10/26/16
8/18/16
Surrealism
Surrealism is not, has
never been, and will never be a literary or artistic school but is a
movement of the human spirit in revolt and an eminently subversive
attempt to re-enchant the world: an attempt to reestablish the
“enchanted” dimensions at the core of human existence—poetry, passion,
mad love, imagination, magic, myth, the marvelous, dreams, revolt,
utopian ideals—which have been eradicated by this civilization and its
values. In other words, Surrealism is a protest against narrow-minded
rationality, the commercialization of life, petty thinking, and the
boring realism of our money-dominated, industrial society. It is also
the utopian and revolutionary aspiration to “transform life”—an
adventure that is at once intellectual and passionate, political and
magical, poetic and dreamlike. It began in 1924; it continues today.
| — | Michael Löwy, Morning Star: Surrealism, Marxism, Anarchism, Situationism, Utopia, p. 1 |
8/8/16
7/14/16
Little Blue Heron
When I got home I did exactly as I was told. I did not pass
go, did not collect two hundred dollars, I sat down on the large paper spread
out on my living room floor and set to it. With the back of my hand I brushed
away the layer of dust, grit and hair and began searching among the fifty or
more sharpies scattered around for a blue that still had some life left.
After weeks of standing over the thing, I began making marks
again, cross-hatching at first, figuring in the slight muscle along the back of
the bird’s neck. I’d been at it long enough I didn’t even need to look at the
book for reference anymore. The geography of the drawing was well known to me. The little blue heron had finally begun to
emerge from the stand of reeds, except at five foot by seven, it consumed my living
room easily.
There was no other proper marker besides blue in the sets I
brought home from Wal-Greens. Not even in the pastel twelve pack I’d
experimented with one time. The only way to go was blue upon blue, more blue
for shadows, maybe some black along the outer perimeter to set down hard lines. Thousands of marks laid down finally achieved
a solid layer of color. It had formed something that resembled feathers
covering its thorax. The fine plumes wisping from its neck like a beard almost
swayed with the wind coming up from the bend in the great river below.
I drew until my back was ruined and my knees ached and then
I kept drawing. I poured everything I had into it, layering until the cobalt
beneath me acquired a depth I could peer into, teasing out blue with hundreds
of marks. Like a thousand cuts into flesh, or a thousand arrows falling from
the sky to pierce me, I drew until everything fell away. I was a diver above the impossible sapphire expanse
of the Gulf Stream, almost tumbling into the abyss. I carved Xs into the breast
of the bird, crosshatching or scribbles writhing across the landscape of its
wings like a new language. An insane person outlining the figure of God, I was
a broken vessel made whole again, and being filled from heaven, it was all I
could do to lay my art down on paper.
7/4/16
They Feed They Lion
Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter,
Out of black bean and wet slate bread,
Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar,
Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies,
They Lion grow.
Out of the gray hills
Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride,
West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of buried aunties,
Mothers hardening like pounded stumps, out of stumps,
Out of the bones’ need to sharpen and the muscles’ to stretch,
They Lion grow.
Earth is eating trees, fence posts,
Gutted cars, earth is calling in her little ones,
“Come home, Come home!” From pig balls,
From the ferocity of pig driven to holiness,
From the furred ear and the full jowl come
The repose of the hung belly, from the purpose
They Lion grow.
From the sweet glues of the trotters
Come the sweet kinks of the fist, from the full flower
Of the hams the thorax of caves,
From “Bow Down” come “Rise Up,”
Come they Lion from the reeds of shovels,
The grained arm that pulls the hands,
They Lion grow.
From my five arms and all my hands,
From all my white sins forgiven, they feed,
From my car passing under the stars,
They Lion, from my children inherit,
From the oak turned to a wall, they Lion,
From they sack and they belly opened
And all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth
They feed they Lion and he comes.
--Philip Levine, Detroit 1968
4/25/16
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