Lately, courtesy of an infatuation with Flickr - the internet image hosting
program - I have been having a kind of mysterious fun going into dialog with
images - digital "snaps" - I take from off my neighborhood streets. Unlike
the conventional "picture" poem in which the poet creates an image (drawn
from a painting, or observation) that is re-invoked entirely within the
context &/or frame(s) of language (without any literal picture), the
cyber-world clearly offers the opportunity to marry, or better, let's say
juxtapose the mediums and put them into a kind of conversation. (Obviously,
for the technically more sophisticated, the image can be manipulated and the
text can be variously integrated, fracture, etc. There is much of this
exploration/experimentation abounding among certain poets). At the moment I
am frankly more interested in the photo as a way to "pop" or "trigger" fresh
text - either as narrative or with a somewhat (!) conventional poem.
Something in me, for example, is drawn to take a particular photo and not
another. The image becomes a means of fishing out the psychic connection in
the making of a poem - or if not so psychologically bent - the image just
provokes a language that forms its own trail of exploration. Somehow, for
example, my photograph of a basketball hoop (a game at which I was pretty
adept) becomes a means of both reflecting on a life, as well as a memoriam
for Robert Creeley. Yet, to convolute the issue here - or the newness of
this form - I don't think, in many cases, that the language can exist
independent of the image (and the images combined with the language are
enriched in terms of meaning or implication, as well)
I know Sebald used those usually in paperback terribly reproduced gray
photos as pretext to segments of his novels. Maybe what this form offers is
something in that vein - only much more fragment centered.
If interested, this has been the latest boogie on my blog. I will appreciate
input and comments.
Stephen V
Blog: http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
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