YouTube Wives Or Stepping Stones

YouTube Wives Or Stepping Stones is, before everything, first and foremost, a literary act. Keats’ urns and Rilke’s torsos, Bishop’s fish and Mussorgsky’s pictures at an exhibition, this is the company that Smith is writing to keep as hedoggedly pursues his models. In the concrete this litany of wives appears as a series of tawdry fetishes predestined to fail–dancing girls for Degas, barmaids for Manet, pubescence for Balthus, this Korean for Orientalism, those women for Woman, these artists for ART. These poems and pieces, confessions and letters and descriptions, are essays toward bringing art to life. Smith screens them all, flexing his desire toward the idea of their beauty, even as he is frustrated by their overwhelming distance and his underwhelming isolation. Smith is a Kemp Road Warhol. And so these poems are markers of a journey, in pursuance of an absolute level, a true altitude. This is a Baudelarian night-walk for beauty. Who are these wives? Where do these stepping stones lead?