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Less Intense: Equally Effective?

Filed under: Personal, Science — 21 Comments

September 14, 2013

mixed media visual journal by Anna Chamberlain (sticker is from a Listerine bottle)

my depth of processing
a sensitivity to subtle stimuli
creates emotional reactivity

being overly aroused –
not as fun as it sounds –
contributes to my
vastly nuanced nature

an innate trait
hardwired into my
nervous system
makes me different
I live in a CAPITAL
letter world

full of bright lights and loud noises
a shock and awe campaign
against my nerves
a life of too much stimulation

I need time alone
to recuperate from this
strongly empathetic,
intuitive existence
this overactive conscientiousness

introversion encounters
my complex inner life
I’m moved immensely
by music and art
these creative gifts
of my active imagination

I chastise myself:
don’t cry at road kill
feel love with casualness
develop thicker skin
focus less on others
BE NORMAL FOR FIVE MINUTES

I engage my copings strategies:
overachieving (an understatement)
because I don’t want to be criticized
walking on eggshells (tightrope)
because I am deeply affected by your moods
project a veneer of self-assurance (pretending)
because I want to be like you

yet I cannot be other than I am
so this intense, responsive,
O-V-E-R-W-H-E-L-M-E-D
(highly sensitive person)
will have to become empowered
by naming this state of being,
become emboldened by its truth

If you’d like to take a psychologically valid self-test to see if you’re a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) you may do so here.

Tags: poetry

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Transmission Lost

Filed under: Art, History, Music, Mythology, Postmodern, Tribute — 12 Comments

September 12, 2013

Fallen Angel by Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1981

Music by David Chamberlain, Jr., poetry by Anna Chamberlain, and the lyric ‘all we ever wanted to say was chased erased and then blown away’ is from the Janelle Monae song, Many Moons. Hit play above, this is a spoken word piece.

Tags: experimental poetry, jazz poetry, poetry

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Tanztheater (Totentanz)

Filed under: Art, History, Philosophy, Postmodern, Tribute — 21 Comments

September 6, 2013

The Triumph of Death by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

I speak now to the audience in your head
not the voice that reads this line
(nor the voice that speaks alongside it)
but instead to the part of you
that observes the voice,
(hush now)
watch the unfolding theater:

here is an excursion of the artist into war
from the safety of the mind’s constructs
(you will not have to take a stance)
so you, the observer,
have assurances
double indemnity

Pina choreographs the performers
writhing masterfully among the corpses
wrap flesh around their toes
to raise on point
(incongruous)

upon a beach invaded
by the long dead
(whale song)
marching to the sacred shrine
(come away)
the listening shores rebound

hand-held spotlight illuminates
an iron triangle against the
politics of a graffiti sky
jagged edges slice the dancers
(to operatic pleas)

she stands alone
undulating arms
(come away)
frenetic, kinetic shapes
haunt in liminal space
(collapsing)
consume your ideas,
bury your children

confront the psychology of obstacles
strewn across a room within a world,
a café, a memory, a drama
(inextricable motion)
painting your psyche,
(behind the fourth wall)

bid the virtues,
bid the graces
(come)
daughters of art

cry your overflowing river of dust
a rite of spring granting muddied feet
to reclaim the earth of this stage

incursions into our perspectives
wormholes to exquisite pain
(as I write to you)
of this excursion
of the artist
into war

we close the door (castaways)
seaweed tossed by the storm
mimicking the dance
emotive intensity whirls
in the roar

violent intent permeates Nature,
from whom we learn not
seeing with closed eyes

you hear my voice, your voice,
the observer draws horrific pictures
for your inner sight
you travel, exploring this interior
view of war

at a remove that fans out
like a house of mirrors
dancers mime

(terror)

(exhaustion)

(bloodlust)

death

Pina Bausch 1940-2009

Tags: experimental poetry, poetry

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Depth of Field

Filed under: Art, Tribute — 13 Comments

September 2, 2013

Public domain

resurrected starlight invents cinema
erotic imagination projections
on larger than life screens

mimetic art form
redefining life
and its observation

illusion of motion
cut scene magic
within the festival of lights

beacon of ideas
revolutionizing societies
auteurs of phantom rides

ghost images to
ignite ethical compassion
unveil humanity

close up transitions
create natural intimacy
resonate with voyeurs

audience insights blooming
with the actor’s realization
wide eyed neo-language

its adepts infusing images
with eros, editing the story,
expanding the possible

in a radius defined by aperture
limited and standardized by
35 millimeter film gauge

establishing shots for a new history
intercuts surpassing theater
fragmented space of interiority

conceptual leaps create
sublime, psychological enigmas
human counterparts enacting

the lifecycle of stars
nebulas, supernovas, and black holes,
hype, fame and tragedy

grace, luxury, and sexual tension
in rapturous movie palaces
atmospheric colors heightening

glamour birthed by shape-shifting
purveyors of fantasies,
Hollywood lawbreakers

studio sets creating reality
scrubbing the world clean
of the marginalized

contrasted by dissidents slicing
an eye, a suggestive sea urchin
burning in lava flows of psychosis

yet its legacy lies instead
in the fundamentally humanizing
activity of poetic arcs:

in desperation a young girl
ties leaves to branches to save her sister
from a death foretold when they fall

an intruder stumbles upon an
abused wife, humbling the husband
and helps her fractured self become whole

a bereaved mother cannot
bear the sight of a family of mice
killed by the neighbor’s cat

as an orchestra must disband
its cellist becomes an undertaker,
Shinto ritual bearer for the dead

a grieving widower travels across
the world to engage
Butoh and finds peace

angels bear witness to the trials
of the living, recording their lives until one
becomes mortal from an abundance of love

an aging couple visiting their grown children
find them too busy, leaving their wellbeing
in the hands of a widowed daughter-in-law

through the poetry of these films,
drifting pictures, thoughts, and experiences
we arrive at the carnival of arts

light captured to illuminate our inner worlds
showing us how to love, mourn, and grow,
to spin art from the raw materials of our lives

Tags: poetry

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Creation

Filed under: Art, Love, Mythology — 2 Comments

September 1, 2013

Seraphina (Oil, mixed media 2013)

within this country of perpetual surprise
she inhabits the seven storied house

atop the mountain she writes our fates
illuminated pages in her golden notebook

stepping from the root of the cosmic tree
guiding souls into the world

she invested painting with the power
to circumscribe my time

a metronome marking the elaborate
science of observation, the creation
of self, phrasing, without pause,

these excruciating and ecstatic moments
in brushstrokes saturated with the
pathos of a portrait in blue

my transgression from tradition
metalanguage of spontaneity,
inspired inscriptions

perhaps the mother of cradles,
beside this lake of milk,
will open the portal of being

breathe life into another
fulfilling my desire to embody

Ajysyt, birth giver,
cup gently your warm hands,
form an offering bowl

Tags: poetry

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On the Outside

Filed under: Allegory, Art — 17 Comments

August 24, 2013

I Follow the Wind by Judith Clay (used with permission)

(a children’s poem
inspired by the art
of Judith Clay)

I was once, you see,
a clockwork child
never understanding
all these pieces of me

Alone in a room
I couldn’t manage
to work, no matter
how many fixes I contrived
to my intricate damage

Until one day
I heard a peculiar sound
a roar and a squeak
from a lion I found

He was like me,
part whole and part wheel,
and he endeavored to see
beyond the difficulty, I feel

My trouble, he said
was staying at home in bed
wheels are for turning
and with the wind at our backs
we found our motion,
our own perfect paths

linked to Poetics at dVerse Poets Pub

Tags: children's poetry, poetry

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Too close to be named

Filed under: Art, Personal, Philosophy, Postmodern, Science — 20 Comments

July 23, 2013

Acrylic on paper 2005 Anna Chamberlain, poetry 2013

Tags: experimental poetry, poetry

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Aquiline Excitations

Filed under: Art, History, Philosophy, Postmodern, Writing — 18 Comments

July 9, 2013

Frank O’Hara 1926-1966 by Grace Hartigan

Frank O’Hara says to Grace Hartigan
‘I do not always know what I am feeling.’
(but in For Grace, After a Party
it will become about you)

spouting a poetry of indeterminacy
as he builds his identity,
a compulsion of artistry accusing
her of the betrayal of figuration

pure abstraction was required to
invent a self-referential language,
to find the convincing limits of the self
she asserted the definitive line
in his elegy in paint, Frank O’Hara, 1926-1966

now imagine the Abstract Expressionists
on Facebook, drunken missives
of fluid modernity existing within
the persistent lateral surveillance of decorum

gorging on sycophants sexting naked pictures
from the front facing cameras of smartphones
deKooning’s women couched in
an art of internalized misogyny

in this iDubai world of conspicuous
consumption, anything can be a commodity,
masquerade as a pretense or solipsistic dissolution
accompanied by a string orchestration
to score a cinematic self-expression

all devolves into projection and reflection
tactical apologues in the life of the mind
code-talker paradox a side effect
in a cyber-context devoid of meaning
simultaneously blocking and enabling communication
digital age where we cannot make marks
that depress the paper, only unembossed gloss

we’re so far from the sumptuous feasts
debauched scenes and willful obscurities
of Lycophron’s Alexandra, offering instead
staid symposia and motivational speeches
forgetting the orgiastic origins
and slave owning of the intelligentsia

Plato was the first literary dandy
explicating the joys of exploitation
revived by the Queen of Versailles
time share dream pushers building
90,000 square feet of opulence because they can
suing the filmmakers for life story rights

we bleat mutilated themes like Adele anthems
(registering attempts at emoting)
obsessive tracks running on elliptical trainers
to avoid over-hyped terrorist psychosis

virtualization is an act of fallacious connection
Time polls reiterate being rich will make you happy
performance art in the social hierarchy undermining
Rich’s dream of a common language

private and public merged
process and product revealed
so that the art and artist are one
unheeding the warning signs
Pollock’s unveiling killed him because
he knew the falsehood he stood upon
(cigarette butts and ejaculate
embedded in house paint)

how could we not continuously turn
to the melodic tones of dancing limbs?
pregnant looks, throwbacks to lover’s songs
ingestions of longing, You Belong to Me
melds into Make You Feel My Love

both speak intensely of possession,
of an invented and distorted humanity,
at the edge of thought as it becomes volition
or fades into the void, a gnat’s worth of life energy
in the storied American pursuit of happiness

Tags: experimental poetry, poetry

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• Postmodernism

  Postmodernism is an intellectual, artistic, philosophical, and/or cultural mindset that questions institutionalism, hierarchy, power, and simple, knowable truth. Alternatively it embraces complexity, contradiction, ambiguity, fractured metaphysics, multiplicity, deconstruction, and diversity. In poetry it offers semiotic liberty.

• Robert Anton Wilson

  Semantic noise also seems to haunt every communication system. A man may sincerely say, ‘I love fish,’ and two listeners may both hear him correctly, yet the two will neurosemantically file this in their brains under opposite categories. One will think the man loves to dine on fish, and the other will think he loves to keep fish (in an aquarium).

• Witold Gombrowicz

  Here is the writer who with all his heart and soul, with his art, in anguish and travail offers nourishment – there is the reader who’ll have none of it, and if he wants, it’s only in passing, offhandedly, until the phone rings. Life’s trivia are your undoing. You are like a man who has challenged a dragon to a fight but will be yapped into a corner by a little dog. from Ferdydurke

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  I’m an Executive Director with a doctorate in education, a consultant, painter, photographer, composer, poet, and vocalist.

• Gustav Flaubert

  Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.

• Dušan “Charles” Simić

  Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.

• Monique Wittig

  Language casts sheaves of reality upon the social body, stamping it and violently shaping it… Language as a whole gives everyone the same power of becoming an absolute subject through its exercise. But gender, an element of language, works upon this ontological fact to annul it as far as women are concerned and corresponds to a constant attempt to strip them of the most precious thing for a human being – subjectivity. Gender is an ontological impossibility because it tries to accomplish the division of Being. But Being is not divided. God or Man as being are One and whole. So what is this divided Being introduced into language through gender? It is an impossible Being, it is a Being that does not exist, an ontological joke, a conceptual maneuver to wrest from women what belongs to them by right: conceiving of oneself as a total subject through the exercise of language. The result of the imposition of gender, acting as a denial at the very moment when one speaks, is to deprive women of the authority of speech, and to force them to make their entrance in a crablike way, particularizing themselves and apologizing profusely. The result is to deny them any claim to the abstract, philosophical, political discourses that give shape to the social body. Gender then must be destroyed. The possibility of its destruction is given through the very exercise of language. For each time I say ‘I’ I reorganize the world from my point of view and through abstraction I lay claim to universality. This fact holds true for every locutor.

• W.S. Merwin

  All the things that really matter to us are impossible…Writing poetry is impossible. I don’t know how to write a poem. A poem – there has to be a part of it that is not my own will; it comes from somewhere that I don’t know. There is so much that comes out of what we don’t know and what we don’t have any control over. I think that one of the only things we can learn as we get older is a certain humility. – from Doing the Impossible

• Thomas Aquinas

  Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.