BOUND UNDER THE INFLUENCE BOOKS – EDITIONS – LETTERPRESS – WORKS ON PAPER & SOUVENIRS

BOUND
UNDER THE INFLUENCE
BOOKS – EDITIONS – LETTERPRESS – WORKS ON PAPER & SOUVENIRS

collected and made by Suzanne Vilmain

BINDINGS: Accordian Broadside Codex Chapbooks Loose Leaf Pamphlet Ledger
Stab Scrap Origami Pop-up Peep-Show Photocopy Abecedaries Map Folds Fan
Journal Scroll Zine/Collaborations Toaster Purse Vise Ephemera Calendars
Art Handmade Recycled Palimpsest – CABINETS OF CURIOSITIES

INCLUDING BOOKS & ART BY SOME OF MY FAVORITE INFLUENCES:
BANTOCK, BANYAI, DUCHAMP, ERNST, FREDERIC CLEMENT, LEONARD COHEN,
DANA NEWMANN, MICHELLE GOODMAN, KAHLO, KLEE, BOURGEOIS, HOCH,
DAVI DET HOMPSON, YOKO, CAGE, ROBERT BASSARA, TIM ELY, E. KLINGNER,
KATE KRASIN, L. KOREN, HEDI KYLE, NERUDA, DOLPH SMITH, TOM LEECH,
MARTHA LITTLE, BARB TETENBAUM, MARILYN CHAMBERS, VICTORIA RABINOWE,
H.N.WERKMAN, TAPIAS & ZINK and so many more……………….

Like falling down a rabbit’s hole……………..

Mesa Public Library Art Gallery – Los Alamos, NM
APRIL 2-30th 2012
Reception: Saturday, April 7 2 – 4 pm

Translating Basho

Translating Basho

The other night, there was a beautiful conjunction of the crescent moon, Venus, and lowest down, Jupiter, in our western sky. My daughter Isabel was spending the evening. I was enjoying Robert Aiken’s book on Basho–still evocative after many years.

Basho writes:

kono michi ya
yuku hito nashi ni
aki no kure

I asked Isabel to look at it–she can read Japanese.

We got:

ah, this way
without travelers
autumn’s evening

and a variation–

nobody walks
this way but me–
autumn evening

But I like this last one best–mostly Isabel’s:

this path, moving
without anyone
in the autumn evening

Devon Miller-Duggan on Judging a Poetry Contest

Over the next couple of days, I’ll be reading 110 pages of poetry and 3 chunks of memoir/creative non-fiction by high school students in Delaware (the small state by the big water…). Of course, they’ve been in my in-box for a while now. I think actually may be the Queen of Procrastination—especially if being queen involves highly developed skills around Getting In Under the Wire, for which I have a positive genius, if I do say so myself.

Decades ago I decided to quit trying to work the way “they” said I should and get good at working the way I seem to be genetically programmed to work. I can’t say that making peace with my inner ADD-driven procrastinator has eliminated the stress of last-minute, fear-driven WORK fits. After all, that anxiety is a lot of what energizes the work itself. But it has taken away a goodly portion of the self-laceration involved. Good thing.

So why did I agree to judge a contest (a national art and writing comp. that recognizes extraordinary gifts)? Bunches of fairly obvious reasons: citizenship, the honor of being asked, a longstanding and deeply held belief in the education of gifted and talented young people, paying my dues. What will I get out of it besides a very small, but still nice, honorarium and the loss of a not inconsiderable number of hours? Well, I’ll have gotten the material for this blog entry, because nothing energizes the brain like avoiding a pile of not-always-rapturous work.

More to the point, I will have gotten the answer to a question I heard for the umptieth time on NPR yesterday: Is Poetry Dead? Of course, the answer in the NPR story was no because it was another nice story about the transformative power of poetry for at-risk kids. It’s an old story, but one that bears repeating loudly and frequently. I have no idea about the circumstances of the kids who wrote the poems I’m reading. I’ll bet that a fairly serious proportion of the best poems will be by students from the state’s “better” schools. But some won’t. Doesn’t matter. I have on my desk a gillion poems written by humans who are in the process of surviving their own adolescences by, among other things, writing poetry. That is certainly not the only reason poetry is not dead and still MATTERS. But it’s a damn fine one. So, to the kids I’m giving lousy scores to—Boy I wish I could talk to you face to face and tell you how much I respect the work you’re doing. Keep doing it. It may not save you, but it’ll help. It may not change the world much that you can tell, but, believe me, it is keeping the world just a little farther from the edge—it’s sacred work. And to the kids whose work is already showing signs of gifts and energy and edge—the high scorers: you rejoice my heart.

New Paintings by Natalie Goldberg

Fractal Poem by Chantal Quincy

Fractal Poem
I want to disappear into the ellipses of dreams
I want to forget the infernal vortexes
Whirling in my head and expanding
In oppressive concentric rings
The breath wrestling through
The lotus roots of my lungs…
Every day the rising sun unveils
A peaceful dawn ceremony
But the mind keeps slashing
The awaited sleeping fog
With its deadly axe
Turning the demonic brain waves
Into a repetitive pattern of abysses
Finally the power of an equinox in the mountains
Gives me the right to demand a miracle
The circumference of insomnia
Divided by the diameter of the will to sleep
Pi to the rescue!
The long struggle is shattered
In an irrational number of snow flakes
I let go and float through the dream catcher
Escaping at last from the wheels of hell
Thank you 3.1416 times!
Chantal Quincy, March 2012

Spring Break Hiatus

Miriam’s Well is on break until March 25. See you then!

Liberty by Paul Éluard

The poetry class was introduced to this tremendous poem by student Chantelle Quincy. It has so many techniques–anaphora (repeating the start of a line), listing, and refrain. It was written in occupied France, and in a way is a giant concrete poem or potry installation…written everywhere. Exquisite!

Paul Éluard
 

Liberty
Translated by A. S. Kline © 2001
 
On my notebooks from school
On my desk and the trees
On the sand on the snow
I write your name
 
On every page read
On all the white sheets
Stone blood paper or ash
I write your name
 
On the golden images
On the soldier’s weapons
On the crowns of kings
I write your name
 
On the jungle the desert
The nests and the bushes
On the echo of childhood
I write your name
 
On the wonder of nights
On the white bread of days
On the seasons engaged
I write your name
 
On all my blue rags
On the pond mildewed sun
On the lake living moon
I write your name
 
On the fields the horizon
The wings of the birds
On the windmill of shadows
I write your name

 
On the foam of the clouds
On the sweat of the storm
On dark insipid rain
I write your name
 
On the glittering forms
On the bells of colour
On physical truth
I write your name
 
On the wakened paths
On the opened ways
On the scattered places
I write your name
 
On the lamp that gives light
On the lamp that is drowned
On my house reunited
I write your name
 
On the bisected fruit
Of my mirror and room
On my bed’s empty shell
I write your name
 
On my dog greedy tender
On his listening ears
On his awkward paws
I write your name
 
On the sill of my door
On familiar things
On the fire’s sacred stream
I write your name
 
On all flesh that’s in tune
On the brows of my friends
On each hand that extends
I write your name
 
On the glass of surprises
On lips that attend
High over the silence
I write your name
 
On my ravaged refuges
On my fallen lighthouses
On the walls of my boredom
I write your name
 
On passionless absence
On naked solitude
On the marches of death
I write your name
 
On health that’s regained
On danger that’s past
On hope without memories
I write your name
 
By the power of the word
I regain my life
I was born to know you
And to name you
 
LIBERTY

http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/French/Eluard.htm

Tsunami Memorial by Julia Deisler

Fractal Poem by David Parlato

playing marbles

lately the young boy is playing marbles

later he paddles a ping pong ball
later he scores a birdie with a golf ball
later he slams the wall with a racquetball
later he serves an ace with a tennis ball
later he hits a home run in softball
later he spikes a volleyball
later he grows tall and dunks a basketball

later he runs the mile (four times around the track)

later he dreams of a diving bell voyage
while touring Europe’s majestic basilicas

later he sleeps in a spaceship orbiting earth
which looks like a tiny blue white ball
which is dreaming him playing marbles

david parlato

Clegyrboia

rocks

from

the river

writing

for the see

I’m enjoying a fascinating blog,
http://clegyrboia.wordpress.com/

of one artist’s vision on a special piece of European land.