luffing lipograms (poems)

Here is a series of various lipogram poems I wrote (constraints explained by each poem):


Left-handed Lipogram (Port)
(a poem written with only the left side of the keyboard)

We cast free & fast ~ 4 years at wester sea fer war ~ rest wet & sweaty ~ daze eastward as day draws red fever & deceases ~ very wet we sat awed ~ eased yet sad ~ we cry ~ yes ~ stay! & ever stay


Right-handed Lipogram (Starboard)

“Up—
“Hup—
“Pull—
“Mo’—
(O, I ill—
O, I kill—
Buh pull mo’—)
“Jib up—HO—


Latitudinal Lipogram I
(written without the third row of keys on the keyboard)

A clash.
Had lash.
Mad.


Latitudinal Lipogram II
(without fourth row, including quote marks, return, etc.)

Every morn we men put new worry into Cptn. Quinn—Mutiny…we receive more rum.


Latitudinal Lipogram III
(without fifth row, including comma, shift, etc.)

at port the other day
i took a walk
saw a tree—it was great
all tall—so shady—
you should see its shadow
i forgot how i like trees—
roads—hills
people
how i hate powder—
sails—water—
god—i hate water
the float of the freshly dead
how a look at a tree will do
that to you is—well—silly

a pregnant pause

On Monday I met with my adviser and the feedback he gave me was 'get back out there and keep making stuff'--so I am making more work and in new directions and faster. I've started drawing, that is, have taken my doodling out of my notebooks (see above). That's something I was very timid about because I've never taken a drawing class.

I realize now that I have a very strong conservative bent in my creativity--I want to polish, frame, complete, narrow my final product. I want my work to be like little comfortable nests that I can settle into. That's a strange impulse for someone who enjoys collage and collage poems--practices that are known for fracture and messiness. It means I often create dull work. But when I push myself it creates a lot of friction, a lot of heat.

"Composition No. 18" (collage)

"Composition No. 17" (collage)

"Composition No. 16" (collage)

say softly so no one can hear, bouguereau, I love you

"Whisperings of Love." William Adolphe Bouguereau. 1889.

I saw this painting at the Joslyn in Omaha as part of a traveling exhibition of work rescued from New Orleans after Katrina. I hate to even show this image because it is such poor quality and the original size of the painting is huge--life-size at least.

I returned to this particular painting (and a Robert Henri one) several times throughout the afternoon. I still keep a picture of it on my computer and look at it frequently. It is perhaps the most beautiful painting I've ever seen--I would rank it with Canova's Cupid and Psyche as the most transfixingly wonderous works of art I've ever seen.

The composition is perfectly balanced yet with enough subtle variety to keep your eye moving. The coloring (which you can't see here) is detailed and finely rendered. The figures threaten to leap into the world. And yet the woman's face is shadowed, the light coming from behind her--it gives a haunting feel, perhaps it feels like a visual whisper.

Although Bouguereau was famous in his day, he was attacked by the avant-garde as the artist that exemplified everything wrong with Academy painting. You will find him in museums if you look, but for a long time he was lost behind the canonical history of Modern Art. (You will be surprised at how few books there are on him.) To be the last great master of a tradition in the Modern era is to have really no value at all. And perhaps, for that reason most of all, I always give extra time to him when I see his work. (The Art Institute has "The Bathers" (right) which is also a beautiful composition.)

I think what adds to the wonder of this painting, strangely enough, is that no one is doing work like this today--and that no one could. Bouguereau was immersed in and trained by an industry that no longer exists. There is a level of oral tradition and physical imitation (looking at a painter laying down paint and then copying him) that is inaccessible to us now. Some things can be conjectured but Bouguereau's paintings are now truly priceless.

Personally, I am bothered by my own love of this painting. Do I love work like this (and Canova's) because they are beautiful women? Would I love it as much if it wasn't a woman? Does a work even as modest as this objectify women? Is it "okay" to love this painting--even though it has a cherub in it? Am I shallow for loving a work that has no apparent theoretical underpinnings, carries no secrets, is not subversive in any way? Should I ignore the unbearably sweet, sentimental emotions that stir in me before this painting as so much silliness?

"Composition No. 14" (collage)

"Composition No. 13" (collage)

I miss Ernie

The one thing that Omaha has that no other city has is Ernie Chambers:

State Sen. Ernie Chambers Sues God

Chambers lawsuit, which was filed on Friday in Douglas County Court, seeks a permanent injunction ordering God to cease certain harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats.

The lawsuit admits God goes by all sorts of alias, names, titles and designations and it also recognizes the fact that the defendant is omnipresent.

In the lawsuit, Chambers said he's tried to contact God numerous times. "Plaintiff, despite reasonable efforts to effectuate personal service upon defendant 'Come out, come out, wherever you are,' has been unable to do so,'" Chambers said.

chicago diaries 2

- It is has been exactly one month since I moved to Chicago. I've had the obligatory getting-lost-at-night-does-the-bus-still-run-? moments. I've discovered some cheap places to get a sandwich, how much garbage I generate by myself alone, and that a single casserole can last for three days. I've begun to help sightseers find their way around the Loop...so, maybe I'm already 'local.'

- Even though I haven't been to a Writing program at a university, I can't imagine that they are anything like the Writing department at the Art Institute. It's a free, open place. I think I heard someone say that the School an institution that sometimes seems bent on destroying itself--the idea, I think, is that there is very little bureaucracy, minimal structure (it feels like) and yet it's a very large place. This is not your great-great-grandfather's Academy.

- Since I've arrived my creative development has accelerated ten-fold. I am making a collage every day, I'm developing several ideas simultaneously, I'm getting regular feedback. It becomes overwhelming at times. I feel I may be drifting towards art, away from literature...but that kind of oscillation is normal for me.

I'm totally going to this

"Composition No. 10 (Portrait of a Woman looking at a Man looking at Sailboats)" (collage)

6" x 8" photocollage on canvas board.

"Composition No. 9" (collage)

8"x10". Photocollage on mat board.

"Composition No. 8" (collage)

8"x10". Photocollage on mat board. The sculpture is (banished) Eve by Rodin, on display at the Art Institute.

"Composition No. 7" (collage)

8"x8". Photocollage on cardstock.

"Composition No. 6" (collage)

8"x8". Photocollage on cardstock.

hurricane hearts

Enjoy the smooth tones of my friend Joseph's ensemble Hurricane Hearts. His voice reminds me of Jakob Dylan of the Wallflowers. "Where We Started" is as good as anything coming out of Saddle Creek these days.

Revelation (poem?)

What if an angel came to you and said, You’re going to be OK. Everyone’s going to be OK. But you’re never going to feel that way, ever going to feel certain about it. How could you explain that kind of news--especially to people really hurting and you’re not?

Or, when you were still young, it said, You are here on this Earth to make some great work of art, and vanished. Over time it would likely give you more doubts than if you had never heard it. Until then it was a live possibility, something to daydream about. But after, so dreadful and crippling.

I have stood many times transfixed before life—often at a backyard barbeque with friends, or watching a small girl sing out heartfelt on a filled but silent subway car, or driving over a hill on any ordinary day in Nebraska—a transfiguration occurs. It feels likes the easiest thing then to build a house around that moment and retire for good. Why can’t life be all those moments?

What’s worse, I never remember them when I need them most, when they would be most helpful. Under the press of loneliness, failure and guilt, you do what you would do anyway—keep working. If you ever realize that revelation changes nothing, you are likely to be bitter about it and become a terrorist of some kind. In that way, I understand why you’d do it—sick of Beauty being so beautiful and so unwilling to stay.

tarkovsky's andrei rublev (review)

Tonight I watched Andrei Tarkovsky's masterpiece Andrei Rublev on the big screen for the first time, perhaps the only way to fully understand Tarkovsky's genius. Many films have made me cry, but this one took me beyond tears-- to completely jaw-dropping stunned. He has the ability to show a wide epic pan of horsemen but make you notice the single innocent village chicken being trampled by them.

In another image, a character is shot by an arrow while standing in a creek; he stumbles toward the camera, splashing water that leaps right out at the viewer, lands on the lens causing the entire scene to blur--then the camera pans away upsteam and an unexplained white shape floats downstream that affects one in a way I can't describe.

Everything to the smallest detail expresses in this film--not ideas but emotions. Before I had ever watched a Tarkovsky film, I had read that he had an amazing magic in the details. It is hard to explain in words how every smear of blood, every reflection in water, fire, tree, leaf, snowflake is so powerfully expressive. You have to experience it.

An entire book could be written on this movie--from its use of animals, the artist in a world of injustice, Russian history, faith, the several 'fool' characters and other Shakespearian elements--this barely scratches the surface. It is unfortunate that its 3 1/2 hour length might make it intimidating to some. This is my #1 favorite movie--if you ever ask--and I recommend watching it...twice.

Skydiving (poem?)

That there is a species in this universe that has both the ingenuity to build an airplane and the inclination to fall out of it is an outcome not even God could have predicted. Yet the act--a human jumping from a plane--seems to contain our whole history: our first leap from the trees, Icarus and the Enola Gay, the dream of every human being...falling. And also what makes us worth keeping--hope that overcomes terror, forgetting the rules of our evolution, the ability to put faith in the smallest things.

Today I learned about Throat Singing Music In Inuit Culture.

fragments and drafts from the 'chesil beach' project

I am currently in the middle of collaging On Chesil Beach. For the first time I've been able to collage several poems simultaneously over several days, allowing for more editing and 'cross-editing' (moving phrases or lines from one poem into another). It is shaping up into a small book of poems (15-20), which I hope to find a way to mass produce. So far it's been exhilarating--though I curse Ian McEwan for his lack of action verbs.