Complement As Evolution
Jan. 3rd, 2012 08:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jjhunter posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
poetreeIronically, I cannot remember the book that started it all. I do remember the yellow leopard on the cover, the thick, rough-edged paper, the intensity of how I felt when I reached the final page. I wept, and I could not find my words.
This is a post about a poem as a complement, or perhaps a complement as a necessary evolutionary step for creating a poem. It is the story of how this
became this
The former image is a selection from the painting I came to call 'Lightning Man'; the latter is the first stanza of my poem 'A Thousand Pieces of Soul'. Both are rooted in the same emotional experience immediately after finishing the book, and both evolved dependent on the other. I could not express everything I had to convey in either format, so I did both and hoped for the best. I'm sure that I lost something of the grace I'd tried so desperately to hold onto in the process; I'm equally sure that I gained something rather cool in return in how I went about doing so.
So. We left the story with me weeping over the ending of a really good book early in the morning on a weekend in bed. In other words, in private and with no immediate need to go be elsewhere and do something. (A luxury I did not fully appreciate at that age, alas.) I am a word person; when I feel intensely, I reach for words to understand how I feel and give it shape. That time, however, words were flat, dull, worthless and not right. I had to go through an image first: a sketch of a neutral figure floating over water cracking open with light. That person was filled to the bursting with understanding, filled to the cracking open with light.
Having literally drawn my metaphor, I was able to write quickly and surely - the poem was in its final form within fifteen minutes. But the image came first.
(The painting based on the sketch, on the other hand, took weeks afterward to get right...)
In effect, the poem is the experience filtered through the image, and the image a crucial step toward the evolution of the poem. Can each be appreciated on its own in its own right? Sure. But I think there's something interesting there in the intersection and interaction between the two. There's something immediate about the image that bypasses the articulate part of the brain, and something more refined about the poem that speaks to the need for narrative and context. They complement each other. They are in dialogue.
=
A Thousand Pieces of Soul
The book hits me directly in the heart
a beam of light that shatters me
into a thousand pieces
and salt-water flows out from the edges
a sea of emotion pushes the pieces of me
further and further apart
until I am spread out
across the entire world
and when the waters subside
my pieces come back
pushed together as if by the receding waters
and painstakingly glued to one another
the world is gingerly held within
and understanding lies within it
though I am at best a leaky human
and soon most of it will run out
still, I am stronger where my pieces fit together
able to hold a little more understanding
a little more liquid hope
a little more soul
all good books I revere
for they can break us
and heal us
and make us human once more
-
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
This is a post about a poem as a complement, or perhaps a complement as a necessary evolutionary step for creating a poem. It is the story of how this
became this
The book hits me directly in the heart
a beam of light that shatters me
into a thousand pieces
and salt-water flows out from the edges
[...]
The former image is a selection from the painting I came to call 'Lightning Man'; the latter is the first stanza of my poem 'A Thousand Pieces of Soul'. Both are rooted in the same emotional experience immediately after finishing the book, and both evolved dependent on the other. I could not express everything I had to convey in either format, so I did both and hoped for the best. I'm sure that I lost something of the grace I'd tried so desperately to hold onto in the process; I'm equally sure that I gained something rather cool in return in how I went about doing so.
So. We left the story with me weeping over the ending of a really good book early in the morning on a weekend in bed. In other words, in private and with no immediate need to go be elsewhere and do something. (A luxury I did not fully appreciate at that age, alas.) I am a word person; when I feel intensely, I reach for words to understand how I feel and give it shape. That time, however, words were flat, dull, worthless and not right. I had to go through an image first: a sketch of a neutral figure floating over water cracking open with light. That person was filled to the bursting with understanding, filled to the cracking open with light.
Having literally drawn my metaphor, I was able to write quickly and surely - the poem was in its final form within fifteen minutes. But the image came first.
(The painting based on the sketch, on the other hand, took weeks afterward to get right...)
In effect, the poem is the experience filtered through the image, and the image a crucial step toward the evolution of the poem. Can each be appreciated on its own in its own right? Sure. But I think there's something interesting there in the intersection and interaction between the two. There's something immediate about the image that bypasses the articulate part of the brain, and something more refined about the poem that speaks to the need for narrative and context. They complement each other. They are in dialogue.
=
The book hits me directly in the heart
a beam of light that shatters me
into a thousand pieces
and salt-water flows out from the edges
a sea of emotion pushes the pieces of me
further and further apart
until I am spread out
across the entire world
and when the waters subside
my pieces come back
pushed together as if by the receding waters
and painstakingly glued to one another
the world is gingerly held within
and understanding lies within it
though I am at best a leaky human
and soon most of it will run out
still, I am stronger where my pieces fit together
able to hold a little more understanding
a little more liquid hope
a little more soul
all good books I revere
for they can break us
and heal us
and make us human once more
-
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-04 03:30 am (UTC)It's interesting how different ways of expressing the same feeling/thought can occur cascade fashion at times. The same semester that I wrote the poem Silently Screaming I did a sketch, which became an oil painting (that alas I no longer have) and a short story all based around the same emotion.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-04 03:56 am (UTC)Cascade is an excellent way of putting it. It's like whatever the thought or feeling is, it will keep coming out in different ways until it has matured fully and you can express it to your satisfaction. Then it becomes a touchstone you can draw on to express other things.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-04 03:57 am (UTC)Perfect way of putting it.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-05 02:47 pm (UTC)This post makes me wish I were more visually oriented so I could appreciate the full impact of the pieces, though. But I did want to let you know I'd read this. ^-^ I'll be mulling it over for a while, I suspect, though whether anything useful comes out of it... Who knows.
Appreciation
Date: 2012-02-01 08:36 am (UTC)Rabbi Rachael,
Shalom,Toda and thanks for your inspiration.
yours sincerely
victor fatherheart consoler