SUUPAA FURAFFII (Super Fluffy) (c) 2004 Yumiko Kayukawa
SUUPAA FURAFFII (Hatsu Yuki)
for Yumiko Kayukawa
seal hunter polar
bear losing traction on ice
is human at home
Superflat Elephant Blues (Atsusa)
for Chinatsu Ban
piercing wit reveals
elephant sagacity
hidden enigma
Survivor (Kasumi)
for Aya Takano
blue octopus ink
deimatic display acts
counter maneuvers
Refusal To Be Cast as the Observed 2008 18X24 Acrylic and Pigment Stick by Anna Montgomery
for Camille Claudel
Mode de vie
‘Men have expelled you
from the world of symbols…’
born of the culture
knowing eyes ready
to absorb aesthetic influence
caught in gender’s ontological ruse
cast as muse
Le artiste (le future)
‘and yet they have given you names…’
Rodin’s model, mistress
influencer, collaborator
sculptor, painter, a creator
but never equal (non pair)
Le mûr age (fermeture)
‘They say the language you speak
is made up of signs that rightly speaking
designate what men have appropriated.’
poverty and obscurity
now cast out these are
your gifts from society
one that finds no place for
‘a revolt against nature:
a woman genius’
you work, you destroy
anger spirals inward
La fatalité (destinée)
‘They say the language you speak
is made up of words
that are killing you.’
committing you
doctor’s try to convince
Paul to let you out
he refers to you
in the past tense
lying in a communal grave
no one claims you
Camille Claudel public domain
Notes: Camille Claudel was a French sculptor and painter. Art critic Octave Mirbeau called her ‘a revolt against nature: a woman genius’. She was a genius destroyed by the concept of gender and her society. ‘Men have expelled you from the world of symbols and yet they have given you names . . . . They write, of their authority to accord names, that it goes back so far that the origin of language itself may be considered an act of authority emanating from those who dominate . . . they have attached a particular word to an object or a fact . . . . They say the language you speak is made up of words that are killing you. They say the language you speak is made up of signs that rightly speaking designate what men have appropriated.’ is from Les Guerilleres by radical French feminist Monique Wittig. Camille Claudel’s surviving masterpiece which dealt with the dissolution of her relationship with Auguste Rodin was called by several names: The Mature Age; The Destiny; the Way of Life; The Fate. After her break with Rodin she fell into poverty and obscurity. Her younger brother Paul had her wrongfully committed to a mental institution where she eventually died and was buried in a mass grave.
The Emplorer by Camille Claudel
Linked at dVerse Poets Pub for Open Link Night #12 – please join us http://dversepoets.com/2011/10/04/openlinknightweek-12/
Linked to http://dversepoets.com/2011/10/01/dverse-poetics-pop-art/ prompt! Get your pop art on and join us!
DOB (art toy) by Anna Montgomery
Hot off the presses in Tokyo, Paris, Miami Beach
Aya Takano’s octopus (tako) fights
with a topless high heeled girl
to set the scene – what planet are we on?
A spaceship – last week she flew over a plane –
indigo intensity battling hot pink haute couture
while Hayao Miyazaki’s animation plays
background noise on High Def TV
Yoshitomo Nara’s dog slashes with a knife! through Takashi Murakami’s 727
Pop art snogs graffiti art
anime crashes into Japanese street culture
it’s all so surreal, post-modern hip now kiddies
Louis Vuitton claims kawaii (drop dead cute in Japanese!)
Too cool for school little girls
smoke cigarettes shouting through
pouting mouths ‘power to the punx!’
(adorning manga inspired canvases)
Feel the pain/kill the pain (squash it FLAT!) it’s all too much, it’s harmless!
A solid fist declaration of war for yourself!
Haunt it, flaunt it, kiss it, Kaikai Kiki Co Ltd. produce it!
Travel to outer space from your living room
build social capital, put bling on your phone
(get caught standing next to the giant boobs of Miss Ko!)
Tan Tan Bo Puking high meets low (only $350,000 USD) let’s all have a go!
Kid Robot toy painted
pop icon DOB gets your head
S P I N N I N G
subculture hot house demands
Are you in the know?
Didn’t think so.
STEAL THIS POEM
To learn more about the superflat art movement (Japanese Pop Art) click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superflat and to learn about Kaikai Kiki Co Ltd. (in English) click http://english.kaikaikiki.co.jp/whatskaikaikiki/
Linked to dVerse Sestina challenge http://dversepoets.com/2011/09/22/formforall-sestina-and-its-variations/
Torn Anna Montgomery 2011 Oil on Board
(Dedicated to A.S. Byatt, all quotes are from her lips or her books, some of the poem comes from an Artist Statement I wrote for a solo show in 2005)
Whistler (click to hear the poem read)
Her ‘greatest terror which is simply domesticity’ with its denial of liberty
Struggling with feminism: ‘their language, like their bodies, was a dreadful hybrid’
Tyranny was a death sentence, via lethal injection, to her volition
For one who’s ‘passionately interested in language’, her display monumentally erudite
An engagement in the broader world, in an expansive psyche
Within her I recognize genius, incandescent purpose, need, here is my encomia
Prizes line up to offer formal encomia
Each reinforcing and elaborating her intellectual liberty
‘I like to write about people who think, to whom thinking is as important and exciting (and painful) as sex or eating’ in full embrace of psyche
Admitting ‘writing is always so dangerous. It’s very destructive.’ a paradoxical hybrid
A concatenation of zoology, myth, dystopia, psychology, art, politics, ethics truly erudite
Displaying all the passions of mind within her volition
‘She would give anything for a child and had duly given birth to a monster’, this volition
A half-hedgehog half-boy, an ugly creature, hardly her desired encomia
Whom she fed just the same, coddled, and loved for his mind, agile and erudite
Suckling on, then weaned, speaking the half-breed language of liberty
Embracing his role as an evolutionary hybrid
Evolving, Eros to Psyche
‘Structures of authority, of persecution, of hierarchy’ excised from the psyche
All these things ‘which led to oppression’ in a great caving of volition
Were cast aside, power a twisted, engineered hybrid
He’s ‘a naturally pessimistic animal’ leery of encomia
Who set out into the world to define his liberty
Circumnavigating, investigating, experiencing all distilled to become more erudite
Encountering Whistlers, bird women, their ‘feather words and skin words grown into each other’ his sight is erudite
Singing and whistling in a cacophony emitting from the dual psyche
They had been banished, pariah, for their desire and seizing of liberty
Each act of will now a strained volition
‘We wanted the speed and danger of the wind’ the Artic Tern sang our encomia
Twinning dualities longing to be whole or at least embrace multiplicity, no vile hybrid
I hear this echo in in my painting language, a hybrid
Where I spin ambiguity and chaos in a sphere of erudite
Possibilities, pluralism, and paradox not garnering encomia
But pain, confusion, a language unclear, but of the psyche
Birthed from my own volition
An unshackled liberty
Encomium is not a purpose for art, it is a bastard hybrid
Liberty oppressed to the sick purpose of an erudite
Psyche that panders to ambition’s deadly volition
This is in response to the Poetics prompt on silent film @ dVerse.
Note: Spoken and written language, numerical skills, reasoning, and control of the right side of the body occur in the left hemisphere. The right hemisphere is responsible for control of the left side of the body, music processing, emotional thinking, and perceiving visual-spatial relations. The two hemispheres are connected by the corpus callosum.
Mesa Verde National Park Anna Montgomery
‘Was machst du?’
‘Excuse me, when will
the 10:30 Long House tour return?’
I’m not wearing a park ranger uniform
this happens all the time at Target
I have a customer service face in America
crowds of eager eyes and restless voices
little myth making for me here today
paucity of material
meets 100 degree heat
melting the initiators
global warming’s a gift from America
no room for thought
society’s lost its silence
can’t read Black Zodiac in peace
The Appalachian Book of the Dead
‘Go in fear of abstractions’
Charles Wright was born
in Pickwick Dam, Tennessee
here in America
returning to sketching
I try to make marks
meaningful in my privacy
so awkward with an audience
trespassing at the Ancestral Puebloan site
Utes got a corner, whites got a park
(archaeologists named them Anasazi,
Navajo word for ancient people
or ancient enemy)
method of loci, utterly American
retreat to the car
inner dialogue
(chattering monkeys)
we are having a very disparate
experience of this America
I worry I am a creature made
only for the hearth
open to the vast landscapes
of the mind and nature
so little at home
in this narrow, confounding ‘America’
the breeze soothes
nested in the tail gate
interrupted only by traffic, bird calls
my solace is won, art lives,
making the world real again
escaping America
the mark must be made
it must be fixed
time to draw the line
an infinitely nuanced touch
like the potent power of naming
this line must be drawn
with curves and crooks
from a fleshy hand
New Amsterdam descendent, all American
since 1640 before she had a name
I’m awaiting the alternative reality of America
Notes: Mesa Verde (‘green table’ in Spanish) National Park was the first park founded under the Americans Antiquities Act of 1906 is located in the SW corner of Colorado near the Four Corners area. This is where the state lines of Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado join. It is on a high stone cliff (7000-8000+ feet in elevation). Long House is on top of Weatherill Mesa and is one of the many sites where the Ancestral Puebloans or Ancient Pueblo Peoples lived between 600AD and 1300AD. The Utes, whose reservation is in the area of Mesa Verde, are not descendants of the Ancient Pueblo Peoples. Anasazi is a Navajo word meaning ‘ancient ones’ or ‘ancient enemies’ an odd choice for archeologists to make, the modern Pueblo Peoples, who claim them as ancestors, prefer the name Ancestral Puebloans.
‘Was machst du?’ is ‘What are you doing?’ in German.
Target is a US corporation: ‘Our mission is to make Target the preferred shopping destination for our guests by delivering outstanding value, continuous innovation and an exceptional guest experience by consistently fulfilling our Expect More. Pay Less.® brand promise. To support our mission, we are guided by our commitments to great value, the community, diversity and the environment.’
The Ute Indian Tribe consists of more than 13 historic groups that included the Capote, Cumumba, Moache, Moanumts, Pah Vant, Parianuche, San Pitch, Sheberetch, Taviwach, Timanogots, Tumpanawach, Uintah, Uncompahgre, White River, Weeminuche, and Yamperika. They were forced out of many areas of the West after the Ute War and now hold the Uintah & Ouray, Southern Ute, and Ute Mountain reservations. Today they are self-governed, ‘domestic dependent nations’, with many sovereign powers retained from the pre-contact period. There are currently 500 tribal governments recognized in America.
Charles Wright is an American poet who won the Pulitzer Prize for Black Zodiac in 1998. ‘Go in fear of abstractions’ is from his The Appalachian Book of the Dead. Pickwick Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Tennessee River in Hardin County.
New Amsterdam, from 1614-1644 part of the New Netherland Territory, was the settlement that became New York City. It grew up to provide security to the Dutch East India Company’s fur trade (a megacorporation). The land was purchased from the Lenape, Algonquin Native Americans, for 60 guilders. The Lenape tribe mostly ended up forced into the Oklahoma Territory, within the Cherokee Nation, in the 1860s. My ancestors, 11 generations back, Michael Paulus Van Der Voort (later Vanderford) and Marritie Joris Rapalje came to New Amsterdam in 1640. He was from Dermonde, Flanders, Netherlands. I’ve traced most of my ancestors back 10-11 generations to the first immigrants arriving in the 1600s from Scotland, Ireland, England, Wales, Germany, Netherlands, and France.
He nevertheless produced backdated “self-forgeries” both to profit from his earlier success, and as an act of revenge—retribution for the critical preference for his early work.
This is a post for the dVerse prompt on artist Giorgio de Chirico.
Casting Hollow Precipices (click to read the poem read)
Querulous forming bodies gesticulating
specious melancholy turns flickering ivy wilting bowers
casting hollow precipices of venial autophagy
jumping lascivious shelters along tantalizing downspouts
while frivolity and hope cavort
illuminated by broken serrated wine gardens
licking poisonous frills up vestments
of nouns arborous consuming limitless
Prussian blue snuffers frothing magnanimity
sliding deconstructed zoological gathers
while populating quips radiating aspect ratios
lined parallax of jinxes or bemoaning victorious
tumbled traits unconscious on smothered nauseous florid grandiosity
bailing sensitive assurances with galloping crowns gilded
hampering flotillas of bawdy helium didactic formal art perched
dying in vitriolic plumes of xeric tomes unending
Bas Jan Ader ‘I’m too sad to tell you’
Brutality Between the Lines (<—click to hear the poem read)
“I don’t really like human nature unless…”
requiem for the unsung
Phillip Glass scores
obsessive tracks
drama at river Ouse
mourning, death grimace
cataleptic rigidity
art forms suicide note
Bas Jan Aders
missives of pain
I’m too sad to tell you
broadcast without expatiation
Rothko’s emanating spirituality silences
she fills her overcoat pockets with stones
sexual abuse knocks mental illness
click and add the weight
there are more
you won’t drown with less
art as consoler
doesn’t transform the pain
allures with vows of immortality
Pol Pot slaughtered millions
driving toward the tabula rasa
an entire society stripped
cinematic epic can’t revive
or ferry spirits home
from killing fields
burnishing aesthetic pall
this poem is a postcard
sugared and heating on the stove
thermometer ready
poisonous confection
Helen Chadwick’s golden locks
entwined with sow’s intestine
“You see, I can’t even write this properly.”
Ars memorativa; parlor tricks
trauma plays on the mind
positive bias memory distortion
works its illusions on all:
holocaust survivor
recovering addict
aspiring artist
schema of selective processing
regulates the current state
cooing emotional well-being
smoothes the heinous crimes
stories we tell evolve
voyeuristic titillations for consuming masses
molding the world into utopias of art
ignorant of the price
products worth infinitely more
than the life that birthed them
aftershock of naïveté
Adeline Virginia Stephen had a name before she was
“…all candied over with art.”
Notes: “I don’t really like human nature unless all candied over with art.” Virginia Woolf. “You see, I can’t even write this properly.” is from her suicide note. She drowned in the Ouse River. Bas Jan Aders was lost at sea while performing “In Search of the Miraculous”. His body was never found. Mark Rothko overdosed on antidepressants and slit his wrists. His estate was contested in a 10 year court battle know as the Rothko Case. Helen Chadwick died from a viral infection contracted at the hospital while shooting ‘Unnatural Selection’, a series on IVF embryos rejected for implantation. Killing Fields won 3 Oscars (nominated for 7), 8 BAFTAs (nominated for 13) and grossed $34,609,720 US. Haing Somnang Ngor, who won both the Oscar and BAFTA for his performance, survived the Khmer Rouge only to be murdered in Los Angeles. After the release of The Killing Fields, Ngor had told a New York Times reporter, “If I die from now on, OK! This film will go on for a hundred years.”
Endophytic Incursions (click to hear this poem read)
Synchronicity ensconced reveals nugatory variables
apophenia of writer invariant: subversive hallucinatory crippled vessels
their mesostic corrugated tentacles of substantive poetic egests
may mask irreplaceable profundities
pinned in unpersecuted opposition they create borderline synaesthesia
presenting artists as warped furled fecund hosts
suffering endophytic incursions
jostled oubliettes of bulbous traipsing ladders connecting
twining implosions arch upon the oeuvre and ignite nesting charges
of gravitas and blather a mulled kinship born perniciously or merely neurologically
they may illuminate or obscure, form a gestalt or dissociate
matters of quiddity hoisted upon ontological backtracking
accelerating dilatory insights
atomic breakdowns, each quark mensurated
in reductionist monochromatic gatherings
stultify creative impulses
dense joyous words weighted with luscious delectable gustation
visual fields dripping with chords of music inviting
xenologic etiquette of intertwining nebulae
lilting effluvia
Dioxazine Eyes Scrying (click here to hear this poem read)
palette knives flick interference red
pouring sublimation and holy rites along
horizons of Mehndi adorned canopic jars
eons of sounding bells striking
like vestigial reflexes
Naples yellow under French ultramarine hues
in drift chambers where saturation
blankets Antarctic glaciers sloughing into
anti-cavitation valves emoting indigo
in transcendental release
sienna fidelity blurs marigold rituals as
deep turquoise strokes plebian decorum
nuances of cadmium connect rustling wisteria
highlighted by terre verte jaune brillant imperial
dioxazine eyes scrying those
ever-fixed marks
I’m an Executive Director with a doctorate in education, a consultant, painter, photographer, composer, poet, and vocalist.
