"The other knee is covered by voluminous
gold drapery -- what he holds
for us to see is blazed in Hebrew
while framed behind him words
are carved in Greek"
A dramatization of Michelangelo credits Raphael with genius. Just by showing one knee of the statue, he believes the patron should be able to recognize the nuance and skill of the statue. The mystery of the other, covered knee is the allure by which the patron may piece together a personal experience of the art. Imagination is a requirement.
"The calm of a mirror
as it copes with guilt,
the face of a divinity
brought up from silt."
In "On the One Hand" Porter examines the modern dilemma of the white man as he attempts to reconcile with the oppressive deeds of his ancestors. Surrounding life appears calm, idyllic even, allowing no visible sign of the guilt within. Porter uses the metaphor of a mirror to describe the feeling of estrangement yet responsibility which he and his fellows feel regarding their ancestry.
"We have always welcomed strangers --
Andre Breton introducing Henry Miller:
'Gentlemen, the Big Sur Realist.'"
Porter's France is a place open to the outsider. He loves the country because of its availability to the foreigner and the experimentalist. While Breton and Miller have little in common, they possess a mutual respect which characterizes their interaction, even on Breton's home turf. Their accomplishment and nuance is of a different variety from one another.
"In autobiography everything seems static,
trapped indoors in session of vignette
and loud disclosures as if each family
had its own Joe Orton writing its punk confrontations"
In a genre analysis, Porter reduces the autobiography to an exploration of family dynamics. He almost precedes his own time in this analysis. Pondering the nature of memory, he identifies the peculiar trait of the vignette -- individual but representative scenes which piece together a more complex emotion or thought through a series of images. The pattern is inevitably the same, regardless of the author's taste or intent. Joe Orton becomes as representative as the next guy.
