CGP 28: Learning to Draw / A History: Portraits
by Basil King  (28 pp. Saddle-Stitched, full-color drawings & photographs) $6 ppd.
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 Cy Gist Press is happy to announce the official release of Basil King's Learning to Draw / A History: Portraits. 
-->Before I began reading grown-up books as a child, most of what I knew about literature came from a card game called “Game of Authors.”  In this installment of his epic “Learning to Draw / A History,” Basil King likewise stacks his own deck of historical personages.  Like King’s exquisite line drawings that accompany the poems, the Portraits offer intimate yet enigmatic limns of such luminaries as Charles Darwin, Joan Mitchell and Amiri Baraka. King's Portraits follow a thread through the labyrinth our intellectual history looking for the bull-headed genius of vision.

From Portraits
by Basil King

Eva Hesse


All she had was a piece of string to dip into fiberglass, paint, dyed nets and papier mache into another piece of string tied to another piece of string tied to another piece of string. Tied to another piece of string.


Paul Klee wouldn’t believe his friends when they told him he had to leave Germany. He was a German. Eve Hesse left Germany with her family when she was three. At Yale she studied with Joseph Albers. Albers had known Klee when they were both at the Bauhaus. Eva was told she would forget her parents their divorce, her mother’s suicide the death of her father.


All she had was a piece of string to dip into fiberglass, paint, dyed nets and papier mache into another piece of string tied to another piece of string tied to another piece of string. Tied to another piece of string.



Aricimboldo claims music like water
Has the face of vegetation
Lemons and candlesticks
Beetle wings and Eyes