Written in the Spring of 2009 and composed of short, fragmentary blocks of verse and prose, including several quoted sources, A GUSTONBOOK is a workman’s notebook of sorts sketched out in response to several years spent contemplating the work and life of painter Philip Guston in relation to the ongoing world, i.e. exhibitions, books on/about Guston, other books/art works amid daily walks, drinks, and talks. More explorations than explanations, the entries contained herein situate the eye of memory as witness to the immediate surrounds of now: day to day, hour by hour, the concern never (always) changing. As Guston once said, gesturing out the window, “Who wants that? and you can’t have it anyway.”
Patrick James Dunagan lives in San Francisco and works at Gleeson Library/Geschke Center for the University of San Francisco. A graduate of the Poetics Program at the now defunct New College of California, his writings have appeared in: Amerarcana, Artvoice, Big Bell, Blue Book, Box of Books: Vol II, Cannibal, CHAIN, Galatea Resurrects, home: An Anthology of Ars Poetica, House Organ, Forklift, Fulcrum, HNGMN, Jacket, Moria, Morning Train, Octopus, ON, One Less Magazine, le Palais de Nuit, Pax Americana, Poets for Living Waters, Polis, Pompom, Puppyflowers, Rain Taxi, Riprap, SF Bay Guardian, St Mark's Poetry Project Newsletter, Shrimp, Try!, and VANITAS. His chapbooks include from Chansonniers (Blue Press, 2008), Spirit Guest & Others (Lew Gallery Editions, 2009), Easy Eden with Micah Ballard (PUSH, 2009), and her friends down at the french cafe had no english words for me (PUSH, 2010).