Dek Unu Magazine - B.A. Van Sise

For this month’s Dek Unu, B.A. Van Sise sends portraits of eleven of his favorite poets, borrowed from his 2019 book, Children of Grass: A Portrait of American Poetry. Each portrait provides a counterpoint, or a concordance, to a poem by the pictured poet — sometimes dark, sometimes witty, always surprising, and always spot-on. Photos and poems combine to reveal a connection between artists, two high creatives at work to invent something new. As with the poems, there is always more to B.A.'s work than at first it seems. These images are not book-jacket portraits, just as the poems are not book-jacket blurbs. Instead, each photo, in its craft, its originality, and its veracity, is a poem in itself — thrilling and challenging to anyone who is ready to see.