Category Archives: collaboration

Aperture

[This poem is #1 in a series dedicated to revisiting poems that were written by me as part of my participation in a collaborative and experimental poetry blog: IMUNURI.blogspot.com. Aperture was written and first published 31 December 2014.]

 

These that are things and not things both
They pepper the landscape
The landscape that is so and not so both
I walk amongst them
The I that is not an I after all, yet somehow is

It’s not that I wonder about this apparent conundrum
As in feeling troubled or some kind of loss
Rather it is there or with it that I belong
Nothing of this casts me aside
All things that I am and am not Rest here

Whose favor would I garner
To look upon this any differently
Seeing is a communion after all
That each and every one of us
Has within the very fabric of being

Ultimately there is no such thing as compromise
And yet how often is there a sensation
Of All of This somehow tangled
Around my ankles that I possess
The I that has no counterpart

As we see through this aperture
Closure is a function of clarity
Focus celebrating the visual spectrum
Saturating this field in the unseen
An exposé of brilliance and crystallization

Astrolabe… contemplating Rumi

Rumi Hawk Ocean sky copy

Book launch this week ~ 15 March 2016

I have special news this week to share with you all. Please join in my excitement as I announce that two works of my poetry, a visual poem and a collaborative poem, are included in One Way to Ask, an unusually delightful and innovative book of poetry and art by poet Daniel Ari and his 67 artist collaborators. (Norfolk Press, San Francisco 2016)

One Way To Ask book cover

The innovation in this book is many things, but a prominent and specific one is a new form of poetry created by Daniel called the queron. What is queron, you might ask?

Queron is a form that emerged from my poetry practice to match the way my creativity dances, curiously and deliberately, with my experience. Querons have seventeen lines grouped into three quintets and a final couplet. The rhyme scheme is ababa bcbca cdcdb dd. I prefer subtle rhyme.” ~ an excerpt on queron from the book

• • •

My collaborative poem (with Daniel Ari) is called “What Experiences” and the “artwork” that accompanies this penned collaboration is a visual poem in its own (w)right: “Where is the line drawn?” Daniel included these works as the end piece, as we delved into a unique level of collaboration, for this book, inspired by our years of writing together on a group blog of Daniel’s called IMUNURI. (I have posted/published many innovative poems on that blog, some of which I have linked to here on Contemplative Fire.)

Kudos, Daniel Ari!

And congrats to all the artists/illustrators included in this unique book of #poetry!

• MORE •

See a preview of the book or purchase a copy of this cool book for yourself, both on the Norfolk Press website.

Check out One Way to Ask on Facebook to see posts about the launch.

Check out Daniel Ari’s blog: Fights With Poems.

Or if you’d like a special author signed copy, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with Daniel.

• • •

“Reading Daniel Ari‘s poems, juxtaposed with artwork by an impressive roster of talented graphisticators, is like entering a cultural Whirlpool washer. Set to the final spin cycle. Everything comes out clean at the end, but your underwear and your socks may have switched identities.”  -Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead