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Published April 9th, 2014
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The Intricacies of Art and Poetry
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| PBS NewsHour's Jeffrey Brown facilitates panel discussion at SMC about published poetry and related art |
| By Lou Fancher |
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| Jeffrey Brown Image provided |
"Trading Secrets: Art-Poetry-Practice," was the public end-cap on a week-long visit to Saint Mary's College by Jeffrey Brown, PBS NewsHour Chief Arts Correspondent and his wife, internationally acclaimed artist, educator and author, Paula Crawford. As Visiting Woodrow Wilson Fellows, Brown and Crawford led classes, workshops, panels and presentations aimed at addressing the relevancy of a liberal arts education. In the digital age and amid rapidly-changing cultural concerns, discussions encompassed consumerism, the role of an artist in promoting and marketing his or her work, arts criticism, freedom of expression and how television's inherently visual medium influences broadcast journalism.
Brown opened himself to a "Turning the Tables: Your Chance to Interview Jeffrey Brown," session on April 1 and participated as moderator in the poetry panel the following evening.
A poetry reading began the program, with opportunities for poets to explain the artwork adorning their books' covers. The interplay between visuals - including images, and the graphic design of title treatments - and a collection's content, was the primary subject of discussion.
Jai Arun Ravine introduced herself, saying she preferred to be referred to as "Jai," or in the third person as "they, their, them." Intensely involved in every aspect of how and where the work is presented, Jai's poems introduced stark images, like "Naked body through a frozen window," and asked questions, like "What would you do, in a box by yourself?" It's a thinking person's poetry: demanding attention and denying easy answers. And thought has gone into the construction, not just of the poems, but of the paper they are printed upon. Using found objects, compiling rice paper, folding tiny treasures into miniature self-made books - or publishing in more traditional paperbound editions - Jai proved literary art's preciousness is partly the tangible product, the precise packaging, constructed to compliment and carry the language.
Brenda Hillman, the Olivia C. Filippi Professor of Poetry at Saint Mary's, said she had written several volumes categorized under natural elements, like wind and fire. Reading from one, she said, "The word edge has wings made of 'E'." The line demonstrated her acute visual sense - applied to both the individual word and aspects of the natural world. Holding up the collection of poems on fire, she exposed the jacket, front and back, and said, "This piece was too subtle, so we put it on the back. The artist who made this (front cover) image took a picture of a fire. Then he burned the picture and took a picture of the picture burning."
During the panel discussion, the focus veered toward an analysis of images, often placing them in opposition to words. Brown asked the poets, Hillman, Jai, Kevin Simmonds and Alexandra Mattraw, along with visual artist Nori Hara and Crawford, at what point in the process they first thought about cover art.
"I don't think about it until the manuscript has been submitted. It has to rhyme with my idea of the book," Hillman said.
Simmonds said image ideas follow titles and the title is "a little magic, a little confusion." He works with Hara, who said he can see Simmonds' ideas in his head and doesn't always read the poems themselves.
Mattraw mentioned not having input: occasions when an editor will choose the art for her book and she is left only to hope it connects with the work she has cherished and nurtured into existence.
Naturally, Brown asked the writers how it felt to give up control of their work. Simmonds admitted, he "went nuts," when he once asked to have input on the jacket art and a publisher told him, "We have people who do that."
Crawford broadened the discussion by delving into the complexity of combining - and separating - words and images. "I got a solid humanities education, so when I came to arts school I was full of words. I worked hard to separate the two worlds," she said. Today, having co-authored, with sculptor Kendall Buster, "The Critique Handbook, The Art Student's Sourcebook and Survival Guide," and widely recognized for her spacious, suggestive abstract paintings, Crawford spends most of her time outside of language. "It's like a retreat," she said, of her studio. "But the language of poetry is closest to painting: you're getting words, standing in isolation, very chosen."
Mattraw called the trance-like state she enters, while composing a poem, "a slippery space." For her, an image in a film or a conversation can trigger a life experience that projects itself as words in a poem.
The layering of different art forms, like music and dance, as well as images and fonts for book covers, finds its way into the composition or texture of the panel's work, regardless of their resistance. "It's a parallel universe," Crawford claimed. Then, speaking about a poem that was highly influential in work she is preparing for an upcoming exhibit, she warned, "But I don't want a poem to be a caption for a painting. I like them to be near each other. "
An English teacher in the audience asked how to answer his students' most frequent question, especially about poetry: "Why do we have to read this?" they've asked.
Mattraw, with 15 years of teaching under her belt, tells her students: "Art, poetry and fiction are a reflection of life. Go with the flow. Be open to weirdness."
And Hillman said she answers the question with a question: "I ask students, which of you thinks in complete sentences all day long?" she said. "Modernist fragmentation wasn't invented by James Joyce, it was invented by the human mind. Poetry is reality."
Student Art and Poetry Exhibition Opens
An exhibition, "Through Young Eyes: Art & Poetry from the River of Words Collection," which features works by K-12 students from across the world will be on view Saturdays from 2 to 5 p.m. April 12-26 at the Garage Gallery, a satellite of Berkeley Outlet (3110 Wheeler Street, Berkeley). River of Words is a project of the Center for Environmental Literacy at Saint Mary's College of California. According to the SMC website, the artwork presented in this show is the product of students of the River of Words K-12 curriculum that reaches out to young people all over world, engaging them in an exploration of their watersheds through inter-disciplinary (poetry, drawing, painting, science) place-based education. Through teacher training, publications, exhibitions, and advocacy, River of Words strives to inspire and empower future generations of informed and compassionate earth stewards through hands-on, investigative and fun experiences of the world around them. It was founded in 1995 by writer Pamela Michael and then-US Poet Laureate Robert Hass. An opening reception will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, April 11 at the Garage Gallery. Winners' work will be displayed at the Saint Mary's College Library beginning April 30. For information, visit http://www.stmarys-ca.edu/through-young-eyes-art-poetry-from-the-river-of-words-collection.
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Lamorinda Weekly, Moraga CA