990" is a poetry anthology published in 1994. It was edited by American poet and publisher Douglas Messerli – under his own imprint Sun and Moon Press ISBN 978-1-55713-131-7 – and includes poets from both the U.S...
, 1960-1990. Sun & Moon Press. 1994 - Messerli, Douglas, ed. The Gertrude Stein Awards in Innovative American Poetry. Sun & Moon Press 1993-94, 1994–95, and 1995–96
- Bernstein, Charles, ed. Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word. Oxford University Press. 1998.
- Bernstein, Charles, ed. 99 Poets/1999: A special issue of Boundary 2. Vol. 26, no. 1. Duke University Press. 1999.
- Caws, Mary Ann, ed. Manifesto: A Century of -isms. University of Nebraska Press. 2001.
- Beckett, Tom. "Exchange-values: the first XI interviews. Otoliths Press. 2007.
- Loydell, Rupert. Troubles Swapped for Something Fresh. Salt Publishing. Pending publication, 2008-2009.
Exhibitions
- 1980. Wordworks. Group show. PS122
- 2001. Poetry plastique. Group show. Maryann Boesky Gallery.
- 2005. Infinity. group show. Harvard Dudley House
- 2005. Free Fall. Analogous Series. Cambridge, Mass.
- 2006. group show. PS122.
External links
- Tom Beckett. E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-V-AL-U-E-S. Interview with Nick Piombino. February 26, 2005.
- Ramez Qureshi. Musical Objects. Lynx: Poetry from Bath. Issue 15. June, 2000.
- fait accompli
- Electronic Poetry Center
- Recording of Nick Piombino's Readings
- Free Fall
- Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino. The Argotist. Interview with Nick Piombino
- Pages from Free Fall
- More pages from Free Fall
- Eratio Gallery Issue 4
- Mark Wallace. "The Individual as Social Process: Writer and Self in the Work of Nick Piombino" Jacket 23. August, 2003.
- Poets and Writers Interview posted April 1, 2009 by Pamela D. Toler
- http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2010/04/nick-piombino-toni-simon-looking-at-400.html