Visual Narratives

By Leena Prasad

 

Poetic Pictures

 

The teenage poet was unable to stop her eyes from watering as she read her poem about a dead friend.  Her loss became so tangible with those tears that the source and inspiration of her poetry writing suddenly became clear to me and I understood that poetry has given her a home of sorts, a place to not only grieve but also to find solace. I can’t say that I understood her pain but I was touched by her sorrow.

 

This occurred at a recent Poetry Slam at The Intersection for the Arts at 446 Valencia Street in The Mission.  The poets ranged from Junior High students, their teachers, to professional poets like Ruth Forman, author of “We Are the Young Musicians and Renaissance.”  According to Booklist, Ruth Forman’s poems are “alive and kicking; they pound and pulse with a hard-won sense of self, beauty, femininity, strength and righteous indignation…”  Ruth Forman personified her poems as she captivated the audience with not just her word craft, but with a delivery that made the words of Booklist come alive for the audience.

 

The visual element at a poetry reading is, of course, the physical presence of the poet and an emotional delivery that hints at the genesis of the poem.  The narrative element is a combination of the poets’ personality and ability to connect the message of the poem to the emotions of the audience. For example, one of the poets at the reading wrote about how Mexicans are found behind-the-scene in every eating establishment in San Francisco, but rarely in the forefront as managers, hosts, or waiters.  In the fashion of a Poetry Slam, the poet read with emotion and flourish and with a touch of humor.  He also mentioned his Mexican heritage in the poem.  There was poignancy to his reading that would not have affected me with the same force if I had read those words silently in my head from a black and white piece of paper.

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Of course, there were occasional readings where I dozed off for a second or longer.  It wasn’t that the poem was necessarily unappealing but the poet lacked charisma.  It’s difficult to qualify the lack of appeal to the poem itself or to the poet’s lack of personal magnetism.  This being a Poetry Slam, I had expected performance and lost interest when the poet was too shy or lazy or untalented to use the force of their voice, appearance, and personality to tap into the visual and narrative potentials of their poem.

 

On the contrary, it would have been impossible not to pay attention to the poet who read with ardent convictions about her feelings regarding the Iraq war and about racism.

 

I wondered if the poets were affected by the audience response.  The listening crowd laughed, sighed, cheered, and clapped. As a fan of poetry, it was reassuring to witness its revival and to experience the reading of poetry as a social phenomenon rather than a silent and solitary affair.

 

I hadn’t expected to be writing about the Poetry Slam for this column.  I also hadn’t anticipated that it would be difficult to find an empty seat at the reading. There were probably about a hundred seats and almost all of them were occupied.  The experience convinced me that there’s a visual and narrative element to Poetry Slams which explains its popularity over the traditional poetry readings that focus on just the words of the poem and not the poet.

 

It wasn’t until Poetry Slams invaded the urban landscape that poetry became a visual experience.  Of course, MTV added a visual dimension to songs a long time ago.  But, it was Poetry Slams that bridged the gap between poetry as an exclusive domain of the elite and that of the urban masses by putting poets on the stage as not just readers but as presenters of the poem.

 

Please write to leena@WeAreNotAmused.com for comments, kudos, critique, potential topics, suggestions, etc.

 

 

Classic VS Modern, Husband VS Wife, Art as War
Article By: Ali Salamin


This is a strange way to start this article, but, Economics. Right? The thing about economics is that when someone outside it’s realm of understanding takes a general gaze over the subject, it doesn’t register. I mean numbers and new words, and old words with different meanings than what you’re accustomed to them meaning. It’s a whirling cyclone of gibberish.

But, economics, like a lot of big ass things-you-should-know-about topics, can be made down right simple to understand if you posses the Rosetta Stone idea that unlocks it into the Queens English.

With economics, it’s that its all about people. Everything about it comes down to the bizarre whims and tastes and up to the minute situations of humanity in any given economy. With this idea, the idea that an economy unfolds the way it does, due to the hopes and restraints of the society in question, everything falls into place. The epiphany moment.

So just what in the hell does that have to do with my and my wife’s recent trip to Santa Barbara? I’ll tell ya what g##damnit…

 It was the last day of our honeymoon, I decided to extend the stay one more day if that day would be sunny (it had rained for 4 days in a row), and guess what, a miracle. Even before we got there she was blabbing about the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. But with the non-stop cosmic thwarting going on, we did everything but go to the Museum. But with the change of plans, we were on our way.

Not that I was really excited about it. To the contrary, despite being an artist, I’ve never really considered myself a fan art at all. I have no use for it. To me the world is ugly and makeup doesn’t fix it. I mean you can put a coat of paint over dog-shit, but it’s still shit, yeah? It’s why I’ve always inherently drifted towards the Buddhist outlook on things. Life is suffering, as they say. Everything sucks, the end.

Maya, my wife, of course has a different take on things, and thus obviously, art. She doesn’t just dig it, she duh duh duh digs it. And so where better to bring up my inadequacy and her superiority, than at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art?

 As all of our arguments begin, it started with her asking me a question while knowing how I’d answer in advance, then pouncing all over my feebleminded thoughts due to being pissed off about something else I’d done earlier. So, while we both leaned on the railing of the second floor terrace overlooking the lobby below us, having just done the rounds at the museum, I walked right into it.

She wanted to know which of all the works on display I liked the most. But more to the point, she wanted me to tell her which I’d preferred, the modern installations or the more traditional works. I said it like it is, I respect the skill and disciplined attention to detail that classically trained artists put into their work. No imagination or pondering abysses is necessary to grasp the obvious perfection of a craft. A diamond is a diamond.

So I told her: “Ancient Roman sculptures.” They were on display. And unless you’ve actually tried to recreate life out of dead materials, you just can‘t grasp it. Succeeding where others fail, I mean. It’s straight Sun Tzu shit. And once upon a time this is what I loved about being an artist. There’s an up, and there’s a down. An order, a goal, and you either succeed or fail. Art as war.

So when I see an angel statue strapped to a rope that’s hooked up to a motor that’s spinning the f#cken thing in circles, 15 ft. up in the air above a pile of 20 or so statues laying on the ground like some massacre had taken place, I’m sorry modern art lovers, aka WIFE, but I don’t get it. And I never will, if only to spite you.

Course I didn’t actually say this to her, I think I said something about liking modern art too, just liking the Roman sculptures more. But that that was good enough for her. She had a point to make ya see. And her point was that I’m an “art snob”. To which I quite possibly replied, “No, you are.”

Immediately after our agree-to-disagreement on the second floor, we spotted a nook of the museum that we’d missed near the entrance of the lobby. I used the odd painting housed inside to underscore my appreciation for what seemed to be abstract and therefore modern art. The painting was called “Water Low Bridge”.

The wife didn’t like it. According to her no true appreciator of art, would. The whole trip to the museum had been one big shit on husband fest, and this was the final lesson in Ali dumb Maya smart 101. But being the Kerouacian Buddha I am, I let it go, confident in knowing that I’m secretly right about everything. And that was that.

Or so I thought, because as we packed our things in the hotel that night to prepare for check-out in the morning, we stumbled upon a very interesting souvenir. Among the brochures Maya had collected over the course of our honeymoon, was one advertising a painting apparently on display at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Entitled: “Water Low Bridge”, by Claude Monet.

Now, I could have let this slide on by and been content with knowing that I was right. But why do that when I could make her feel as stupid as she made me feel all day? Right? So I don’t wanna say I shoved the brochure in her face, to prove I was right to appreciate “my kind of art” over “her kind of art”, but I didn’t not shove the brochure in her face.

We laughed at first, her a little, me like a donkey on crack. But underneath it I could tell that she was genuinely embarrassed. So as you can imagine, of course, it was a hollow victory. I done hurt my baby’s feelings and in the process done hurt my self. And that is where, in the midst of my feeling like a dick , it hit me… the epiphany moment.

Neither of us were right to like what we liked. And neither of us were wrong. The truth is, art is what’s art to you. And although “my kind of art” may be appreciated more by those who make the rules on what good art is, what the hell do they know? It’s  either “oooo pretty” or nothing at all. Whatever moves you, let it.

Etc. etc. the end.

(Don’t be mad at me Maya, you‘re still perfect, I still suck.)