poemimage

Where text meets image. Where the visual intersects the literary. Often posting 1st drafts and editing in (almost) real time.

Month: March, 2015

March 26, 2015

aeroplane

f

Experiments at the Hadron Collider

were perhaps on my mind

as I digitally revised

the image of a crowd

observing an early flying machine.

various flights

The serendipity of the moment

was surprising.

I realized I wanted

to add text.

adventure-3

The first page I turned to,

in the first book I opened,

a paperback I bought for one dollar

many years ago

titled

Cinema in Revolution,

mentioned the word aeroplane

almost immediately.

new sky

‘Generally speaking the character of the local people helped us a lot.

They are very sensible.

Nothing surprises them; they continued about their business

without paying any attention to the camera.

m

They did all the market scenes themselves,

at our request,

perfectly calmly and amiably

and exactly as we wanted.

They are really excellent people.

orb 3h

When we needed to collect a large number of them

 together for the final scenes,

the aeroplane served as bait.

We offered them trips in the plane.

Well, as I say, nothing surprised them!

grey zone

They saw an aeroplane for the first time in their lives,

and they got into it as calmly as might be –

a man must not show that he is frightened of anything.

happening 3people

As for the monks, the lamas, it was even more simple:

they said that all this had already existed long ago,

only men had not considered it useful,

so had forgotten it…

l

Pudovkin was very impressed by all this.

We made the film,

with a very strong feeling

for all its living material.’

structure 2

Interview recorded in Moscow (1965)

with

Anatoli Goloynya – Cinematographer,

Storm Over Asia.

tools

Page 149, Cinema in Revolution,

Hill and Wang, 1973.

Edited by Luda and Jean Schnitzer

and Marcel Martin.

Translated by David Robinson.

in partsepia

As a result of the Khrushchev cultural thaw

Russians were able to see the work

of the Soviet experimental filmmakers

for the first time

since they were suppressed

under Stalin.

spectacle

Director Vsevolod Pudovkin’s 1928 film

Storm Over Asia 

can be found on YouTube.

escape2

In 1848,

an archaeological expedition working in Egypt

discovered hieroglyphs of flying machines

at an ancient temple in Abydos,

several hundred miles south of Cairo.

h

I do not claim copyright to the original image

of spectators & the flying machine

(photographer unknown).

I have revised the image to create a new work

for non-commercial purposes.

man in the moonhhm

8 Comments
March 20, 2015

SAINTS IN MY RAIN by Silva Zanoyan Merjanian

royal 3triple
I learned the rain in cursive slants

I learned 
lying on doubts

spread on the sacred and not

spread on my bed, my pillow, my exhale

the crust of every lie I loved

tainted with silver sliver of your tongue

frametriple

I turned that night on its back

after you went to bed

your streets indebted

to shadows of restless dreams

bruising on its replaced ribs

where trash collectors compress

disposed remnants

in the ruble

life’s severed limbs

an envy here

a longing there

a nothingness holier than my prayers

movie 3triple

and I add

that face without the lips

under the face with muffled shame

under the face I used to have

on heaps of unfinished poems

where a lemon tree and jasmine blossoms

promised mornings

colored and scented at my fingertips

shadow2

I learned the rain in every lie

in stammer of your pavements

where Saints gather in line at rock bottoms stacked

between my howl and a crow’s black squawk

wrists dripping prayers on St Rita’s solemn face

she sympathizes but says tonight she owns the ledge

glowtriple

there’s always mad laughter at the foot of beds

where Saints sleep on their sides facing the drapes

that catch the city’s quieting breath

misting under street lamps

that catch impelled compromise

in bourbon shots and blues on a clarinet

as lonely as you

that time when you asked my name

sometimes I tell you

long after you’ve gone to bed

wispish

Silva Zanoyan Merjanian is a widely published poet residing in Southern California. Her work is featured in international publications.  Silva’s  second volume of poetry Rumor will be released by Cold River Press in March 2015.

x32x18x18shadow2royal 3triple

22 Comments
March 4, 2015

‘Mythological Visions of the Nature of Time’ (William Irwin Thompson)

2

In the post-Pleistocene period the glaciers retreated,

the seashore rose 300 feet,

the tundra turned to forest,

and the great herds disappeared

from Western Europe.

3

 And gone with the animals

was the great ‘high culture’

of Ice Age humanity.

5

It is not hyperbole

to speak of the high culture

of these hunters and gatherers,

for cave paintings like Lascaux

9

are complex works that speak rather eloquently

9

for the abundant leisure

and rich cosmology

of their creators.

13

Primitive humanity devoted

most of its spare time

to matters of ritual and art.

555

As a contemplative people with time on their hands,

they gave much thought to menstruation and the moon,

observed nature,

16

constructed a calendar,

told stories,

27

and painted hundreds of thousands

of images

on the walls

of the caves.

27
As the Sistine Chapel expresses

the flowering of the culture

of the Renaissance,

so Lascaux expresses the flowering

of the culture

of the Magdalenians.

272

In more ways than one,

the two great murals have much in common,

for they are not mere decoration;

they are mythological visions

of the nature of time.

9

‘The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light: Mythology, Sexuality & the Origins of Culture’ – William Irwin Thompson

11 with credit131313

12 Comments