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\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Chagall\u2019<\/em>s Circus <\/em>is set out in five sections with poems alternating between pristine tercets that give each stanza room to breathe, and relatively short blocks of text in contrast. \u00a0Poems are headed by quotations from Chagall\u2019s autobiography \u2018My Life\u2019 (1923), and facilitate the storytelling.<\/p>\n Chagall, in his long life, experienced some of the most dramatically troubled periods of history.\u00a0 Bedford writes of it boldly, slipping seamlessly into the painter\u2019s voice. \u00a0The poems are never simply descriptions of the paintings; but are set within history and biography.<\/p>\n In the opening poem, Self-Portrait with Brushes (1909), <\/em>Bedford has extracted the painter\u2019s shtetl childhood, incorporating images:\u00a0 the flowers, the cow, the fiddler, that run throughout Chagall\u2019s art\u00a0 — All the poetry of life glows in sadness,<\/p>\n <\/p>\n and his (father\u2019s)<\/em> silence is a forest of imagined flowers,<\/p>\n like the cow sleeping on the roof of our barn,<\/p>\n the fiddler leading the bride to her wedding.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The second poem-painting, Grandfather\u2019s House (1923)<\/em> is of a child-like sketch of a house, with two windows.\u00a0 The voice is Chagall\u2019s, a boy experiencing the vibrant world around him:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I spent my childhood devouring horizons,<\/p>\n seeing angels in the pattern of the carpet.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n but warned \u2018of the hunger hiding in colours, \/ the graveyards at the end of rainbows.\u2019 Bedford unpicks the folkloric mythology Chagall created of his childhood in Vitebsk, his vibrant colours in marked contrast to the grey reality of poverty and fear experienced by Shtetl Jews.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The poem, Red Nude Sitting Up (1908),<\/em> references Chagall\u2019s romantic and sexual awakening:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n my canvas was all nipples and angels<\/p>\n and despite the wild nights of St Petersburg<\/p>\n I painted my red nude sitting in Vitebsk.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n All roads, inevitably, lead back over his shoulder to Vitebsk.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the final lines, Bedford is the painter \u2018covering the canvas in a horse blanket \/ to protect the villagers from their own fear,\u2019 noting that his family \u2018always preferred photographs.\u2019\u00a0 One recognises the stiff family portraits of that period.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In section 2, \u2018The Paris Years\u2019, the poet-painter takes on the art establishment labelling Chagall\u2019s work against religion and poverty as \u2018surreal.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yes, the man has the head of a bull,<\/p>\n and the girl wraps herself round his shoulder.<\/p>\n You can see that any night in Montmartre, (To my Betrothed, 1911)<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n In the following poem, I and the Village (1911), <\/em>Bedford builds on its epigraph: \u2018But perhaps my art is the art of a lunatic:\u2019 He writes: \u2018My clownish inner world was all I needed \u2026<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I have collected these fragments from my dreams<\/p>\n the paintbrush fingering clouds\u2019 (ah, fingering clouds!)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n concluding with: \u2018The poet<\/em> naming what the painter painted. (the poet here, Chagall\u2019s-friend, Blaise Cendrars)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n That was not what I meant at all <\/em><\/p>\n My art may be the art of a lunatic,<\/p>\n but Surrealism is only the name of an era.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I love the way the poet Cendrars acts as a counter-balance between the poet Bedford and the painter in critiquing the process between art and poetry and art.\u00a0 The effect is of a history of history within a history of art where politics, religion and love make up the Chagall circus:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But I had the Louvre inside me. The Fiddler<\/em><\/p>\n became The Praying Jew, <\/em>the praying Jew<\/p>\n became The Smolensk Newspaper,<\/em><\/p>\n The Feast of Tabernacles became my feast. (The Fiddler (1912-1913)<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n The penultimate poem, Couple on a Red Background,<\/em> references the painter\u2019s second marriage to Valentina Brodsky. \u00a0Bedford uses some lyrical description: \u2018The man is tenderness, \/ his arm, the arm of nature\u2019s protection,<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The painter-poet voices join in unison, leaving us with \u2018Stalin fiddling with his black moustaches, \/ Hitler saluting the gods in his mind.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This collection is a banquet for the senses, which in other hands than Bedford\u2019s, could be overwhelming.\u00a0 That it is not, begins with the poet\u2019s skill in setting up a sound, containing layout. \u00a0The narrative, no matter how intense and detailed in its content, tells the story of a life with grace and precision.\u00a0 Here is a book that that can be consumed with relish once and returned to with pleasure again and again.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n U.S.-born Wendy Klein<\/strong> has published three collections:\u00a0 Cuba in the Blood (<\/em>2009) and Anything in Turquoise<\/em> (2013) from Cinnamon Press, and Mood Indigo<\/em> (2016) from Oversteps Books.\u00a0 She is currently working on a selected and assorted pamphlets.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n