The Future's Installation By Kabakov Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

In an earlier comment, I said that most of your poetry does not look to conceptual art as a source of imagery. Now I see that your range is broad enough to include it.

I saw an installation by Ai Weiwei: bicycle frames welded together into a spiral. I had been bicycling around Beijing, so seeing it gave me a sense of leaping upward. That was when autos were beginning to occupy the streets completely. A traditional image made remade by an imaginative leap.

I think that conceptual artists tend to be skeptical of the traditional imagery used to evoke transcendent experiences.

But it is prejudicial to say that conceptual art thrives on the breaking of old categories. It also liberates by conceiving of new categories. Such as a future installation in the starry heavens.

Conceptual art often tests the outer limits of art and its potential to generate meaning. Hence it often seems to be a saprophytic---growing off the decay of the old.