The Vivian Poems: Street Photographer Vivian Maier
by Bruce Rice
Published by Radiant Press
Review by gillian harding-russell
$20.00 ISBN 9781989274293
Through The Vivian Poems, Bruce Rice creates a vital portrait of the “mystery nanny” who was also a gifted New York City street photographer during the 1950’s and 60’s (until her death in 2007). By entering into her point of view, telescoping through her eye and adopting her persona and voice, Rice lures us into her way of seeing and thinking. By turns, we see the photographer as she was perceived by others, through her opinions as drawn from personal writings and through her street photographs which typically capture people in poses that reflect human moments of indecision. Although some of the poems may be termed ekphrastic, Rice in seeing through the artist’s eyes may also be said to project himself into his own poems, and in so doing, he leaves room for self-discovery inside us all.
Perhaps the poems that reflect most closely on both Vivian, the photographer and the poet himself include the poems about the still life where no human is present. Whereas in “Pluviophile” we see in W.C William’s style of the “Red Wheelbarrow” that the images in the world remain concrete and essentially themselves, in “Three Windows” a more ominous view in which nothing seems itself reflects the artist’s uncertainty and foreboding near the end of her life with so much artwork that is stored lifelessly in her locker.
Here is a collection of poems that in reflecting the life and work of a female street photographer is not only feminist before its time but touches us all on a human level.
