WHAT HAPPENS TO POETRY?

I spent a lot of time with Diane Ackerman today.  Okay, not actually with her, but with her poetry.  I can honestly say that over the course of the last two weeks I examined each line of each poem in her book Jaguar of Sweet Laughter. This is because I have been cutting the book, line by line of poetry, into strips, which I will use in my next art project.  Ackerman says, “A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.”  I wondered today what she would think of me dismantling her book this way.  Would she understand that my deconstruction, the tearing apart of her patchwork of words, is a sort of ekphrasis? 

I am fascinated by the idea of the ways in which a painting may resemble a sculpture, or how a poem may portray a painting.  I have written at least two poems related to the paintings of Van Gogh, and I am currently working on a mixed media piece inspired by a statue of Cupid and Psyche that I photographed in Paris.

But would Ackerman appreciate my dissection of her work?  Perhaps she would.  She is, after all, the author of a book titled Deep Play, which according to her website, “considers play, creativity and our need for transcendence.”  So maybe she would understand why I feel the need to play with her words. 

You see, I don’t just shred her work and glue it to a panel.  I cut it apart one line at a time and put it in a box.  But not before reading it.  And because of the way I cut the stanzas and then the lines apart, I don’t usually read the poetry in the order the poet intended it to be read.  Instead, I perceive it bit by bit as I trim the now unnecessary white space away from phrases such as “to where he loves being a hermit,” “of night blooming orchids,” and “with a salmon’s purpose.”  I almost never glimpse entire clauses, so when I do, they become as memorable as these bits: “he sees the world through a small tube,”  “the new biography makes me a fortuneteller,” “he will be less than an inkling,” and, “we live in the outback of our art.” Sometimes my favorite bits are mere subtle images, such as, “the vicarious agony,” “an orient of light,” and “hypnotic tantrums of the surf.”

I love the absorption and shift that occurs repeatedly as I cut the poem to pieces, as I consider the variety of line lengths I encounter and the way the before unnoticed ascenders and descenders of the alphabet attempt in their tiny ways to impede my progress in the creation of what will become the equivalent of brush strokes in my new piece.  (This is not the first time I have played with text.  The photo at the top of this blog is a bit of background from a previous piece.)

But for this to be a true attempt at ekphrasis, my work must contain some consideration of the sentiment of the artist, or in this case, poet, when she created her work.  What then will be the subject of my art piece?  Perhaps part tribute.  Not overtly stated, but implied.  I admire the bits of Ackerman’s poems, but also the cohesive creation of each poem and the way they come together to create a volume.

Perhaps part imitation.  But only in the sense that I admire her powers of observation and the way she tints her words with a naturalistic view of the world.  When I started this project, I had planned to create a portrait of a pair of lovers.  I have not turned away from that idea, but more and more images of trees, snakes, oceans and clouds have crept into the background as though threatening to overtake the couple. 

I am feeling some sense of urgency.  This is always a good thing for me as an artist when I put brush to canvas, or in this case, when I apply gel medium and paper to panel.  It means that my thoughts and observations have begun to swirl into a vision that will be shared at some point in the near future.   This sharing, whether through word or image, is for me what gives my life order and meaning.   I agree wholeheartedly with Ackerman when she says, “I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it.  I want to have lived the width of it as well.”  And so the shape of the collage is decided--a perfect square.