Dean Rader has written, edited, or coedited numerous books, including the poetry collections Works & Days, which won the 2010 T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry; Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry; and Before the Borderless: Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly (Copper Canyon Press, 2023), in which his poems and Twombly’s works appear side-by-side. He is a professor at the University of San Francisco.


Edwin Parker “Cy” Twombly (1928–2011) was an American artist known for large-scale paintings characterized by calligraphic marks on solid fields. A contemporary of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, Twombly influenced a younger generation, including Francesco Clemente and Julian Schnabel. His works can be seen in permanent collections around the world, notably the Menil Collection in Houston, the Tate Modern in London, and New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. Twombly was awarded the Golden Lion at the Forty-Ninth Venice Biennale and was also made Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur by the French government.

Before the Borderless: Dean Rader/Cy Twombly


Eternal Return

Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1963–1964, Rome. Pencil, wax crayon, colored pencil, ink, pen ballpoint; 50 x 60 cm. Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne, Paris, St. Moritz. © Cy Twombly Foundation. Photograph by Jochen Littkemann.


This evening the sun seems
                                                                             to lie down inside itself
everything clicks on from within
                                                                             even as it draws its way into the margins
angels as they do emerge
                                                                             from their shadows / cut and cloudlike
across the curve
                                                                             of color and swirl
like the soar of voices
                                                                             over arc and echo—
sky-smudge / sky-scrawl
                                                                             blue bruise / red rip
gouge and gash
                                                                             both wound and wound


Meditation on Inscription

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