Recent Forgeries

Viggo Mortensen

Did you know Viggo Mortensen, alternately by turns Lucifer, Aragorn, the American Yakuza, and Tex is also an accomplished painter, poet, short fiction writer, and musician? (Well, I'm taking the "musician" part on faith, because the CD had been removed from the copy of this I just finished by someone who is not me.) And I'm not talking "accomplished" like Jimmy Stewart, Jewel, and Ally Sheedy are accomplished. Nope, Mortensen can be a little loose with his verbiage sometimes, but the man's got it. (And, really, all those reviews from people who had never heard of the man until Lord of the Rings? Where you folks been for twenty years? You never saw The Prophecy? Albino Alligator? Witness? The Indian Runner? The awful remake of Psycho? Get to the video store.) And while I'm far less schooled in the arts of photography and painting than I am poetry, it's obvious that Mortensen's photographs have a definite thematic unity to them, when they show up in series, and that the man has an eye for what makes a good picture. The paintings, which have a more restrained Basquiat-esque feel (one wonders if Mortensen's dating Julian Schnabel's daughter had any effect on that), seem as if they're a bit more confused, but still powerful. I liked the representations of both here, certainly enough to go looking for Mortensen's other published works in those two areas.

The poetry was what really floored me. The short fiction is good, but the poetry rips it up (aside, as I said, from some loose verbiage here and there). Mortensen is a man who truly understands the value of image in poetry. You'd think that obvious from someone who works in the film industry, but take a read of Jimmy Stewart's book sometime and get back to me on that. I guarantee you won't find anything as worthy of being called poetry as

...An errant vine has sprouted
two blue flowers
where it reaches
roots of the lemon tree.
They are beautiful;
I am suspicious.
("Cuttings")

A wonderful little book. Probably more wonderful had not some enterprising soul stolen the CD, but I can recommend it without hesitation. And come on, people, add a copy of Albino Alligator, one of the best films ever made, to your order.