You vs. Yourself: Self-Portraits for Poets

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Ada Hoffman, Alicia Savage, art projects, art teachers, Arts& Academe, Baltimore Review, Cave Canem, Dos Gatos Press, dVerse Poet's pub, Easel and Me blog, Fishouse, Frances Borzello, Liminality, Lisa Russ Spaar, Mirror Mirror: Self Portraits by Women Artists, National Portrait Gallery, poetry lab, poetry prompt, Project Fairytale, Reginald Harris, Seeing Ourselves: Women's Self Portraits, self portrait art projects, Self Portrait Poetry anthology, Self Portrait Project in Haiti, selfie, Silver Birch Press, The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Incredible Art blog, The Poetry Foundation, Tracy K Smith, vinyl window portraits, Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry, women artists, Women Artists at the Easel

Self Portrait, Undated by Vivian Maier

THE ART-SIDE

There has been a long tradition of self-portraiture in art, especially amongst women artists, who use it as a way of coming to a better understanding of oneself (as a temporary break into “other”), often adding symbolic imagery or stylized elements to their renderings.

For a thorough education in the subject, refer to Frances Borzello’s gorgeous book Seeing Ourselves: Women’s Self Portraits, which covers eight centuries of “lady” painters and photographers and also includes an interesting discussion on 20th century adaptations for performance and new media.

For more of a crash-course style intro, see the annotated galleries at Women Artists at the Easel& Mirror Mirror: Self Portraits by Women Artists.

There is also an eclectic mix of historic and contemporary offerings at the Easel and Me blog.

 

If you’d like to try your hand at an artsy but less traditional self-portrait, plow through some of the lessons at the Incredible Art blog. Created for art teachers, but fun for adult dabblers as well, choose from vinyl window portraits, bobblehead selfies, collage silhouettes, scratchboard etching, Matisse inspired cut paper portraits and more.

A few more stray links that I like: The Self Portrait Project in Haiti and Alicia Savage’s Project Fairytale Self-Portraits.

POETIC MUSINGS

Now on to the word-ly bit!  For the the low-down on poetic self portraiture,  check out Lisa Russ Spaar’s Arts& Academe post at the Chronicle of Higher Education–a quick intro to the genre with examples from a handful of emerging poets.

If you want the expanded version (yes! please), pick up a copy of Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry (the original) and turn to her lesson on pgs. 277-283.

Here you will find three multi-step exercises on tackling self-portrayal in poems, including the persona poem and the Self- Portrait as OBJECT format.

There are, of course, more example poems packed into the lesson and a handy list of contemporary poems for further reference. Dverse has a few of the suggestions listed here up on their site along with a more open prompt.

The Poetry Foundation also has a nice offering of old& new poems.

 

For those craving more, Silver Birch Press has a meaty anthology with poems from 67 scribes from all over the globe.

Other poems I’ve gleaned from the net (for your use as models):

Self Portrait as Bilbo Baggins from Liminality

Self Portrait as the Letter Y at Fishouse

Self Portrait as My Father’s Son at Baltimore Review

 

Have a favorite self-portrait poem, painting or photo?  Shoot us a link in the comments. We love hearing from you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poetry Prompt: Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando

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Aerialist, Black Venus, circus performers, Degas, ekphrastic poems, high flying, impressionist, La Femme Canon, Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando, mixed-race women, National Gallery, poetry prompt, poetry prompts, Sitting with Art, strong women, Syliva Plath, Victoria Hallerman, writing prompts

Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando (1879)–Degas, oil on canvas

 

Degas’ only painting of the circus, repeatedly called “one of his most surprising canvases” by biographers, it is now housed at the National Gallery in London. Find out more about the unique artwork and the mysterious mixed-race aerialist here.

Two poems for additional inspiration:

Aerialist by Syliva Plath

Aerialist by Victoria Hallerman

Share your own high-flying poems in the comments!

 

 

 

Mining Ghosts: Fighting the Inner (Ms.) Pac-Man to Find New Poems

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ghosts, hauntings, memory, Ms. Pac-Man, poetry lab, poetry prompt, writing prompt

Poor Ms. Pac-Man! She has spent a lifetime fleeing ghosts. By embracing yours, you can free up a wealth of material for new work.  Everyone has some image or moment or experience lingering from their pasts.  Yours might be tied to people or houses or stories.  You might even have a book that has attached deeply in your memory. The key to unlocking these “nuggets” is to override the self-preservation instinct and push into uncomfortable territory.

Let me give a personal example.  Recently, I accompanied my mother on a drive through an older part of town.  When we had lived in that area ourselves, we used to pass a certain two-story that would always launch my mother into a well-worn story about the two, small boys who had once lived there. One had accidentally (fatally) shot the other, and was forever haunted by the memory.  I was too young to remember much of the detail of the tragedy for myself, but this ritual retelling ingrained the warning just as certainly as our endless fire drills. Incidentally, we were the most emergency-prepared children on the planet. [More on that later.]

Mom

It had been many years since we passed by this house, but my mother immediately picked up with the story, and I was reminded of yet another cautionary tale that was always prompted by a certain Mississippi back road. Here she would recount the story of a close friend who had lost his arm while dangling it from a car window. She would talk about the phantom pain he would complain of years and years later, and how that one stupid decision had hung over his life.

As a child, I could repeat both of these stories by heart, but it was not until a high school friend lost his older brother to huffing, that I understood about phantom pain and true hauntings.

I watched helplessly as this friend struggled not just with the loss of his brother, but with his parents’ strange reaction.  Even long after we had gone off to college, they carried on as if the dead brother were still alive– keeping him constantly before themselves with his favorite activities, even birthday celebrations, and especially ensuring that nothing was touched in his room or his soccer shoes removed from the foyer.

The honoring of a dead brother over a live one was deeply traumatic even for those at more of a distance.  I dug into this residual pain and the images from my mother’s warnings/stories in a poem called  “Apparitions” that is currently under consideration at a prominent magazine.  It’s probably some of my best work, precisely because I made myself dig out all of those old ghosts.

See where this type of mining might take you!

Wild Things in Art & Verse: ANIMAL Rocks the Poetry Lab

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ANIMAL, Cynthia Huntington, Derain, Dufy, Fauvism, Gertrude Stein, Matisse, Muppets, Natalie Goldberg, Pablo Neruda, Peter Jay Shippy, poetry prompt, Writing From the Body

Muppets are good therapy, especially when faced with the worst kind of writer’s block–inabilitytowriteapoemitis. Kermit’s wise words tell us to embrace our differentness, but ANIMAL may be the real key to unlocking our truest selves.

He knows how to rock the beast, how to unleash that wildness that is sorely lacking in much contemporary literature and art. I’m not talking about debauchery or creating for shock. I’m talking about tapping into your animal core. Be the wild beasts, like Les Fauves.

ANIMAL would have loved these guys! They were a tight group of French painters that decided to shake up the art world at the dawn of the 20th century.

Theirs was a wide departure from the subtleties of the impressionists and the more structured post-impressionist style, with an ultimate goal of capturing crystallized emotion in their big, lusty brush strokes and bold colors.

While not immediately popular in the art world, their work took off amongst the literati, most notably with writer Gertrude Stein, who purchased A Woman in a Hat (left) from Matisse very early on in his career.

Other key artists of the movement were Derain, Braque, Vlaminck, Camoin and Dufy. Just a few representative pieces, and then I move on.

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Though Fauvism as a movement was largely over by the time that Pablo Neruda came onto the scene (having been absorbed by the German Expressionists), its influence is strongly felt in his work, both in his use of color (scroll to the Ode) and raw emotion.

For instance, in this poem:

I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.
—————————————————————–

What passion! The man was surely a genius. And he got there by throwing off worldly constraints and embracing his animal instincts. Think about that. Think about how that would feel. It would give you the wild energy that John Lee talks about in Writing From the Body (ch.7). ANIMAL would approve.

Even more so, the exercise recommended by Natalie Goldberg in Writing Down the Bones (pgs. 83-84). She asks us to “be the Animal..to walk in the world in touch with that present, alert part of ourselves, that animal sense part that looks, sees and notices…to move slowly, stalking your prey, which is whatever you plan to write about.”

In other words, write through animal eyes. Let it make a new way into your poetry. No boundaries. Just go with your emotions. RELEASE THE ANIMAL. And write.

Then perhaps come back and take a look at Peter Jay Shippy’s poem, The Palm of the Paw, or Cynthia Huntington’s, From the Dunes.

And if you end up with something great of your own, please feel free to share.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Get A Lick of This…

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Aimee Nez, Creole Creamery, Ice cream, Ice cream social, Kei Miller, lab, Laurel McConnell, Liz Rosenberg, Mary Rose O'Reilly, New Orleans, Picasso, poetry prompt, Raoul Dufy, The Prytania Theater, The Wave, writing prompt

Back when I was in school, the junior high vice-principal (not from the South nor good with 6th graders) decided that it would be a good idea to have a welcome-back ice cream social for the newbies.

Now this was in Louisiana, in the middle of August. Needless to say, an unairconditioned gym plus moody teenies were not such a good plan. We melted down faster than the slop they were passing off as ice cream. I am not sure what that goop was, but I am telling you that it almost turned me off ice cream for good. Seriously, seriously gross.

Luckily, I discovered Ben&Jerry’s when I went off to college. My only excuse for not having found it sooner was that my mother did all the grocery shopping back then. Let me just say a little thank you to all of the ladies at Hollins for keeping the Rat stocked with my favorite mix. I forget the name of it now, but it had some yummy shortbread chunks and was a total God-send. Sorry, but the cafeteria sucked! And you Virginians really need to learn about spice. 

I was so very happy to move back to New Orleans where red beans & rice are kept on tap. And do not even get me started on crawfish. National treasure.

Almost as good as the ice cream. Almost! Creole Creamery on Prytania (that’s in the Garden District) really whips up a mean Creole Creme Cheese and a kickin’ Sweet Potato Praline. Some people swear by their Red Velvet Cake, but for now I like me some Blueberry Pie in a waffle cone thank you very much.

A good cone after a movie at the Prytania is the perfect date. That’s right, snuggle up. Eat that ice cream in pairs. You’ll need some good lovin’ after watching The Shining (it’s playing all week).

And if you happen to have come by in the daytime, you really should try to take some photos of the wild parrots that own the trees in Uptown.

This photo ran in the local paper.  Hard to get a better shot of the birdies! Pretty, but loud.

Reminds me of one of my favorite paintings by Raoul Dufy. He liked the bright colors of tropical birds, and so do I.

I am also reminded of Picasso’s Woman Reading. Something about the combination of colors and shapes.

I also think ice cream when I see photos of the Wave formation in Arizona. Chocolate swirl anyone?

What you do associate with ice cream?

A color? A smell? How about weddings?

These pics are from photographer Laurel McConnell on the happy couple’s anniversary. Very cute! And reminiscent of the opening photo.

Ice cream is perhaps an unofficial language of love??

Find a way to tell that story. Or work it out as a poem.

Or go another way. Whatever speaks to you, write!

And if you can find a copy, read In Praise of Ice Cream Vending Machines at a Greyhound Bus Station by the talented Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Then soak up Confession by Mary Rose O’Reilly.

Here’s part of Life Without Ice Cream by Liz Rosenberg. You can find the rest in The Lily Poems.

Or try something a bit more political like this set from Kei Miller.

Post if you find something else that you like. I love it when you share.

AY COLORES!! Juicy, Juicy Color Bytes for Poets and Painters

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Aimee Bender, Audre Lord, Belle Journal, color, contemporary artists, Diane Lockwood, Marge Piercy, margo roby, Pablo Neruda, poetry prompt, Ruth Stone, Sylvia Plath, W.S. Merwin, William Sitting Bull

So, I’m a big fan of Margo Roby’s Wordgathering blog and her Poem Tryout for today was all about color. And since I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic myself:

1) because I’m highly anticipating Aimee Bender’s new collection of short stories, The Color Master and 2) because I just put together a collection of my own art for Belle Journal [will link to the gallery when it’s up],

I have decided to give you a selection of poems and paintings to complement Margo’s post.

First a sampling of some contemporary art:

Profile on Red by Delia Parvu

Fire Horses by Maria Spencer

Image #29 by William Sitting Bull

Large White Flowers in Vase by Susanna Shap

Image #32 by William Sitting Bull

Flirting with a violin by Anna Razumovskaya

And now the poems:

Ode to Wine by Pablo Neruda

Colors Passing Through Us by Marge Piercy

The Summer He Left by Diane Lockward  [You have to scroll]

Tulips by Sylvia Plath

White on White by Ruth Stone   [Ignore the nasty comment. Someone please send me a better link if you can find it.]

Separation by W.S. Merwin

Coal by Audre Lord

And that should be enough to get you going for now.  I’m sure I’ve left some really good poems out. If you have one, please post in the comments.

C.A.

Adder-Mouthed Orchids and Shrooms: Getting Down in the Dirt For the Sake of Good Poetry

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Mary Oliver, mushrooms, nature, nature poetry, orchids, poetry lab, poetry prompt, the private eye, Theodore Roethke, writing prompt

If your town is like mine, then you have seen something called the Private Eye Workshop popping up in parks and local colleges.

No, they’re not trying to teach you how to get in touch with your inner Magnum. But they do look kind of strange running around with all of those jeweler’s loupes and shoving their faces into weird things.

And before your imagination gets the better of you, here’s a link to the book and the facebook page.

See! It’s really all in the name of education, and for the grade school teacher it’s a must-do.

I’m recommending it to the poets out there as well.  At least the part about closely observing nature. You don’t need any special gear, and the regular practice of this skill is what takes a good poet to great.

Just look at the work of the sharply honed Theodore Roethke and Mary Oliver.

Countless hours spent amongst his father’s flowers gave us Roethke’s famous Orchids poem, and Oliver got Mushrooms to us after a lifetime of walks in the woods.

So here’s your challenge for the day: Taking these two poems as your models, try to craft one of your own in a similar vein. Remember to focus tightly on just one specimen and lavishly describe!

Try not to get too hung up on honeybees and spiders. And if anyone knows of some good insect poems out there that don’t sound like they are channeling Shel Silverstein, please post.