poemimage

The visual & the poetic.

Category: Poetic & Visual Narrative

GIF Experiments: 22 (The Charge of the Light Brigade)

Although the title in the GIF looks like a book and the GIF looks like a book trailer it’s not. However I created poetic text after the fact.

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The Light Brigade

As in

Let There Be Light.

Witness

The mechanics of charging light.

Witness traction activate

Clouds of unknowing known

As muscled determination.

The mechanical opposite to A sucker born every minute.

Touch your tongue to the tent of your mouth. Announce

Charge

Pronounce light

As in

Let There Be Light.

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Notes on the GIF: Intimations of Runic script transform into curvilinear vegetal design indicating a charging beast. It happened visually by itself (so to speak) during the design process.

Finding ‘his’ footing. Gaining traction. The irony of a ‘massive’ beast doing double-duty as charging light. Charging like flashlight beams in a force field? Surely he is not disembodied.

This GIF ponders our pressing situation, universal as it is, and the question of something, anything, out of the blue in reply.

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GIF Experiments: 21 (Crossing Timelines in the Imagination)

The Augustinian Francesco Petrarch travels backwards into the Dark Ages and witnesses President John Kennedy trying to calm Lyndon Johnson. Kennedy senses the unknown. The King of Naples in 1341 appoints Francesco Petrarch Poet Laureate. His sonnets, some say, become the model for lyrical poetry. He writes a book of imaginary letters to Saint Augustine. He writes about this experience. Kennedy considers the known and the unknown.

No martyr is among ye now
Whom you can call your own
So go on your way accordingly
But know you’re not alone

from I Dreamed I Saw Saint Augustine by Bob Dylan

I wasn’t able to find the name of the artist (painter) or photographer. In any case I do not claim copyright for the images used for non-commercial purposes of commentary and refashioning new art works.

GIF Experiments: 20 (World’s Greatest Guard Dog)

The ‘Guard Dog’ above is absurd on an obvious level. He’s clearly a harmless creature not a guard dog. Yet he is the World’s Greatest Guard Dog. Absurd. Or maybe the treasure he is guarding only needs a tiny woof and it will hide itself. I don’t know – maybe. I like to think the DADA artists might have smiled upon this little guy expected to be, or pretended to be, fierce. I’ve read they enjoyed the anarchic chaos of Keystone Cops movies and, of course, the genius of Charlie Chaplin. John Heartfield and the DADA artists created not only wildly inventive and incisive commentaries on war – war profiteering – and class privilege but did so with scathing absurdist humour. Heartfield lived in a dangerous time. His artistic satire put him in great danger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Heartfield

1/10 complete by one unit of measurement

I purchased a 33′ roll of Italian paper substantial enough to receive water-based materials: ink, gouache, watercolour, aquapasta medium and water-soluble graphite. The idea is to work in sections and following each section to pause, reflect on the work, and cross-reference it to what I believe to be relevant source material.

GIF Experiments: 17 (Line Drawings + a Song Title by Van Morrison)

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GIF Experiments: 16 (Take a Photograph of What You Love)

I divided 190 images (manipulated in Photoshop) used in these three GIFS into three groups – arbitrarily. Many were repetitive and yet many unique. I sought to give each GIF its own visual rhythm. Then I added a phrase to the third GIF: Take a photograph of what you love.

I reworked and juxtaposed two medieval paintings, a photograph of Jacqueline Kennedy in Dallas, and a photograph of Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin.

Language in a Landscape

One of the images I used for a backdrop in Zoom during my virtual poetry reading at The Art Bar Poetry Reading Series on April 6th. During the first lockdown I painted this 18″ X 28.5″ work (acrylic & water-soluble graphic pencil on cardboard) while exploring concepts of lost text and mystery languages. My reading (video filmed and edited by Charles Hackbarth) can be found @ https://www.facebook.com/groups/artbarpoetry/permalink/10165105586530503/

I have been slowly working my way through Marina Tsvetaeva’s ‘Art in the Light of Conscience – Eight Essays on Poetry’ and read yesterday about Zhukovsky’s translation of Goethe’s Erlking. There is a child, on a horse, held in his father’s arms… All new to me. I borrowed the image and added that bit about ‘the only city’ and related the child’s emotions to String Theory. To not do justice to Tsvetaeva’s essay titled Two Forest Kings I’ll just call it mesmerizing.