Tafelmusik by Joe & Steve Winhusen

Tafelmusik by Joe & Steve Winhusen

$35.00

Keats’ infamous urn and later iterations like Eliot’s vase at the still point of the turning world or Steven’s jar in Tennessee are each accompanied by their “unheard music.”  As bric-a-brac and yet also as embodiments of a time and place, such vessels take on an almost human presence as extensions of the artisans, utility and society which produced them.  The artist Paul Klee seemed to recognize this special relationship between the colors, textures and forms of terra cotta or porcelain and those of living humans with the central figure in his work “Ceramic: Erotic: Religious.”  In this spirit, “Tafelmusik” brings the work of artist Joe Winhusen to the table.  Highly influenced by Asian aesthetics, Joe’s ceramics present a feast for the eye and elides, in its idiosyncratic style, the question of who is invited because all are called to the gathering where our stories and community can nourish everyone.  Eavesdropping on the many conversations such a banquet might inspire gives rise to an ambient music or poetry which his brother Steve provides each of the pieces.  These conversations may be insular or linked down the table in multiple simultaneous exchanges spanning the spectrum from erudite to gossipy. The “cocktail effect” is in full play.  Like its namesake, the title poem “Tafelmusik” serves as a backdrop of music – both heard and unheard – to an event the guest as much as the host creates.

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Description

  • Kind: Hardcover
  • Pages: 132
  • Language: English
  • Date Published: September 2025
  • ISBN 979-8-218-61480-5

Praise

For other books by the Winhusen Brothers

This book is a rare find, a gem quietly concealed in the slush pile of review copies. The Blue Chip City Book of the Dead, by brothers Stephen and Joseph Winhusen, is a deeply conceived text/visual work, with layers of imagery and association waiting to be unearthed by the curious reader.

David P. Miller
Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

Joe and Steve published their first book, The Blue Chip City Book of the Dead, in 2014; their new book, which I will call Rafinesque for short, took eight years to produce. It is, quite simply, a gorgeous work of art . . . The images are photographs of hallucinatory clarity, elaborately staged . . .The poems themselves are composed in a variety of forms, and, working in tandem with the images, are likewise possessed of a clarity, precision, and bold grammatical complexity that one rarely encounters in contemporary poetry. These poems are micro and macroscopic; in them, as Blake would say, we “see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower.” This is a book that Ronald Johnson would love.

Dr. Norman Finkelstein
Restless Messengers: Poetry in Review

Excerpt

from Coda

The orb spider spins its dinner plate,
Less hunter than a gatherer
Or so I tell myself
the strands
of its Aeolian harp
Make music with the many winged vibrations
Swept up in the wind
one November
I remember looking out the window
And finding through its panes
A web woven overnight across them
Affixing the vista just beyond:
its suburban view of houses
gardens, lots, cars and yards
all snarled in the strands
And an eight-legged blot
Of black and burnt orange
Front and center

Gracing the entire frame

Author/Artist

Joe & Steve WinhusenJoe is an artist and art educator based in Indianapolis where he teaches. In addition to many works and several shows, he is the creator of “The Blue Chip City Book of the Dead” and “C.S.Rafinesque: A Field Guide.” He has created works in many mediums, most recently using photographic decals fused to thrown, draped and altered porcelain plates.

Steve is a family physician living on the west side of Cincinnati with his wife April and son Daniel. He is author of “The Blue Chip City Book of the Dead” and “C.S.Rafinesque: A Field Guide.”

Additional information

Weight 26.4 oz
Dimensions 11 × 10 × .5 in

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