After Cézanne

After Cezanne is a sequence of fifty-six poems exploring the life and work of the post-impressionist painter Paul Cezanne. Reimagining his friendships with Zola and Pissarro, his impact on Matisse and Picasso, as well as his posthumous reputation, Maitreyabandhu celebrates Cezanne's apples and card players in poems at once tender, urgent and amused. The book includes 26 colour reproductions, a preface by Christopher Lloyd (Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, 1988-2005) and extensive textual notes. After Cezanne is Maitreyabandhu's third collection.

Table of Contents:
9 Foreword by Christopher Lloyd 16 Cézanne and the Colour Palette 17 The Method of Loci 19 One Hundred Cloche Hats 21 The Apple’s Progress 22 The Ambiguities of Place 23 Angels in Peckham 25 The Black Clock 26 The Mannequins of Paris 27 Madame Cézanne with Anti-Representational Effects 29 Five Studies for Marie-Hortense 31 Self-portrait of the Artist Wearing a Hat 32 Rilke on the Place de la Concorde 33 Sunday Bells 35 Cézanne’s Dog 36 The House of the Hanged Man 37 The Pissarro Portrait 39 Cézanne in the Studio 41 This Painting of a Mountain 43 Man with a Pipe 45 Léontine 49 Cézanne’s Peasant 51 The Artist’s Mother 52 The Church of Saint-Jean-de-Malte 53 Einstein’s Watch 57 Human Things 58 Apple, Chairback and Dish 59 The Disfluency of Cézanne 60 Kukai in Provence 61 Il Était Plus Grand Que Nous ne le Croyions 63 Afterthought 64 The Red Teapot 65 Art Tutorial 67 Rilke Writes to His Wife from the Salon D’Automne 69 Morning in the Studio: Les Grandes Baigneuses 70 This Perpetual Dazzlement 71 Cut-outs 73 Matisse in the Studio 75 Roger Fry at Langham Place 76 For the Artist of Anahorish 77 The Quarry at Bibémus 78 Sufficient Blueness to Give the Feel of Air 79 A Worm Composing on a Straw 81 Salt 83 At the Vollard Shop 84 The Three Inseparables 85 Bathers at Rest 87 L’Œuvre 88 Burnt Lakes 89 Two Dozen Mongoose-Hair Brushes 91 The Mountain Ode 93 Under Linden Trees 95 Vallier 96 Opusculum 97 On Rough Ground 99 Two Ways of Closing 101 A Horde of Destructions 103 Notes

About the Author :
Maitreyabandhu was born Ian Johnson in 1961, in Henley-in-Arden, Warwickshire. His parents ran a coach firm on the High Street. Initially trained as a nurse at the Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry, he went on to study fine art at Goldsmiths College, London, alongside Sarah Lucas and Damien Hirst. He started attending classes at the London Buddhist Centre (LBC) in 1986, and moved into a residential community above the LBC in 1987. He was ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order in 1990 and given the name Maitreyabandhu. Since then he has lived and worked at the LBC, teaching Buddhism and meditation. He has written three books on Buddhism, Thicker than Blood: Friendship on the Buddhist Path (2001), Life with Full Attention: a Practical Course in Mindfulness (2009) and The Journey and the Guide, all from Windhorse Publications. In 2010 he founded Poetry East, a poetry venue exploring the relationship between spiritual life and poetry, and attracting many leading poets, including Jo Shapcott, David Constantine, Mark Doty, Don Paterson and Sean O'Brien. Maitreyabandhu has won the Keats-Shelley Prize, the Basil Bunting Award, the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize, and the Ledbury Festival Poetry Competition. His first pamphlet The Bond won the Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet Competition (2010) and was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award. Vita Brevis, his second pamphlet, won the iOTA Shots Award (2011). His first book-length collection, The Crumb Road, was published by Bloodaxe in 2013 and is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. His second collection, Yarn, followed in 2015. His third Bloodaxe title, After Cezanne, an illustrated meditation on the life and work of the painter, was published in 2019.

Review :
All the aspects of Cézanne’s ordeal are fused together in Maitreyabandhu’s remarkable poems in which the varied forms of composition and wide range of reference provide a refreshingly unique insight into Cézanne’s art. What is achieved here is an incomparable poetic expression of the artist’s personal idiosyncrasies and manifold achievements. These remarkable poems remind us of the close kinship between painting and poetry. Maitreyabandhu shares insights into Cézanne that can, perhaps, only be grasped through poetry. The poems speak eloquently of Cézanne’s art and of the experience of trying to comprehend a great artist. A resoundingly authentic collection with no lapses in concentration. Maitreyabandhu’s understanding of Cézanne and his motivation are endlessly persuasive without ever crossing into presumption. A rich and intense book, unashamed of its erudition and its powerfully keen sight.