Alla Prima

It’s hard to think of something that doesn’t sound better in Italian than it does in English, and for good reason. English is a brutal language in many respects, and the more time you spend with it, the more you begin to notice the ways in which its cinder block qualities leave little chalky scrapes on everything it comes into contact with. Nothing feels completely safe when being described by it, not because English is a threat to its core substance but more because it’s oftentimes a harsh reproduction, like recreating Michelangelo’s Pieta with Legos.

Take alla prima, for example. It’s a technique where wet, often oil-based paint is applied to other still-wet paint layers, typically in a single setting. It was used by some of the all-time greats like Monet and Van Gogh (and Bob Ross), and translated to English it reads as “at first attempt.” That has to be, like, the least horny way to say that possible other than maybe “painting quickly and sticking to the key concepts.” But be that as it may, alla prima has led to some heaters over the years and I’ve included a few below.

The idea of making something in a single sitting has always resonated with me, and back when I was making poems for every Vinyl Me Please monthly release I wandered into writing this way because of some combination of love for the act itself and being too lazy to edit or plan. I’d just put the featured record on in my headphones and smoke & drink on my porch until I was done with it. Pretty cliché shit. But in 2017, I read this article in Fader about the time Eminem met Kendrick Lamar for the first time and forced him to sit alone in the studio and write his verse from scratch right then. I decided that day that I was going to get more serious about my single-sitting writing just in case I ever had to do something like that. I can’t really explain why, I don’t think anyone has ever been confronted by a celebrity idol and forced by them to write a poem then and there, but if I ever am I’ll be ready.

Geranium has been, and still is, a different animal in many respects. I’ve wrestled with this group of poems more than anything I’ve ever written before, and every time I re-read most of them I feel like I’m back at the beginning again. But, as fate would have it, I have one in the collection titled Alla Prima which I wrote a little less than a year ago and feels ready to share. I wrote it in a few minutes one day on my back porch while I was smoking a cigarette, and as much as I’ve tried to fuck with it since then, I’ve kept coming back to the concept of keeping it as it was after the first attempt. I rarely leave things alone anymore, but it felt right this time to let its namesake take precedence and you can read Alla Prima below.