Literature and Art

Comment

Comment by Bifidus Jones on August 15, 2011 at 2:43pm

wonderful!

Comment by Nancy Bell Scott on August 15, 2011 at 2:41pm

Here is Theresa's latest wonderful mail art to me.  It inspired her to write one of her epistolary poems (on the back, but it might be published, so cannot be posted).  I'm posting the photos of images here, and my whole blog post from yesterday can be found here.

Comment by De Villo Sloan on August 15, 2011 at 3:57am

These discussions remain FASCINATING. It's very interesting to read Guido's perspective from Brussels, his influences and the U.S. writers he admirers.

 

Just out of curiosity: Does anyone read or know about the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets in the US: Ron Silliman, Charles Bernstein, Susan Howe, etc. etc. etc.?

Comment by Guido Vermeulen on August 15, 2011 at 1:37am

Just uploaded all the contributions I received late nineties to the Snake project from the Suiss mail artist STEFFEN MARKUS and they are fantatstic. Steffen became quite ill and is not active in the network anymore to my knowledge. It might interest Superhero that nearly all his work were B&W copy art. He wrote also poetry and I forgot he dedicated a snake poem to me. His interpretation of the snake is close to my own heart.

Visit http://cuereghemsnake.blogspot.com to view all his art.

The poem he wrote for goes like this:

 

SNAKE WITH HAIR

Dedicated to Guido Vermeulen

 

Snake with hair

and very tender armpits

show me the moon

 

Snake with fist

Snake with padded feet

Smelling of incense

Snake who stands in the stillness of silence

come to my table of wood and wickerwork

 

Snake with white teeth

Snake teach me the revolution

Rock with jaws which bite

the flies and all flesh

tell me

         tell me

                         the live

 

Steffen Markus

 

Comment by Guido Vermeulen on August 15, 2011 at 1:28am

Well, in an email Superhero recommend the novel THE TUNNEL by William H. Gass, a book I have in my library and that was recommended to me by the Jewish American poet David Stone (whom I visited in Baltimore in 1997). He gave me a list of recommended poetry books; I emailed that list to Superhero and that made me do some visual art on fragments of some of these poems that are so rich (but difficult):

THE DREAM SONGS, John Berryman

THE BOOK OF NIGHTMARES, Galway Kinnell

AFTER RUSSIA, Marina Tsvetaeva

LETTER TO AN IMAGINARY FRIEND, Thomas Mc Grath

At that time these authors were unknown to me, now they are like familiary friends. PAUL CELAN was a poet I already knew and continued to explore during the years. David and I are now in a process of exchanging books. He mailed me all his Celan books (bilingual German-English) and I do this with my Celan books (bilingual German-French). For Celan you simply need the original text to compare. Celan whose familie died in the extermination camps of the nazis, felt that the German language was ruined by the nazi experience, so he created a new kind of German, chopped it up, invented new words and so on. If you know German you still can understand the meaning but how do we translate that into another language, that's a real nightmare. Celan committed suicide in the early '70s by throwing himself in the Seine. Poets and suicide, that's another abyss... I have his complete correspondence (letters) as well, he had a troublesome love relationship with Ingeborg Bachmann.

Comment by Nancy Bell Scott on August 14, 2011 at 5:41pm

You're making me wonder what a rough percentage would be of poets who are or were without fathers.  Here is a poem dear to me by a poet whose father was absent not because of death but because of other kinds of remoteness:

 

 

Kiss the frozen lips

That cannot move,

Pry between lids of sorrow

Looming large under my brow.

 

Me standing near you, here, we together

Watching my bones settle in blood,

Listening to my skin drift

Towards my equator.

 

We are North Pole, and South, opposites

Bulging apart.

 

As I swallow the sand of my seed

Trying to shed this loose habit,

Flapping in the wind,

Your long silences undo me.

 

 

Comment by Guido Vermeulen on August 14, 2011 at 3:18pm

Thanks!

I have the collected poems of Plath and I played with the idea to read one poem every night before sleeping, had to abandon that quickly, not exactly a "fun" experience, you get suicidal yourself. I consider her LADY LAZARUS as one of the greatest modern poems ever written, together with Paul Celan's TODESFUGUE. Performed both live during poetry readings. When I do a poetry reading I'll always read some of my work next to poems by others I really am fond of. This is something I learned from poetry readings in the USA. Great idea because you lay the focus outside yourself and connect yourself with others.

Lady Lazaris is essential to understand Plath as well as the Death fugue is for Celan. Celan for me is absolutely top, together with Fernando Pessoa.

Comment by Nancy Bell Scott on August 14, 2011 at 3:03pm

I especially like Rhinoceros; and If I Am Alive Now, Then I Was Dead.  There are so many lines in Plath poems ripe for visual-art-making, it's hard to pick one.  A series possibly could happen right here on my art table.  It would probably start with her line "Perfection is boring, it cannot have children."

Comment by Guido Vermeulen on August 14, 2011 at 2:34pm

DAGDROOM or DAY DREAM

Painted envelope for ChaosAtlanta

Based on a poem by the Dutch poet SIMON VINKENOOG, who died last year.

 

DAGDROOM

DAYDREAM

 

Sleep holy prisoner sleep

Escaping this dream existence

Where is dead who'll leave

this square, my empty face

with drums in veils

 

Sleep white sleep

Where is the dream without borders

Where is eternal continuation

& where are these blue roads

along you'll betray this heart

 

Sleep dungeon sleep

I've created your mirror image

 

 

SIMON VINKENOOG, 1950

 

From WONDKOORTS (Wound Fever)

Translation & adaptation by Guido Vermeulen

Comment by Guido Vermeulen on August 14, 2011 at 2:30pm

THE HEN'S NIGHTMARE OR HER SECRET DREAM?

From THE BOOK OF NIGHTMARES by Galway Kinnell, American poet

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