collage

Optics

does what I construct
from what I see
fit the idea
of me?

can I be mirrored
repeated copied
multiplied

contained in reflection–
momentary glimpses–
light entering
eye?

translating possibility
into something visible,
manifest–

always an after
to an image as
elusive as
before

For both of this week’s dVerse prompts, from Mish (eye) and De (quadrille of possibilty).

There was a time when I did many many eye collages, and the illustrations here are from about seven years (and many lifetimes) ago. These are both good prompts, and I still have some ideas…

If the circle opens, will it become a line? (new moon/almost like praying)

I wanted to reblog my response to an old prompt of Sue Vincent’s in honor of the New Moon this weekend. The Oracle had something to say about it too.

In my original post, I explained my inspiration: I discovered this week that the plural for luna mare (moon sea) is lunar maria …is that wonderful, or what?  So when I saw Sue Vincent’s Luna photo prompt, above, I had to incorporate it into my response.

Here’s the poem I wrote for Sue’s photo:

The arc of
lunar mountains, edged
dark with bays
of basalt…
Maria!—your names reflect
as mirrors to fill

with sorrow,
forgetfulness, snakes,
storms and fear.
Can we find
the sea of tranquility
and sail into dreams?

between is and if only
we listen
as earth grows restless

breathing wild ancient song
beneath murmuring leaves

climbing windshine
over rock rooted paths

wandering through the hidden secrets
of the moon’s dark night

And of course this song is still and always appropriate.

You can see 14 other interpretations of “Maria” here.

Also linking to Earthweal Open Link Weekend.

swing stroll slide

be
bop shout–
rhythm–blues–
eight to the bar–
oompah oompah groove–
boogie-woogie back beat
jingle jangle jive talkin
double time front line howl growl whine–
interlude solitude riff raff boom–
whistle whomp wah wah zoomba zoomba zoom

The Kick-About’s challenge #14 was a short film by Norman Maclaren called “Boogie Doodle”. It really reminded me of Matisse’s Jazz collages, and I used his abstracted figures as inspiration to create my own dancers based on photos of jazz dancers I found on the internet. I also wanted to recreate the shadow effect for both the dancers and the dots. Primary colors seemed a natural fit for both dots and ground, and I cut out the figures in black and white as contrast, inspired by the film.

For the poem I wanted to use music and musical sound words. It was much harder than I anticipated, but I like the idea of a poem composed mostly of sounds, and may visit it again. I found a great onomatopoeia dictionary online too.

Linking to dVerse OLN hosted by Linda.

Headlines

The Voice kept trying to turn him back—“there is nothing behind the wall except a space where the wind whistles”—but he refused to believe its repeated lies.

And yet he could not find the source, hidden somewhere within the dimensionless shadows of the vertical, the angled, the edge.

He himself was scrabbled, suspended out of sight, waiting underneath many meaningless layers of illusion.  The indifference did not bother him; neither did the newsprint words strewn carelessly about. 

He considered himself abandoned, lost inside an unwritten story.  Curious strings embedded his thoughts in articles torn from the back page.

But what had happened to his body?  It was a puzzle he could not figure out.  He could see, listen, think.  But his position never changed.

Was his mind an orphan, birthed incompletely, accidentally, a false start left unfinished?

Was he himself the Voice?

I did this collage a few months ago, and I’ve been waiting for the right words to pair with it. Merril’s prosery prompt at dVerse,
“there is nothing behind the wall
except a space where the wind whistles”
from “Drawings By Children” by Lisel Mueller
found its way into an old freewrite page in my notebook that contained the phrase newsprint words strewn carelessly about and gave it some shape.

how she flies

I’ve been working on this collage all week, and I asked the Oracle about it.

moon dances

open nevertime

ask air to let nightflower ghosts
bleed spirits like wild dark
star angels

the rhythm of eternity
wakes the secrets of fools–
voices that devour the hauntings
lingering in the icy oceans
of desire

Also linking again to Earthweal’s moondance.

Ersilia

skulls of saints–
the bones of the dead
dismantled–
spiritual songs

the bones of the dead
seeking a form–
spiritual songs,
grey life

seeking a form–
labyrinth,
grey life–
they are nothing

labyrinth,
consumed moon–
they are nothing–
times chant

consumed moon,
intricate relationships–
times chant
blood

intricate relationships
dismantled–
blood,
skulls of saints

A pantoum mash up of phrases from Samuel Greenberg’s “The Pale Impromptu” for Laura at dVerse, and The Kick-About prompt #13 “Ersilia” from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.

The Kick-About prompt immediately made me want to take actual thread and do something three-dimensional to represent the abandoned city of Ersilia. Cardboard boxes were my starting point. Weaving my embroidery floss with a needle between the supports I cut and folded up, it became obvious how the city inhabitants became tangled in a state of impasse, forcing them to move on.

I decided to do a landscape background–the text spoke of viewing the deserted city from the mountains–and I spent a lot of time laying out possible landscapes on my floor from the collage references I had. I then dismantled and retaped a box to make a sort of diorama and glued the landscape pieces down.

Then I had fun rearranging the threaded bones of the city and photographing it from different viewpoints against the background.

Laura’s prompt, to incorporate phrases from Greenberg’s poem into our own verse, made me think of combining those words with phrases taken from the Calvino excerpt. There seemed to be an affinity between the two.

I read “Invisible Cities” in 2016 and posted a review on Goodreads. At the end I wrote: “Certainly it inspires visions that could be transferred to paper…and perhaps some of them will come to form for me at a future time.” And so they have.