The Classical Head

Nature in her wisdom has formed the human head
so it stands at the very top of the body.

The head—or let us say the face—divides into 3,
the seats of wisdom, beauty & goodness respectively.

The eyebrows form a circle around the eyes, as
the semicircles of the ears are the size of the

open mouth & the mouth is one eye length from
the nose, itself the length of the lip & at the top

the nose is as wide as one eye. From the nose
to the ear is the length of the middle finger

and the chin is 21/2 times as thick as the finger.
The open hand in turn is as large as the face.

A man is ten faces tall & assuming one leaves out
the head the genitals mark his centre exactly.


The Romantic Head

The Romantic head begins with the hands cupped
under the chin the little fingers resting on the nose
& the thumbs curling up the jaw line towards the ears.

The lips are ripe but pressed together as the eyes
are closed or narrowed, gazing in the direction of
the little fingers. The face as a whole exists to gesture.

The nose while beautiful is like the neck, ignored,
being merely a prop for the brow that is usually
well developed & creased in thought—consider the lines

‘the wrinkled sea beneath him crawls’ locating the centre
of the Romantic head above the hairline & between the ears;
so the artist must see shapes the normal eye is blind to.

This is achieved at the top of the cranium where the skull
opens to the air, zooms & merges with its own aura.
Here the whole diurnal round passes through. In this way

the dissolution the quivering chin & supported jaw seemed
to fear, as the head longed for, takes place. The head, at
last one with the world, dissolves. The artist changes genre.


The Symbolist Head

No longer begins with even a mention of anatomy,
the approach in fact leaves one with the whole glittering
universe from which only the head has been removed.
One attempts, in the teeth of an obvious fallacy, to find
the shape, colour, smell, to know the ‘feel’ of the head
without knowing the head at all. And the quarry is elusive!
If the stomach disappears, butterflies are liberated & while
the head teems with ideas who has ever seen one? Equally,
the sound of a head stroked with sponge rubber or the sound
of a head kicked along the street on Anzac Day could be
the sound of a million other things kicked or stroked.
The head leaves no prints in the air & the shape of an
absence baffles even metaphysics. But the body connects
to the head like a visible idea & so has its uses, for
what feeling is aroused by The Winged Victory of Samothrace
but piercing regret for the lost head? And beyond the body,
a landscape is not just our yearning to be a pane of glass
but a web of clues to its centre, the head. And here, like one day
finding a lone wig in the vast rubbish dump devoted to shoes,
the Symbolist head appears, a painting filled with love
for itself, an emotion useless as mirrors without a head.
This art verges on the sentimental. It’s called ‘Pillow Talk’


The Conceptual Head

1)          The breeze moves
             the branches as sleep moves the old man’s head:
             neither move the poem.

2)         The opening image becomes
             ‘poetic’ only if visualised

3)                              but even so
             the head can’t really be
                               seen,
                               heard,
                               touched
                               or smelt—
             the Objective Head would be raving nostalgia.

4)         Yet the head is not a word
             & the word means ‘head’
             only inside the head or its gesture,
                               the mouth.
                               So the poem can’t escape,
                               trapped inside its subject
             & longing to be a piece of flesh and blood
             as
                        Ten Pounds of Ugly Fat
                               versus
                        The Immortal Taperecorder
             forever.

5)         While anatomy is only a map, sketched
                                              from an engaging rumour,
             metaphor is the dream
             of its shape—
                                                from ‘head in the stars’
                                                to ‘head of lettuce’

             Between the two
             the poem of the head is endless.

6)         Now the world of the head opens
             like the journals of old travellers
                                               & all your past emotions
             seem tiny, crude simulacra of its beauty.
             & you are totally free

7)                          Greater than all Magellans
             you commence an adventure more huge and intricate
             than the complete idea of Mt Everest.
             And this academy can teach you no more.
                                               The voyage will branch out,
             seem boring & faraway from the head,
             but nothing can delay you
             for nothing is lost to the head.

8)         Goodbye,
                              send me postcards
                              and colourful native stamps,
                                                                             Good luck!