En Plein Air

 

South Fork Poetry: ‘En Plein Air’

“En Plein Air,” mixed media, 2026, by Hallie Cohen.

Courtesy of the Artist

By Francis Levy

April 2, 2026 

I am standing by my

easel en plein air

right here on Main

 

usually there is a group of us down by the inlet

but I don’t see any of those

“No painting from life” signs

the source of the trepidation is:

am I getting things right?

am I exploiting their pain?

is this a justification for art?

 

solitary figure under street lamp

go blank

dark light to draw the figure

 

Nardy Pest Control

Yardley & Pino Funeral Home

 

Valhalla is where everybody who is anybody’s going

the L.I.E. is one those conversations that goes on forever

 

You’re all

over town

without spreading yourself thin

or being unfaithful

and the ripples of the current,

Swann’s Way on Circle Beach

always the mad honking

flocks of geese over Georgica Pond

country cousin of herds of yellow cabs

I started in the sad light

when everyone was still sleeping

the houses were

tombstones in my mind

shadow dancing is what I call these kinds of strokes it’s nothing new

for me

 

I could have just taken a shot with my cell

but it’s not the same

it’s complex

 

I’m the town crier

he finally died is where my art begins

but it’s a tale of estrangement, and love

this one loved him

that one not

then there’ll be the church

I won’t be able to paint the service

and how this one was or was not talking

to whom

---

Francis Levy is a Wainscott resident. “En Plein Air” is part of a recently completed poetry collection, “The Unavoidable Imminence of the Inexplicable.”

 

Taste

Focus groups are used by advertisers and purveyors to psyche out the desires of populations. Vance Packard the author of books like The Status Seekers epitomized the world of 50s advertising. His version of popularized sociology epitomized the  post-war consumer culture. Dwight McDonald famously wrote Mass Cult and Mid Cult. Mad Men presented another look at the attempt to survey and profit from consumerism. Taste is the common phenomenon. Lionel Trilling ‘s The Liberal Imagination is an attempt to help readers of literature examine good from bad. The Dow and The Pulitzer are both forms of measurement and certain bestsellers represent the meeting point between commerce and art.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

A Connecticut Yankee

Alignment refers to celestial bodies. Human wishes often mimic the movement of planets and moons. Lunar and solar eclipses, interplanetary and stellar movements are the essence of cosmology and also astrology but they also function as metaphors in an imaginative context. When you have your chart read, you're looking into a crystal ball. On the other hand heavenly bodies can be used to obfuscate.  Remember how Hank Morgan uses a solar eclipse in Connecticut Yankee to convince Arthur of his magical powers.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Andrenalin

Karl Marx

Controversy produces Adrenalin. Adrenalin is an antidote to priapism, which can create necrotic tissue. It’s also the chemical cause for impotence. You get anxious and lose your erection. Or if you’re a Hegelian "world-historical figure," adrenalin produces the antithesis that facilitates The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

read "Current Affairs" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Brave New World

Scarcity produces demand and hence cost. You have to pay a lot for those things that are in short supply. Can emotion be commodified? Imagine a commissary where one comes for states of mind. You might reply “go to a rave.” There you can acquire MDMA, LSD, cannabis, psilocybin, Bennie’s etc. remember Brave New World and Soma? The price of authenticity is the awareness of death. Unfortunately life’s ending has produced its own meme in which you're not turned into ashes but rather a piece of data. Will Costco sell suicidal thoughts or a perfume named Happiness?

read "Current Affairs" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Bela Tarr's Damnation

Damnation (1988) which was recently revived at The Walter Reade Theater, as a part of a retrospective of the Hungarian director's films, has lots of rain and dogs and dancing. There's a married torch singer (Vali Kerekes), who has sex with two other men, one of whom, Karrer, (Miklós B. Székely) declares that he will debase himself in order to have her. Their sex is extraordinary in the history of cinema. Her legs are spread and she cradles her lover. The rocking allows her to orgasm, but the iconography is that of the Madonna and Child. The film, like all of the director's work is filmed in black and white which creates a chiascoro effect. The movie is a succession of paintings.  One is a Magyar "Night Watch" with the camera panning across the faces of townsfolk, posing uneasily. And the film has its resident seer, a Casandra with biblical innuendos, who resides in a cabaret named Titanik. It sports a broken neon sign and topless beauties. Everything is unremittingly depressing and filmgoers who are discomforted by the representation of happiness will feel at home. Damnation is also a masterpiece. In the final scene, Karrer gets on his hands and knees to threaten a barking dog. Speaking of painters, neither Bosch nor Brueghel could have thought this one up. The film screenplay was co-written by László Krasznahorkai, Tarr's frequent collaborator and the Nobel Prize winning author of Herscht 07769.

read "Current Affairs" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Revenge

Christopher Marlowe died a violent death and there is a whole genre of Elizabethan revenge tragedy epitomized by lesser playwrights like Thomas Kyd, author of The Spanish Tragedy (1582). Theatergoers are more likely to see themselves in these plays than Hamlet. A contemporary example might be titled Road Rage, another Fighting My Wy WAY OUT which deals with the kind of person who perpetually finds themselves stuck in a paper bag. This last is particularly disconcerting, literally the country cousin to Psycho (1960). Here's the plot: The protagonist wants to get back at a friend for their cosmic indifference--by not showing up at an event where the nemesis is honored. No one, least of all the person at whom the gun is pointed cares. In the end the avenger is left holding that same bag they were trying to punch their way out of.

read "Current Affairs" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star