Here is a primer on the history of poetry

Features of Modernism

To varying extents, writing of the Modernist period exhibits these features:

1. experimentation

belief that previous writing was stereotyped and inadequate
ceaseless technical innovation, sometimes for its own sake
originality: deviation from the norm, or from usual reader expectations
ruthless rejection of the past, even iconoclasm

2. anti-realism

sacralisation of art, which must represent itself, not something beyond preference for allusion (often private) rather than description
world seen through the artist's inner feelings and mental states
themes and vantage points chosen to question the conventional view
use of myth and unconscious forces rather than motivations of conventional plot

3. individualism

promotion of the artist's viewpoint, at the expense of the communal
cultivation of an individual consciousness, which alone is the final arbiter
estrangement from religion, nature, science, economy or social mechanisms
maintenance of a wary intellectual independence
artists and not society should judge the arts: extreme self-consciousness
search for the primary image, devoid of comment: stream of consciousness
exclusiveness, an aristocracy of the avant-garde

4. intellectualism

writing more cerebral than emotional
work is tentative, analytical and fragmentary, more posing questions more than answering them
cool observation: viewpoints and characters detached and depersonalized
open-ended work, not finished, nor aiming at formal perfection
involuted: the subject is often act of writing itself and not the ostensible referent

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Expressionism

Expressionism was a phase of twentieth-century writing that rejected naturalism and romanticism to express important inner truths. The style was generally declamatory or even apocalyptic, endeavoring to awaken the fears and aspirations that belong to all men, and which European civilization had rendered effete or inauthentic. The movement drew on Rimbaud and Nietzsche, and was best represented by German poetry of the 1910-20 period. Benn, Becher, Heym, Lasker-Schüler, Stadler, Stramm, Schnack and Werfel are its characteristic proponents, {1} though Trakl is the best known to English readers. {2} {3}

Like most movements, there was little of a manifesto, or consensus of beliefs and programmes. Many German poets were distrustful of contemporary society — particularly its commercial and capitalist attitudes — though others again saw technology as the escape from a perceived "crisis in the old order". Expressionism was very heterogeneous, touching base with Imagism, Vorticism, Futurism, Dadaism and early Surrealism, many of which crop up in English, French, Russian and Italian poetry of the period. Political attitudes tended to the revolutionary, and technique was overtly experimental. Nonetheless, for all the images of death and destruction, sometimes mixed with messianic utopianism, there was also a tone of resignation, a sadness of "the evening lands" as Spengler called them.

Expressionism also applies to painting, and here the characteristics are more illuminating. The label refers to painting that uses visual gestures to transmit emotions and emotionally charged messages. In the expressive work of Michelangelo and El Greco, for example, the content remains of first importance, but content is overshadowed by technique in such later artists as van Gogh, Ensor and Munch. By the mid twentieth-century even this attenuated content had been replaced by abstract painterly qualities — by the sheer scale and dimensions of the work, by colour and shape, by the verve of the brushwork and other effects.

Expressionism often coincided with rapid social change. Germany, after suffering the horrors of the First World War, and ineffectual governments afterwards, fragmented into violently opposed political movements, each with their antagonistic coteries and milieu. The painting of these groups was very variable, but often showed a mixture of aggression and naivety. Understandably unpopular with the establishment  — denounced as degenerate by the Nazis — the style also met with mixed reactions from the picture-buying public. It seemed to question what the middle classes stood for: convention, decency, professional expertise. A great sobbing child had been let loose in the artist's studio, and the results seemed elementally challenging. Perhaps German painting was returning to its Nordic roots, to small communities, apocalyptic visions, monotone starkness and anguished introspection.

What could poetry achieve in its turn? Could it use some equivalent to visual gestures, i.e. concentrate on aspects of the craft of poetry, and to the exclusion of content? Poetry can never be wholly abstract, a pure poetry bereft of content. But clearly there would be a rejection of naturalism. To represent anything faithfully requires considerable skill, and such skill was what the Expressionists were determined to avoid. That would call on traditions that were not Nordic, and that were not sufficiently opposed to bourgeois values for the writer's individuality to escape subversion. Raw power had to tap something deeper and more universal.

Hence the turn inward to private torments. Poets became the judges of poetry, since only they knew the value of originating emotions. Intensity was essential.  Artists had to believe passionately in their responses, and find ways of purifying and deepening those responses — through working practices, lifestyles, and philosophies. Freud was becoming popular, and his investigations into dreams, hallucinations and paranoia offered a rich field of exploration. Artists would have to glory in their isolation, moreover, and turn their anger and frustration at being overlooked into a belief in their own genius. Finally, there would be a need to pull down and start afresh, even though that contributed to a gradual breakdown in the social fabric and the apocalypse of the Second World War.

Expressionism is still with us. Commerce has invaded bohemia, and created an elaborate body of theory to justify, support and overtake what might otherwise appear infantile and irrational. And if traditional art cannot be pure emotional expression, then a new art would have to be forged. Such poetry would not be an intoxication of life (Nietzsche's phrase) and still less its sanctification.  Great strains on the creative process were inevitable, moreover, as they were in Georg Trakl's case, who committed suicide shortly after writing the haunting and beautiful piece given below

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SYMBOLIST POETS
symbolism in poetry

Symbolism in literature was a complex movement that deliberately extended the evocative power of words to express the feelings, sensations and states of mind that lie beyond everyday awareness. The open-ended symbols created by Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) brought the invisible into being through the visible, and linked the invisible through other sensory perceptions, notably smell and sound. Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-98), the high priest of the French movement, theorized that symbols were of two types. One was created by the projection of inner feelings onto the world outside. The other existed as nascent words that slowly permeated the consciousness and expressed a state of mind initially unknown to their originator.

None of this came about without cultivation, and indeed dedication. Poets focused on the inner life. They explored strange cults and countries. They wrote in allusive, enigmatic, musical and ambiguous styles. Rimbaud deranged his senses and declared "Je est un autre". Von Hofmannstahl created his own language. Valéry retired from the world as a private secretary, before returning to a mastery of traditional French verse. Rilke renounced wife and human society to be attentive to the message when it came.

Not all were great theoreticians or technicians, but the two interests tended to go together, in Mallarmé most of all. He painstakingly developed his art of suggestion, what he called his "fictions". Rare words were introduced, syntactical intricacies, private associations and baffling images. Metonymy replaced metaphor as symbol, and was in turn replaced by single words which opened in imagination to multiple levels of signification. Time was suspended, and the usual supports of plot and narrative removed. Even the implied poet faded away, and there were then only objects, enigmatically introduced but somehow made right and necessary by verse skill. Music indeed was the condition to which poetry aspired, and Verlaine, Jimenez and Valéry were among many who concentrated efforts to that end.

So appeared a dichotomy between the inner and outer lives. In actuality, poets led humdrum existences, but what they described was rich and often illicit: the festering beauties of courtesans and dance-hall entertainers; far away countries and their native peoples; a world-weariness that came with drugs, isolation, alcohol and bought ***. Much was mixed up in this movement — decadence, aestheticism, romanticism, and the occult — but its isms had a rational purpose, which is still pertinent. In what way are these poets different from our own sixties generation? Or from the young today: clubbing, experimenting with relationships and drugs, backpacking to distant parts? And was the mixing of sensory perceptions so very novel or irrational? Synaesthesia was used by the Greek poets, and indeed has a properly documented basis in brain physiology.

What of the intellectual bases, which are not commonly presented as matters that should engage the contemporary mind, still less the writing poet? Symbolism was built on nebulous and somewhat dubious notions: it inspired beautiful and historically important work: it is now dead: that might be the blunt summary. But Symbolist poetry was not empty of content, indeed expressed matters of great interest to continental philosophers, then and now. The contents of consciousness were the concern of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), and he developed a terminology later employed by Heidegger (1889-1976), the Existentialists and hermeneutics. Current theories on metaphor and brain functioning extend these concepts, and offer a rapprochement between impersonal science and irrational literary theory.

So why has the Symbolism legacy dwindled into its current narrow concepts? Denied influence in the everyday world, poets turned inward, to private thoughts, associations and the unconscious. Like good Marxist intellectuals they policed the area they arrogated to themselves, and sought to correct and purify the language that would evoke its powers. Syntax was rearranged by Mallarmé. Rhythm, rhyme and stanza patterning were loosened or rejected. Words were purged of past associations (Modernism), of non-visual associations (Imagism), of histories of usage (Futurism), of social restraint (Dadaism) and of practical purpose (Surrealism). By a sort of belated Romanticism, poetry was returned to the exploration of the inner lands of the irrational. Even Postmodernism, with its bric-a-brac of received media images and current vulgarisms, ensures that gaps are left for the emerging unconscious to engage our interest

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IMAGIST POETRY
imagist poetry

Even by twentieth-century standards, Imagism was soon over. In 1912 Ezra Pound published the Complete Poetical Works of its founder, T.E. Hulme (five short poems) and by 1917 the movement, then overseen by Amy Lowell, had run its course. {1} {2} {3} {4} {5} The output in all amounted to a few score poems, and none of these captured the public's heart. Why the importance?

First there are the personalities involved — notably Ezra Pound, James Joyce, William Carlos Williams {6} {7} {8} {9} — who became famous later. If ever the (continuing) importance to poets of networking, of being involved in movements from their inception, is attested, it is in these early days of post-Victorian revolt.

Then there are the manifestos of the movement, which became the cornerstones of Modernism, responsible for a much taught in universities until recently, and for the difficulties poets still find themselves in. The Imagists stressed clarity, exactness and concreteness of detail. Their aims, briefly set out, were that:

1. Content should be presented directly, through specific images where possible.
2. Every word should be functional, with nothing included that was not essential to the effect intended.
3. Rhythm should be composed by the musical phrase rather than the metronome.

Also understood — if not spelled out, or perhaps fully recognized at the time — was the hope that poems could intensify a sense of objective reality through the immediacy of images.

Imagism itself gave rise to fairly negligible lines like:

You crash over the trees,
You crack the live branch…  (Storm by H.D.)

Nonetheless, the reliance on images provided poets with these types of freedom:

1. Poems could dispense with classical rhetoric, emotion being generated much more directly through what Eliot called an objective correlate: "The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked." {10}

2. By being shorn of context or supporting argument, images could appear with fresh interest and power.

3. Thoughts could be treated as images, i.e. as non-discursive elements that added emotional colouring without issues of truth or relevance intruding too mu
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PROSE BASED POETRY
prose based poetry

When free verse lacks rhythmic patterning, appearing as a lineated prose stripped of unnecessary ornament and rhetoric, it becomes the staple of much contemporary work. The focus is on what the words are being used to say, and their authenticity. The language is not heightened, and the poem differs from prose only by being more self-aware, innovative and/or cogent in its exposition.

Nonetheless, what looks normal at first becomes challenging on closer reading — thwarting expectations, and turning back on itself to make us think more deeply about the seemingly innocuous words used. And from there we are compelled to look at the world with sharper eyes, unprotected by commonplace phrases or easy assumptions. Often an awkward and fighting poetry, therefore, not indulging in ceremony or outmoded traditions.
What is Prose?

If we say that contemporary free verse is often built from what was once regarded as mere prose, then we shall have to distinguish prose from poetry, which is not so easy now. Prose was once the lesser vehicle, the medium of everyday thought and conversation, what we used to express facts, opinions, humour, arguments, feelings and the like. And while the better writers developed individual styles, and styles varied according to their purpose and social occasion, prose of some sort could be written by anyone. Beauty was not a requirement, and prose articles could be rephrased without great loss in meaning or effectiveness.

Poetry, though, had grander aims. William Lyon Phelps on Thomas Hardy's work: {1}

"The greatest poetry always transports us, and although I read and reread the Wessex poet with never-lagging attention — I find even the drawings in "Wessex Poems" so fascinating that I wish he had illustrated all his books — I am always conscious of the time and the place. I never get the unmistakable spinal chill. He has too thorough a command of his thoughts; they never possess him, and they never soar away with him. Prose may be controlled, but poetry is a possession. Mr. Hardy is too keenly aware of what he is about. In spite of the fact that he has written verse all his life, he seldom writes unwrinkled song. He is, in the last analysis, a master of prose who has learned the technique of verse, and who now chooses to express his thoughts and his observations in rime and rhythm."

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OPEN FORMS IN POETRY
open forms in poetry

Poets who write in open forms usually insist on the form growing out of the writing process, i.e. the poems follow what the words and phrase suggest during the composition

Journey to Mecca – The IMAX Experience

Imagine the scene... There are crowds of people milling about, some in queues, some chatting by the windows, others sipping a warm drink. There are children playing in corners, babies drinking milk, and wherever you look you see people of all creeds and races united under the banner of a shared humanity. And what is the reason for this diverse cross section of society to be present in one place on a quiet and sleepy Sunday afternoon at Birmingham’s ThinkTank? The answer is right there across the busy foyer. It is a poster for a new IMAX film called “Journey to Mecca”. The very air bubbles with excitement and expectation as the cinema staff cut the proverbial ribbon and usher the people into the auditorium.

Space, vast and open, is the first thing that hits the audience as they take their seats and let their eyes wander over the immense spectrum of the IMAX screen. A map unfurls across the screen and a narrator explains the time and lays down the background to the scene that is about to commence. The year is 1325, the place is Tangier and the story is about a man who is about to embark upon a journey to the holy city of Mecca on a pilgrimage. The charismatic young man is Ibn Battuta, he stares at the stars that twinkle across the canvas of the night sky and he dreams of spires, of domes, of jewelled cities that sparkle in the desert sands, and his vision swoops like a falcon over the alleys and streets of the kingdom until they rest upon the Ka’aba, the sacred building at the heart of Islam.

Ibn Battuta bids farewell to his beloved family and sets out on his journey which will see him tested, both physically and psychologically, as he travels to the fabled city of Mecca. His trials and tribulations on the road to Mecca are detailed with an emotional richness rarely seen in modern cinema. The script is nuanced in a way that allows the audience to connect with the action and the various characters. The depth of research and the care in which the tale is told is delicately balanced. This is cinema as entertainment and as education.

The film reveals the magic and wonder of the Hajj by contrasting the life of Ibn Battuta with modern day worshippers at the same holy sites as those visited by the young traveller all those years ago. The scale of the event is brought to realisation in a way that will make even the most jaded film connoisseur gasp with astonishment.

In terms of technicalities, the IMAX technology is notorious for being extremely expensive and difficult to master. The format does not allow for the creative freedom that one can utilize in 35mm, so it is to the credit of the crew that this film looks seamless and breathtaking. Every single frame of the drama is a beautifully crafted canvas that seems to glow like a painting. The cinematography is exemplary and employs a painterly palette. The deserts and mountains are dry, cracked and dusty brown like wrinkled parchment while the sun drips golden lava across the scorching landscape. The white garments of the pilgrims are like beacons floating in the creamy dust of the desert sands whilst the tapestries hanging in the bazaars are lovingly stitched in green and blue threads; and the silver and gold bangles on the arms and ankles of the village girls ****** and twinkle. The atmosphere of warmth and friendship is apparent in every scene, especially when the succulent food is shared by the soft red glow of the campfires. High above this blend of colours, languages and the swirl of human emotions are the dancing stars that ripple in the heavens. The spectacle and sounds of a bygone era are stunningly designed.

The soundtrack also serves the film quite well. The music is never intrusive or melodramatic, it is there as a soft accompaniment to the proceedings. The use of strings, Moorish mandolins, African percussion and the human voice brings an exotic and ethereal ambiance to the drama.

“Journey to Mecca” is a journey of hope, a journey of understanding and a journey that will inspire. The sheer magnitude and beauty of this film left the audience awed and instilled a desire to learn more about the past which we sometimes neglect to reflect upon in our fast moving lives. This film is an ode to peace, love and compassion, and acts as a bridge of understanding between the past and present. And, as the film fades to black at the ******, there is a final haunting image that will resonate with every member of the audience. The message is simple and poignant. It illustrates the transient and swift nature of life; it shows how we glow brightly by the light of the noon day sun and then fade into the tranquil shadows of the coming twilight. Our journey in this life should be one that respects all of humanity despite our cultural or political differences. It is not often that one leaves the cinema knowing that your soul has been moved by something rare, delicate and exquisite. This was one of those rare occasions.

Smooth, smooth, fringed by yellow smudged, hard plastic
smooth, left to right then a painterly inconclusive running
out, the stroke all 60” expires into the yellow, then a firm
vertical orange stripe, a bookend, a hot surface elevated
upon a warm yellow bed, exotic, turmeric, heated from
below, as though from another world, a future planet found
in Manga, gum wrappers, belonging to the wedding
wardrobes of older women, and those with impossible
shoes, maybe a scarf, definitely lipstick and small Japanese
cars, decorative paper, a can’t-miss logo, as when I close
my eyes in the act of love, holding your kneeling body to
me I lose myself in a pattern of flashes, the bright play of
light and colour, a sensual play of pigment, blue and red
wavelengths, fuchsine, electric, electric, and the aura of
artists, such latent energy, hidden passion, rich in ******
fragrance, edged with desire.

The path of the brush now right to left yellow exposes a
yellow bookend at the left hand edge, there is a roughness
here in its covering of yellow, as though applied in haste or
in a single gesture with a large brush, it is thick, thick and
rough, but the yellow is almost present, a hint, a reflection,
as in the petals of the Bellis Perennis, you open your mouth
breathing, breathing your lips frame such perfect teeth as
day arrives,

Left to right, the paint thick then thinning to a broken
tailpiece revealing yellow on magenta, again, again, again, again,
how little I yet understand your body, the innerness,
the sheltered regions of your desire, I am afraid to harm this
preciousness, be disrespectful of the tapering valley where
love’s caress and kiss meet, are multi-dimensional, the
rectangle is not charcoal, but deflected, hesitant, to the left
the darkness of chocolate, to the right a greyness, a *****
grey, a dusty dark dog, loamed, a depth then play of
shadow, dark, textural as your maidenhair under the covers
above my right hand as it spreads my fingers across its
darkness into deeper darkness, a flat stone, its left end
washed by the cold tide, olived, clothed in mourning, there
is unpleasantness, some distaste, a little fear, the unknown,
the unknowable.

Daisy petals, opening in the morning light, the clapperboard
house on the Block Island beachside fresh-painted every
spring, immediately weathered, porcelained sea shell
textured, turned, tumbled, a dawn sky after rain,
ceramicised fungi, plain flour, acidic, taut, the moment
when the heart and breath seem to pause as we join each
other’s flesh as though this cannot be cannot really be.

Unrhymable this flower shade hued pigment deep saffron
vibrant, phoned, not quite of the fruit, a different tang,
sharper without sheen, magenta beneath its smoothed
surface up to left and right edge, (but for the yellow
frill beneath), lip covering, silk-scarfed, not autumnal yet, but oh
those Californian poppies, those desert landscapes as the
sun sets,

a single uneven gesture thrown left to right, an island
in silhouette with a rocky foreshore spreads into distance,

a bed of sylvan jade, an oasis, this an aerial view of tree
tops modulating to grassy pasture, a down-stroke western
boundary, an edge of surf on its northern border, perhaps
the brush formerly coloured has left its trace,

the main body of this Australian desert seen from the air,
Sidney Nolan’s bush, aboriginal earth, coloured mud,
unguent, the sense of liquid in your kiss, its warmth, the
very tip and corner of your lips, the brush of hair as you
move your head to my chest, the rubbing of hair on hair,
under your arms this play of sensation through the lips’
touch, then the shore, the sand no sand though, only in the
brochures, daffodilled perhaps, unsmudged, fresh,
vigorously golden, well-watered.

late last night i walked alone along the desolate shore
of Monet’s pond at Giverny the pale moon
sometimes obscured by impasto clouds
the waterlilies those treacherous waterlilies
screaming in agony
Saskia, Rembrandt’s wife, was there
naked and weeping, her hair and body
wet and slimy draped in orange pond algae
Cezanne crouched nearby cursing and slashing canvases
with a butcher’s knife before tossing them into a fire
when he finished he made fierce love to Saskia
who sang an old Dutch love song as he did
Rembrandt was in deep conversation with Monet
in a puddle of passing moonlight
and didn’t seemed to mind, anything
to stop her endless wailing I heard him say
Monet says Titian’s mistress is now a mermaid
who lives beneath my betraying waterlilies which is why they cry
and why I keep painting them no one makes love like her
just look at Titian’s Madonnas
Van Gogh stumbles in from a dung-filled alley, bleeding badly
from the bullet wound in his abdomen,
where the rich kids from Auvers tormented and shot him
just for the fun of it, Vermeer bankrupt and gaunt
steps from behind a tree and asks if it’s suicide or the new art
Vincent says let the people believe that tragic ending
it’s a dramatic final brushstroke to my life even if untrue
but I love the blackbirds and my wheat fields and blue irises
way too much to spill my guts on them cadmium red maybe
my left ear lobe maybe but never my guts
where’s de Kooning anyhow he yells the *******
borrowed my paintbrush and never returned it
now I’ll have to paint with the tongue of Gauguin’s old shoe
Caravaggio floats by face up caressed by the wet palms of the weeping lilies
he’s burning up with fever delirious screaming
where’s my ship where’s my ship
they’re all on the ship my paintings
my paintings will redeem me the Pope knows
I only killed one man
Monet strokes his beard like Moses Rembrandt
says it happens to all of us even our wives and
mistresses perhaps it’s the lead in our *****
it’s not suicide it’s not homicide it’s the madness of living too much
Rothko appears, a translucent ghost inside a mist salving his slashed wrist
with Monet’s pond water Mark washing washing
the healing water the Giverny water dancing with pran the giver of life
that’s what Monet was painting at the end
using the palette from the other side
pran transmitted through the wailing
of the waterlilies the siren’s song
that lures artists to their death
and then washes them clean for the next go
to pick up where they left off, alone
with his whiskey bottle Jackson ******* hurls paint clots
at Rembrandt’s Still Life with Peacocks
those two dead peacocks they’re all dead peacocks
floating belly up under Monet’s footbridge
all the color gone from their plumage
drink the water Jackson or better yet
let Cezanne rip out your diseased liver
and wrap it carefully in a weeping waterlily
and float it out into the middle of the pond
where the forgiving moonlight and the mermaids
and Monet’s eyes now dim with cataracts
can help it filter out the poison of living
too much and then you too Jackson
will make painterly love to Saskia and she will
daub your diseased body in Titian’s blue
and her husband’s gold and Vincent’s sunflower yellows
and send you back into the world
where you will continue to splash us all  
as we lie flat on the ground hands and legs intertwined
our faces and bodies your canvas more willing than ever
Jackson, you’ll turn us into a unified field of smashed hues not just from here but from where you stand one foot on the other side
get us all raging drunk Jackson in that myth you longed for
splatter us in the tinted mess of the mystery you raged at
and had to settle for drunken oblivion instead
drink deeply the mystic-hued water of Giverny
Vincent and Paul and Mark and Jackson
and when you come back
spit it out on our parched souls

all i'm saying is that the tetragrammaton was lying about in full view, an umbrella on the train; the tetragrammaton was just there for the taking, in english... and no jew noticed it, or picked it up.

poetic proliferance comes at a price designated the role
of anti-oratory - imagination and memory
are scattered narratives, thought the prime of the three,
an animal is bombarded  with sensual impressions,
a feline pet is the ultimate unit of fighting against
this constant bombardment  of sensual impressions,
before us, the ultimate leisure  activity, albeit without us
actual engaging in it personally; we created such utensils
as memory and imagination to counter-act the vacuum
of unnecessarily narrating a sunset and a sunrise, a comet's
flight. pro life interference - a snake shedding its skin, e.g.
non-oratory, even anti, poetry for bookshelves, for dust,
migraines, moths and bookworm larvae;
for shrapnel ego... for stances in aesthetics like:
run DMC's *it's like that, countered
with... 'and i thought disco polo was bad.'
cheap thrills, scribbles on toilet paper,
marquis de sade made an inkwell from
his wrist, blood on white:
Boabdil gives the Granada key to Ferdinand and Isabella
v. kazimir MALEVICH's red square,
                                painterly realism of a peasant woman
in two dimension -
a Faustian gamble... mental retardation...
no curly curves on pillars, no mention
of Pompeii... mythical Atlantis with its sea-monkeys
agile in water but hardly acrobatic on earth
(exceptions due to Russian Lolitas)...
no regime, no rigour, too much jealousy surrounding
the Renaissance art-schools, jealousy, greed,
fat parasites invoking their name, say, Raphael
as useful as the noun tree, hammer, ship tried to be...
hell the mad dog without a KA GA NIEC
and off the leash... you really can't expect more
abstracts... but art follows science,
what with anti-matter, subatomic particles,
art will see less beauty and science more complications,
both will be working on abstracts...
enter the art critics with their narratives...
also due to the fact that calculators replaced our
natural ability to process arithmetically...
hence a lost technique of arithmetic and a more
sensual engagement in the motto: precipitating
toward a MALEVICH black cross, black square etc.
was the art movement cubism - unravelling
the cube post-scriptum in it all... *******
this ultra-modern fascination with Python-gruesome-oraz
(oraz translated as: also) -
come the critics and their narratives
of triangles without a thinking-do-d'ah suggesting
trigonometry or a squared + b squared
equates to c square (or a hypotenuse...
likewise with hippopotamus i'm dyslexic to mind the
matter too much... honest to god,
i'm dyslexic with certain words - mainly because
it's hardly a scene in a pub: 'pint of ale my good man'),
and added to the chaos of lack of diacritic
in english, you tend to be chaotic with punctuation,
and the words stemming from the latin
æ grapheme (graphite, the tertiary carbon representation)
simply coagulate into a rancid custard of
non-differential puzzles via sūdoku - now repeat
after me, the sharp Japanese HI! sù doku!
HI! HI! well, aye, but it's sùdoku! HI! HI!
si sense... and there's the roundabout.
i'm probably the first poet of darwinism,
i got a blank in my head and i just allow the poem
to evolve... why sù and not sú?
you aim to repress, insert a quasi pause, stress
the would be associated categorisation of sù
as prefix... the doku comes as an suffix -
in culinary terms that's representative of
a hunchback leaning over a *** of sauce and
invoking a movement, a whiffing to get the scents
ticking the nostril fibres - wave in, entice - so indeed
the Japanese punctuation omitted in universal
encoding: - (the hyphen), the sharp impromptu
HI! (HIGH... *******, they're one and the same!)
sùdoku hin ji roo shika! that's samurai for:
i said sharpen my samurai sword like a mathematical
rubric of the 2 times table: 2 x 1, 2 x 2, 2 x 3... etc.

She was a lovely looking thing,
A beautiful young blonde girl/woman
She hadn't been with us long... at
   work
She was smart and sassy, even a little
   scary
Held strong opinions on some things,
She lived close to where I lived, only
   a few miles away
So I was sitting amongst them one
   day, the girls/the ladies
They were a little bored that day and
   for some sport
Were trying to draw me out, to get me    
   to open up a little
To reveal some more about my ways
   and my life
So I thought I'd have some fun with
   them
I told them I did some painting as a
   hobby
And that my speciality was 'the
   female ****'
But alas! I had a problem, I had no
   one to sit for me
"If only I had some beautiful nymph, some haughty Queen, some dazzling princess", I lamented
And then I'd gaze over at Her, give her
   a longing look,
Then of course, someone upped and
   said the obvious
" Jen....don't you live close to where he lives, would you not go sit for him "
My face it lit up and I smiled
"No! I would not!!! she said
   emphatically, disgusted
Now I knew from the Christmas party
   she liked to drink Gin
So I said enticingly "I'll throw in a
   few bottles of Gin"
"I'd never pose **** for anyone", she replied again emphatically, "it'd be embarrassing, it'd be degrading! Sitting naked before some man!",
" But ", I replied, " you wouldn't be embarrassed sitting for me
'Cos when I paint a **** I insist on
   being in the **** myself as well
So as to make my Sitter feel more at
   home, more at ease
Yeah, Me! I'm very... Avant Garde"
(said with a devilish twinkle in my eye)
Still she resisted my painterly
   charms
So as to further entice her I said
"I'll even cook you breakfast, no one can resist my lovely sizzling sausages".
I felt as though I'd dangled my carrot
   right in her face
But still she wouldn't take the bait.
I suppose I was lucky she hadn't for if
   she had of (agreed)
I would have had to have learnt how
   to paint Nudes real fast
And how to cook sausages and other
   breakfast repast.

It's acold misty morning
The large grey cobblestones creating valleys by themselves
The old black lampposts casting the imaginings of light
The buildings shuffle between dark grey and black as if they were a depressed Chameleon
A man walks along this pathway
His dark black Brioni suit covered by the enveloping arms of his coat
The buttons undone as the coat ***** dramatically in the wind that isn't there
The outfit is completed with a black fedora which he wears upon his head
He walks down the pathway and passes a small man
With ragged clothes and a baggy hat
He barely notices the painter as he Iis consumed with his Own demons
The painter holds a brush in his right hand
An old thing with paint and chips on the wooden handle
The bristles are long
Not imacculate
But well used
In his left hand he holds his pallette
It has every colour imaginable
But only a small splotch of it
The painter walks behind the man with the fedora
And he painted
He painted galaxies on the cobblestones and valleys separating them
He painted patterns into the sidewalk and stories into the bricks
His style a rough painterly style
Jagged geometric lines creating organic spirals and waves
A Van Gogh style
Painfully wild strokes
That seem to contain the souls of suffering and pain
His flat yellows contrast to his vivid reds
Powerful imagery created by nothing but contrast
Emotions toyed with by jagged currants and swirls
The painter painted
Trying to catch up to the man with the fedora
Painting eruptions of beauty from the lampposts
And birds and flowers floating upon the air
As the fedora man's heels lifted paint was laid down in insane yellow
Driven insane by trying to catch up to this man
Driven insane by trying to show the man beauty
The painter ran out of paint
A masterpiece a mile long
Seen and admired by all who walked behind
But the artist had failed
His face Contorted as his emotional suffering manifested physically
His heart broke again as he realized that this man with the fedora wouldn't stop
He would live his whole life
Without seeing beauty
The painter was put in a nice jacket and a white padded room to live the rest of hus days
Forced to live in his misey....
His  emotion....
His failure...

Pompous:
"Oh God, no, not another shallow rhymer,
fitting each word to its neat little place.
Oh God, no, not another painterly composition
with planal directions going round and around or leading that way and this.
They did that in the past; get to the new.
Make sure the reader or viewer knows that the masterful
knows more than than the masterful lets t/h/r/o/u/g/h/  out.
Disdain extenuating weakenings caused by straining for clarity
or unnecessary exertions in expressions of cohesion.
Words, though plain, arouse astonished wonder by nonchalant impenetrable shufflings.
Be clued-in, be bold, be tough and show it when you sculpt the clay.
When shaped, use your trowel to scratch the surface, evoking even more obscurity.
Toss it off in broad strokes of masterful negligence.  
Be above the miniscule.
By these means show in shadowy hints the profundity that winks beyond merely ordinary restrictions.
Break the barriers, fly the constructive. Those old shackles lie about the world.
Show you ain't no conforming *****.  
Display in impatient referenceless strokes
Your forceful awareness of the world as known."


Facetia:
                "Oh?
A world which evidences no form and structure in living creatures;
no eons of effortful evolution;
Forests have no ecology, and laws of nature aren't for binding.
Mind never happened, spirit's a farce,
unions only expedient plottings.
Lessons of history describe the disruptive;
it's what you grab and who you club;
others are only take or be taken.
Show 'em who's boss,
stash it away,
it's dog eat dog until there's nothing.
Shake it all up and break it all up.
It's only entropy."

I

You’re higher up on a train so the flatness the far horizons the empty fields the ***** disappearing into the distance solitary houses set amongst windbreaks of trees and surrounded by the loam-rich fields the serious machinery turning or drilling the earth raised levies of a distinctive green birds gathering notating music on telegraph wires suddenly a mumuration of starlings undulating wave-like in the drab mouse-grey skies arching and over this train riding perched above the land and now acres of water not a lake flooded land gradually tapering towards a sprawling city all but hidden by its hill-less topography

II

Smash! the percussionist wipes his hands and grabs another bottle before the music escapes checking his fingers for cuts and kicking the broken glass from his feet It was a brilliant though unplanned moment we all agreed and will remember this concert always for that particular accidental smile-inducing sharp intake of breath moment when with a Fanta bottle in each hand there was a joyful hit and scrape guiro-like on the serrated edges a no-holes barred full-on sounding out of glass on glass and you just loved it when he drank the juice and fluting blew across the bottle’s mouth

III

It’s the other side of town past and running the gauntlet of the shops we’d love to stop and look Don’t lets That’s for later Now it’s the house we’ve come to see four narrow cottages joined as one hard to believe the inside from the outside Oh that lemon on the pewter plate Ben’s drawing beneath the windowsill you had to kneel to look at The long table surfaces decorated with stones shells wood on shelves of the right books and the right chairs to read them in we sat still I sketching you in the grey fading light

IV

Suddenly the brightness of the adjoining gallery a dozen paintings nothing here of the interstellar abstract chilly world of the ellipse where she failed to make a home preferring to make a cup of tea alongside a growing bud and the tissued plants the gathered flowers in a chapel niche the white saxifrage of the Highlands and washed out colours of Bamburgh’s beaches then suddenly a child and that life-size photo a tall girl hair braided painterly somewhere in the Italian lakes her obsessive colour chart searching for the unknown purple she had once glimpsed with her father in India

Of artists blocks
and charcoal pencils
lines drawn
blackened white
with hearts the stencil
gouache pastels
in dusted hues
smudged
whetted thumbs
by moistened lips
colours gently bruised
with fingertips
stroked by brushes
firm tipped certain
outside the frame
of loves drawn curtain
softly washed
in watercolour fade
the painter plays
loves serenade
emboldened strokes
in oils dramatic
his canvas laden
replete
climactic

© J.C.

Of artists blocks
and charcoal pencils
lines drawn
blackened white
with hearts the stencil
gouache pastels
in dusted hues
smudged by
whetted thumbs
from moistened lips
colours gently bruised
with fingertips
stroked by brushes
firm tipped certain
outside the frame
of loves drawn curtain
softly washed
in watercolour fade
the painter plays
loves serenade
emboldened strokes
in oils dramatic
his canvas laden
replete
climactic

J.C. honey- tiger 09/08/2019.

I - Sunrise at Futamiguara/Revealed Intent

The piano on fire/
echoing throats of crystal

Village Mystics resign their title for a quick drowning

(dream)

Wedded-Rocks tide
together while Tsunami rolls in

(Izanagi / Izanami withstand the thrashing)

Japanese Autumn
welcomed as I watch a tinted rose unfold its cloaked chaos

(wherein a panther heeds its calling)

My heart has revealed itself at last


II - Love

bristling zeal/
halycon eyes & Haitian drums
aid the muscles
christening scene-

- bridal dancer pollinates a sleepers teeth in love poems fused with salt

&labor keeps the diaphragm sky
(with pinneedle clouds) afloat

I temper the image tilled with pen/sometimes it doesn't feel enough

(the shadow devours itself)

III - Conservatory of Music/Child Complex

Each gate of heaven its own sound

each device of wrath like doorstep-

-chimes (miracle)

or a whimper dashing through a lake
(vision of pallbearer)

gas heater/
the central puppeteer is dimmed, enjoying his contemplation of the (crafting)
day

999 violet walkup,
I can faintly hear what sounds like a private fountain

   (misguided flamingos bathe here
   and die
     during ***-season
    
   (panting)
  
IV - Joyful Soul/Reconciliation

   Year of water,
  exiting the glassness

which
  once showered me in doubt
  
-remove the cause

... and discarding my obligations
(they have only been actors)

undoing-
where phoenix-mind
owes/
erudite/the staggered
  single conversation between grace & naivety/

Balinese temples smeared in
  urns
(******) ash & brass &

frame of fade (childhood) yearning for bedsheets and harmonica temperature

V - Reminder/Ocean Choir

(tiger tiger burning bright/amplify your helplessly

joyful your motion
the motion of eager
island-seashells
  repeating archaic
     imitations (meditative)

VI - Painterly Woman/Temporary Gladness/Objective in Medium

my family is
sculpted by candles countless candles
(shadow dancer)

-inhaling holidays

I nightmare
     skin emerging from my bedroom wall
the

suggested image written with higher potential imaginative range than the act of looking at a "described" moment on a canvas. As one suggests their own image in writing while as painting assumes its own image for you. The reverse transaction. One cannot author a paintings beauty such as one sculpts the image from ink. Both are as immediately beautiful. Different mediums for different objectives (or rather methods we use to achieve this objective)

VII - Unattainable

Pine drum;winking
fashionable clothmats
copulate for silk and ever purer
silk
ever purer
(silk)))       the child universe

will bleed like
gardenbed

(amen/doldrum/amen(doldrum) amen)

VIII - Spring

Aware (zen taste) - moment evokes a more intense, nostalgic sadness connected with Autumn and the vanishing away of the world

This is the unbinding of words
as my terrific dead lover of disaster
put it-

(Somehow the unforgotten
name remains lavish, after all this reconfiguring, the infertile soil we attempted to escape,
the shade we hid in once like a peacock's coat, somehow the name, your name

remains clean)