Transfiguration
A poetry video from eight years ago I made with a professional camera operator and video/audio editor, location sound mixer, a drummer, public domain silent film (masters!) footage, Spanish & French translation, urban footage…
poemimage
Where text meets image. Where the visual intersects the literary.
Tag: poetry
February 22, 2020
Prologue by Luciano Iacobelli
To create angels
Is to slice pie and name wedges:
difficult angles of light preserved in heart’s jelly
teenaged crushes trapped diagonally
undirected love felt in the presence of music
infatuation without object
movement in the skull
turtles waking in the mind’s mud
grape cluster the past becomes if artfully remembered
not images
but the script under them
negative space written in spelling errors
negligence that amends the soul
a family of perspectives driving a cumulative death
into the oncoming traffic
whole note in a black triangle on a blue background
disappearances denting the air
weather not noticed by the self absorbed
ignited visions
kissed ashes
barrel in the cellar
parallel fermentation of grape juice and darkness
the strong red taste of every humanizing event
stolen hour at the church dance
when a hard father’s daughter meets the one
who steals her from home
mines and quarries dug with the eyes
dream’s mailman
slipping letters through the slot
the white surrounding this
word
Luciano Iacobelli is a Toronto poet, publisher and editor. From 2007 to 2019 he was involved with Quattro books as both publisher and editor. He still runs a micropress entitled Lyricalmyrical press, specializing in hand made poetry chapbooks. As an author, he has published 6 full length books of poetry, his most recent book DOLOR MIDNIGHT was published in 2018 and deals with the subject of gambling. His next book, NOCTOGRAMS is due to be published in the fall of 2020 and deals with the subject of night and transformation.
Prologue begins THE ANGEL NOTEBOOK (Seraphim Editions, 2007)
August 4, 2017
Reposed in Flight by Ned Baeck
Basement bright with skin
shows dark, rapt faces.
They hold him
in their hearts and brains.
Someone whispered the world
is not worth becoming evil for –
On the ceiling, which is the maiden mother’s floor,
they pound, and pause, and pound again.
Blood pulsing in their fists,
the pierce of loathing under their ribs.
In a shadowed mezzanine
below the conscious mind,
they gnaw on river fish,
direct you to the wrong people,
put glitter in their eyes,
control the atmosphere,
arrange stillborn thoughts in old places.
Later they will say you brought down
the old, dull, rusted sword
with your own hands – and you did –
on the samovar that hid her hand
and the bed where she bared herself.
Motionless,
bird reposed in flight,
love for whose sake everything, murderous
and merciful, is done –
It’s so quiet now,
vouchsafed to a world of sullen depravity,
a few crumbs of dust for the broom.
The true operation of your mind – follow it –
Ned Baeck lives in Vancouver.
His poems have recently appeared in untethered, The Continuist and Sewer Lid.
His first full-length collection of poems is forthcoming from Guernica.
July 26, 2017
and we did have joy
When roadblocks appear.
Roads go to funny places.
One returns to a place.
I remember you burned the soles of your feet during coal walking at the weekend seminar.
Somebody stole your expensive Turkish sandals and replaced them with flip flops.
You didn’t stop walking.
We discovered a comet fallen to the sidewalk.
And then a colourful one.
You were afraid it would burn your feet.
You said my skin had cracked.
I touched my arm. It felt
Like a fallen column in the library at Alexandria.
Though not as old as a comet.
As old as the sidewalks put in after WW2.
On the roads that go to funny places.
Where you walked and kept going
After I stopped.
*
and
we
did
have
joy
*
May 20, 2016
From Satire to Symbol to Where is the Poem in That?
Recently in Canada we had a minor brouhaha in Parliament. A satirical magazine depicted the former Leader of the Opposition wearing a neck brace with his caucus in body casts, wheelchairs, etc…
I cropped the photo in a circle & added text to make my own satirical statement. No. I decided. Something else. So I began to manipulate the images. Emerging psychedelic shapes with the politician becoming 19th century-like wearing a clerical or clown collar.
Shapes emerged as I worked intuitively with Photoshop.
A symbol began to emerge. Or something that looked like it wanted to be a symbol.
Recently my investigations have led me (in books & online) to India where the Celtic God Cernunnos is preceded by a similarly depicted figure revealed by artifacts from the Indus Valley.
The similarities of the visual language are striking. Mythologies are a bit like dreams, arising from the same ‘bedrock’ of consciousness. Or from somewhere beneath the bedrock.
Jokes also lead to interesting places. And who might be both psychedelic and from an earlier century while wearing a clerical – clown collar. The depictor. Or the depicted. Or someone else entirely. And where is the poem in that?
Original photo credit: The Beaverton
April 4, 2016
When Birds Were Fish
One could write poetically concerning When Birds Were Fish.
Or When Birds Were Suns. When Birds Were Moons.
Soaring and skimming from here to there, across times, flying into the rivers of the underworld.
Emerging silently into the forbidding underworld of Jean Cocteau’s 1949 film Orphee, situated within the relic of postwar France: A modern world as silently old order as mythology itself.
Orphee, played by Jean Marais, interrogated by an underworld tribunal.
Stating his occupation as poet.
To write without being a writer.
The Princess of Death, played by Maria Casares, asking him for a pen (to sign her confession).
Her confession of love. He has no pen.
She laughs. She forgot he is not a writer.
The scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_o9l3OqPMk
Film images courtesy The Criterion Collection.
March 8, 2016
Marilyn Monroe reading James Joyce in a Public Park: Druidic and Bardic Powers of Enchantment (Text by Tina Fields & Photo by Eve Arnold)
Inspired poetry, regarded as a vital skill of the pagan Celtic seer, fits in with the shamanistic tenet that one must bring back any information gained from the Otherworlds to benefit the people.
One challenge to this is that visions wildly pouring forth while in deep trance can easily be forgotten during the return to ordinary waking consciousness.
They are much more likely to be retained and recalled for later use when placed in some sort of pattern which the cognitive mind can hold onto.
Through the uses of rhyme, alliteration, meter, repetition and tune to this end, the crafts of music and poetry became intimately connected with magical practice and otherworldly power and knowledge in the Celtic world.
Besides voicing deep and otherwise hidden wisdom gained while in an altered state, bards used sound to harm, heal, and alter moods and probability.
Poetry and music were not considered beaux-arts to the pagan Celts, but tools of raw magical power.
Scorching satirical poetry known as the briarmon smetrach was intended to ‘puncture’ and to publicly destroy reputations.
Well-aimed, the poetic form known as glam dicin was used to drive out rats and to disfigure or even kill an opponent.
The Irish cattle-rustling epic Tain bo Cualgne describes the bardic warfare employed by Queen Medb against her enemy Fer Diad:
Then Medb sent the Druids and satirists and harsh bards for Fer Diad, that they might make against him three satires to stay him and three lampoons, and that they might raise on his face three blisters, shame, blemish and disgrace, so that he might die before the end of nine days if he did not succumb at once (Kinsella 1969).
Bardic incantations could also be used to end hostilities. Diodorus Siculus observed this magical use of sound in the late 1st-century B.C.E.:
Frequently when armies confront one another in line of battle with swords drawn and spears thrust forward, these men intervene and cause them to stop, just as though they were holding some wild animal spellbound with their chanting. (Diodorus Siculus 31, 2-5, as cited in Ireland, p. 181).
Tacitus describes the effect of this weaving of enchantment against Roman invaders on the Isle of Mona in 60 A.D.:
On the shore stood the opposing army with its dense array of armed warriors, while between the ranks dashed women in black attire round the Druids, lifting up their hands to heaven and pouring forth dreadful imprecations, scared our soldiers by the unfamiliar sight so that, as if their limbs were paralyzed, they stood motionless and exposed to wounds. (Tacitus, AnnalsXIV, 30)
Finally, bardic powers could also be used to heal – as when a master harper restored speech to the dumb prince Maon through his music.
The small harp was often employed by bards as a magical tool.
Part of the Celtic harper’s toolkit was working knowledge of the Adbhan Trireach or ‘Three Noble Strains,’ attributed to the chants for childbirth sung by the god/spirit Dagda’s harp Uaithne.
Each Strain was not only entertainment but a form of enchantment: ‘Sorrow-‘ or ‘Lament-Strain’, which could reduce listeners to tears; ‘Joy-Strain’, which could turn tears to laughter; and ‘Sleep-Strain’, which could soothe listeners’ hearts into deep sleep.
Gaining songs of power from spirits is a common element occurring in many shamanistic cultures.
Text above from the section Druidic and Bardic Powers of Enchantment in Celtic Shamanism: Pagan Celtic Spirituality by Tina Fields, Ph.D https://indigenize.wordpress.com/about/spiritual-ecopsychology/celtic-shamanism/
My digital manipulation of source material is intended for purposes of commentary & creative pastiche/creating a new work incorporated with original art & based upon Marilyn Monroe Reading Ulysses, Long Island, New York, 1954. Photo by Eve Arnold.
Original photo by Eve Arnold as well as information about Marilyn Monroe’s reading habits and book collection can be found at http://www.booktryst.com/2010/10/marilyn-monroe-avid-reader-writer-book.html
December 19, 2014
A Bolt of Black Cloth
I imagined a colour the density of funeral bunting,
A bolt of black cloth,
A sudden black waterfall quickly dropping six stories,
Unrolled from a balcony,
The beginning of a voyage,
Negotiating darkness.
My father shopped at Dales for paper bags full of groceries,
I waited in the car listening to the radio,
I tried to describe a song called Eve of Destruction,
He looked at me in the rear-view mirror,
Columns of black smoke rose above the Pacific Ocean,
Like poisonous vines,
Morse code blinking through the darkness,
At night he came home as late as possible,
Then looking again into the rear-view mirror,
He repeated the name of the song,
‘Eve of Destruction.’
I pictured a wooden bowl in my chest,
Smoothed and worn by water,
& Climbing the stairs into this language,
Gazed, longingly, into a rear-view mirror.
May 6, 2014
Tasting the Light by Ellen S. Jaffe
I taste the light
coming through the window.
(from “Odysseus and Circe,” Anne Simpson)
Pouring, like you,
into my heart,
washing over my skin
falling
through glass
lightly
flowing waves and circling particles
currents of surprise, delight.
I am water, and I am a gull, flying …
a gulf wide and deep as Mexico
replenishing after spills and spoils
You fish me, for stars
for pearls
lost boys and missing girls
fallen into the hole of our fears
O is an open mouth,
one closed eye,
and one open
a black hole where light cannot flow
out
now light from the window of opportunity
swallows us whole
and we shine
we
shine.
Ellen S. Jaffe’s most recent book of poetry, Skinny-Dipping with the Muse (Guernica Editions, 2014) has recently been launched. Tasting the Light is a new poem, not yet published. Ellen lives in Hamilton, writes poetry and prose, and teaches writing in schools and community centres.
March 31, 2014
Crown Island by Catherine Graham
I am surrounded by Crown Island,
a weave of rock and sand; the waves
lap against me, sizzling white strings.
