“Prolegomena to a History of the Shadow”
(On “Negotiating Shadows,” Shane Guffogg, 2001)
I. Prequel
a. “Prolegomena to a History of the Shadow”
This phrase was given to me in a dream when I was with my family on the Big Island of
Hawaii. I never used the phrase—which seemed to be a title—but I never forgot it either.
b. “Negotiating Shadows” ( 2001)
In 2011, I met the artist Shane Guffogg when he hired my husband’s law firm to
represent him in a legal matter. I visited his studio, found his work intriguing, and
began talking to him about his creative process. I started writing—not about the
paintings—but to and because of them.
Later in the year, we brought home one of his large paintings called “Negotiating
Shadows.” It hangs on a long wall in our living room, where it fits perfectly.
The painting is a chameleon—it changes hues and depth, showing different aspects
every time the light shifts. The work changes its mind and mood, as if the paint were
animate. The impasto on the painting has the color and texture of fine wood grain.
I noticed the similarity of the painting’s title to the phrase in my dream right away. I
wondered, almost superstitiously, if “Negotiating Shadows” somehow contained the
poem that would contain that phrase.
I am negotiating the relationship between poems and painting.
II. Preface
What if I begin by revision?
What if my title were “A History of Shadow” rather than “A History of the Shadow”?
Notice how this changes “shadow” from a concept to a personification, making Shadow into a character rather than a thing?
Shadow, personified, feels more alive than any idea about “the shadow.”
If it’s “Shadow” I’m writing about, I’m writing its “his-
tory.” So let us say Shadow is a he.
His story: A “shadow” [part of myself] turns to face me.
But I don’t believe there are “parts” of the self, except as rhetorical devices—and
Verlaine said, “We must wring the neck of rhetoric!”
However, rhetoric is my sixth sense, so violence toward rhetoric is self-hatred.
III. Pretext
I used to worry that having anything in my unconscious was like a crime.
(Like a crime—hear the off-rhyme?)
If thought comes with a rhyme scheme, is it really pure reason, or rather sound sense?
[There is no reason.]
Shadow commands a bestiary. He has a language of flowers:
Shadow is deadly nightshade. He’s the night-blooming cereus—something momentous
in the momentary, on the night-watch.
This is analogic: Shadow is like, like unto — the “shadow of Death” [free association].
IV. Prescript
The Jungian concept of “the shadow” can see shadow as dark, as in “bad,” as in sinister
(i.e., on the left); as id or alter ego; a cesspool of the repressed; and as that which gets
forcibly incorporated into ego consciousness, with a show of psychic imperialism.
It’s easy to evoke a stereotype and mistake it for something real, when it’s just
another image screening on Plato’s cave wall. If I really watch, other shadow-forms
appear; by which I mean that they’re not ‘mine’ at all.
V. Prelude
I’ve had an ongoing feud with my Shadow. I mean, with that fellow following me,
whom I can neither shake nor catch hold of. He’s the stalker who never stops.
When my slips-of-the-tongue are showing, or if I’m compulsively punning,
Shadow is having his way with me.
It might, yes, be more musical—more Chopin and George Sand—if this stayed a duet of
painting and poem:
The this and that in the enclosures of hypotheses. (Wallace Stevens)
Shadow doesn’t speak . . . Shadow is what I am—in a fugue state.
I only catch hold of him in the “fantasy fragments” with which one evades
the “cramp of consciousness” (Jung). Most of my thoughts come
cramped with this effort.
Shadow comes to grief when Superego, that scent hound, rats him out.
I camp “in the valley of the shadow of death,” fearing all evil.
Should I worry about the scattering sheep?
VI. Prerequisite
What if the Shadow of Death is really the Shepherd? I never thought of that. I was told
that Jesus was the Shepherd, even though Psalm 23 is in the Old Testament.
Shadow shadows me, herding me like a sheepdog.
VII. Prolegomenon
I’ll consider Shadow a shape-shifter who depends on my acknowledgement
for his existence. In Shane’s painting, Shadow shows up first in the foreground,
then in the background, then at a mid-point. He pops up where I’m not looking.
Shadow is shaped like a Matisse cut-out of shimmery azure.
Then there are raw-umber and burnt-sienna layers that appear “deeper” in
their still life. They appear to be “behind” the shimmery blue figures,
giving the flat surface of the canvas palpable depth.
Shadow waits to come forward in me (as ‘he’):
What self, for example, did he contain that had not yet been loosed,
Snarling in him for discovery as his attentions spread,
As if all his hereditary lights were suddenly increased
By an access of color (“Prologues To What Is Possible,” Wallace Stevens)
I’ll try on another ‘fantasy-fragment,’ trying to play out the image
that Shadow has dreamed up for me today:
I, mage.
Notes
“Prolegomenon to a History of the Shadow”: The quote is by Wallace Stevens from “Prologues to What is Possible.”
Bios:
Coco Owen is a stay-at-home poet in Los Angeles. She has published poems in the Antioch Review, 1913: A Journal of Forms, CutBank, The Journal, Rio Grande Review and The Feminist Wire, among other venues. She was a finalist in several recent book contests, including the May Swenson Poetry Award, and has chapbooks forthcoming from Tammy and dancing girl press. Owen serves on the board of Les Figues Press, and you can read more of her work at www.cocoowenphd.com.
Shane Guffogg received his B.F.A. from Cal Arts and lives in Los Angeles. Guffogg’s work is noted for the use of glazes in the tradition of the old masters, though his subject matter is abstraction. Guffogg founded Pharmaka, a non-profit gallery, in L.A., and was instrumental in starting the downtown Art Walk. His work has appeared in more than 100 shows, and he recently had mid-career retrospectives in Naples, Italy, and St. Petersburg, Russia.