“Dear Body”
Collaborators’ Q&A: Poet Dan Rosenberg: I had hoped that Ira would run with the pervasiveness of the body, and the gestures toward duality (Cartesian and otherwise) in the poem—and he has exceeded my hopes! I love the human forms, and the anatomical feel of the landscape—as if we’re inside a beautiful and dangerous stomach. Artist Ira Joel Haber: For the last few years I’ve been working on collages with body and anatomy elements in them. When I read the poem, I jumped at it because of the title Dear Body, which could be read as a letter to the body or as an endearment for the body. I thought this is a perfect poem for my recent work.
Poet Dan Rosenberg teaches at Augustana College. His poems have appeared in Conduit, CutBank, 6X6, and elsewhere. This poem was an attempt to exorcise the word “body,” which kept cropping up, from his poems. It failed. Artist Ira Joel Haber is a sculptor, painter, book dealer and teacher who sometimes writes poetry and movie reviews. Currently he teaches art at the United Federation of Teachers Retiree Program in Brooklyn.