{"id":9475,"date":"2025-03-16T23:36:06","date_gmt":"2025-03-17T06:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/?page_id=9475"},"modified":"2025-06-19T16:39:19","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T23:39:19","slug":"tonight-ill-sleep-on-a-bird-of-nails-will-rymans-bird","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/background\/petting-zoo-guide\/tonight-ill-sleep-on-a-bird-of-nails-will-rymans-bird\/","title":{"rendered":"Tonight I\u2019ll Sleep on a Bird of Nails: Will Ryman\u2019s \u201cBird\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n


<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

April 9, 2013 \u2014 <\/em><\/strong>If you thought Bon Jovi would get the last word on roses and nails, then New York artist Will Ryman<\/a> would like to have a few words with you.And they probably are, \u201cStop listening to Bon Jovi.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just kidding. I\u2019m too old to know what people should or shouldn\u2019t be listening to and, more importantly, what musicians are cool to make fun of. So I\u2019m going to stick to sculpture. Even though I am equally ignorant there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do know that Ryman\u2019s sculpture Bird<\/em> is currently roosting at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Broadway in Manhattan, being pointed at by the famous Flatiron Building<\/a>, which I think needs a name update to something like, say, the Cursor Building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bird <\/em>is a 12-foot-tall steel raven made of both fake and real nails in sizes ranging from affix-drywall-to-frame size to resole-Paul-Bunyan\u2019s-boot size. It\u2019s like Pinhead got reincarnated as a bird.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The nails give the five-ton black bird a fascinating texture. Makes it look ruffled, harsh and soft at the same time. And it stands on a nest of store-bought nails. You sang that line, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The semi-harshness of the bird is only barely alleviated by the rose dangling from its black beak by a long serpentine stem, the kind of mutated, carnivorous-looking flower that Swamp Thing might give to his girlfriend for being so understanding about dating a plant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every news article I\u2019ve read about Bird<\/em> says that Ryman’s sculpture was \u201cloosely inspired\u201d by Edgar Allan Poe\u2019s poem The Raven<\/em>. I\u2019m not sure what that phrase in quotation marks means, but I assume it\u2019s the credit legally mandated by Poe\u2019s active copyright on any artistic use of that carrion fowl. The raven is Poe\u2019s. It\u2019s not something I\u2019d want to challenge in a court of law, either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Actually, according to\u00a0this interview<\/a>\u00a0[download PDF] in the\u00a0Huffington Post<\/em>, what Ryman said when asked directly about whether Poe was his inspiration was, \u201cThe image of the bird, maybe, but very loosely. It’s really more about the abstraction of the nail.\u201d Interpreted in my own native language of jerkese, that means, \u201cYeah, obviously you can\u2019t do anything with a raven without the ghost of Poe looking grumpily over your shoulder, but God damn it, I just wanted to make a giant black bird out of nails.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, the bird\u2019s perch is only a temporary one. It was installed on March 24 and will have cooped the flow on April 21. That gives you less than two weeks to see this thing in this setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bon Jovi will still be around, though. Hopefully having a better night\u2019s sleep these days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April 9, 2013 \u2014 If you thought Bon Jovi would get the last word on roses and nails, then New York artist Will Ryman would like to have a few words with you.And they probably are, \u201cStop listening to Bon Jovi.\u201d Just kidding. I\u2019m too old to know what people should or shouldn\u2019t be listening to and, more … Continue reading Tonight I\u2019ll Sleep on a Bird of Nails: Will Ryman\u2019s \u201cBird\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":9049,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"folder":[],"class_list":["post-9475","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P9VlUH-2sP","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9049,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/background\/petting-zoo-guide\/","url_meta":{"origin":9475,"position":0},"title":"Behind The Petting Zoo","author":"Cassie Carter","date":"March 8, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Childrens Zoo Post Card Originally this page provided links to a lot of books that might help a person trying to understand The Petting Zoo. Sadly the technology I used for this died and there was no way to save the content. I will try to reconstruct this . .\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/childrenzoopostcard.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/childrenzoopostcard.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/childrenzoopostcard.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4030,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/research\/academic-studies-of-jim-carroll\/biography-of-a-poem\/","url_meta":{"origin":9475,"position":1},"title":"Biography of a Poem: “Sick Bird\u201d by Jim Carroll","author":"Cassie Carter","date":"January 10, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"By Cassie CarterCatholicBoy.com 28 April 2004 I need to figure out a way to make this page accessible. Any ideas? In my scholarly work on Jim Carroll I have always taken particular interest in the ways in which Carroll's works differ from one printing to another. He is a very\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9339,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/background\/friends-influences\/carrolls-influence-on-artists-and-culture\/","url_meta":{"origin":9475,"position":2},"title":"Carroll's Influence on Artists and Culture","author":"Cassie Carter","date":"March 12, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"2025: This page really needs to be updated and reorganized . . . Daniel Grey Marshall (2000-present)\u00a0Carroll has actively mentored this young writer, whose first novel,\u00a0Still Can't See Nothin' Comin' (2001). Blue Oyster Cult (1979)On the BOC album\u00a0Mirrors, \"In Thee\" by Allen Lanier refers to Carroll. Playboy\u00a0(1981)A\u00a0Cruiser\u00a0comic strip from 1981\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10173,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/research\/performance-reviews\/missouri-southern-state-college-joplin-mo-1999\/","url_meta":{"origin":9475,"position":3},"title":"Missouri Southern State College Joplin, MO (1999)","author":"Cassie Carter","date":"June 5, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Jim Carroll at Missouri Southern State CollegeJoplin, MO (3\/17\/99)Review by\u00a0Damien9693 at aol dot com It was really cool. Jim is way funnier than I thought he would be. He made cracks before and after most of his poems. He didn't mention the Make a Wish kid. But he did have\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3994,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/works\/articles-poems-by-jim-carroll\/a-message-from-jim-carroll\/","url_meta":{"origin":9475,"position":4},"title":"A Message from Jim Carroll","author":"catholicboy.com","date":"January 10, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"By Jim CarrollUnpublished, 1996 The graphic shown here is a scanned image of this never-published fragment, which Carroll copied out of his notebook in February 1996 while waiting for his flight at the Toledo, OH, Airport. Have you isolated your rage?. . . and what route have you designated to\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/jcpoem3.gif?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4165,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/works\/articles-poems-by-jim-carroll\/","url_meta":{"origin":9475,"position":5},"title":"Articles & Poems by Jim Carroll","author":"catholicboy.com","date":"January 10, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"\"The Man Who Sold the World.\"\u00a0By Jim Carroll.\u00a0New York Times Book Review, 1 Dec. 2002.Carroll reviews Kurt Cobain's\u00a0Journals: \"It's fascinating like a car wreck, and I, for one, wish that only the music survived his death.\" \"I Shot a Deer.\" By Jim Carroll.\u00a0Gentlemen's Quarterly, January 2002: 113-14.GQ\u00a0asked five writers to\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9475"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10479,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9475\/revisions\/10479"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/folder?post=9475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}