This volume, which brings together all of Twombly’s Poems to the Sea drawings (1959) includes a brief untitled essay by Heiner Bastian in German and English, color reproductions, a bibliography, and a list of works. Scholars interested in this volume may also consult the two other related volumes also edited by Heiner Bastian: Cy Twombly: Letter of Resignation (1991) and Cy Twombly: 24 Short Pieces (1989).

Bastian begins with the contested assertion that “Twombly's drawings have nothing to do with the spirit of the great epic odes to the sea as we know them from Fernando Pessoa and Saint-John Perse, nor with the Maximus-verses of Charles Olson… Equally, Twombly's ‘poems’ are not related to the mediterranean [sic] poetry of Byron, Shelley, Keats, of Alberti and Ungaretti.” Instead, Bastian characterizes the drawings as pure reflections on the sea, the product of repeated looking “with the eyes of Virgil.” He describes the conditions under which Twombly produced the series of drawings and offers formal analysis of the sequence, focusing particularly on color and line. Framing the drawings as fundamentally a result of quotidian experience, Bastian writes that “[o]ne moment after another accumulates like an inner reflection which superimposes itself without end, without the figure of physical intensification or affects.” Bastian then considers the relationship between poetry and speech, followed by the relationship between poetry, writing, and allusion. He frames the drawings as essentially metaphysical and draws a connection to Stéphane Mallarmé’s discussion of whiteness.

Scholars researching Twombly’s early practice may also consult Richard Leeman’s Cy Twombly: A Monograph (2005); Kate Nesin’s Cy Twombly’s Things (2014); Thierry Greub’s Inscriptions (2022); and Gagosian Gallery’s Cy Twombly: In Beauty it is finished: Drawings 1951–2008 (2018). Writings on Cy Twombly, ed. Nicola Del Roscio (2002) also includes primary source material from this period. As Bastian notes in his bibliography, Poems to the Sea are also discussed in exhibition catalogues such as Cy Twombly—Zeichnungen 1953–1973, published by the Kunstmuseum Basel (1973); Cy Twombly, dessins 1954–1976, published by the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1976); and Cy Twombly—Serien auf Papier 1957–1987, published by the Städtisches Kunstmuseum Bonn (1987).

(Publication description by Jamie Danis)

Cy Twombly. Poems to the Sea. Edited by Heiner Bastian. With a text by Heiner Bastian. Schirmer/Mosel, Munich, 1990; 64 pages; illustrated; English/German edition.