Poetry | Broadsides

Earth’s Cries Recorded in Space

The broadside, a distinctive form of artistry, came about in the 16^th century. Traditionally, a broadside was an attractive, eye-catching message scribed on a large sheet of paper and intended to be posted or hung in a public space, thereby transforming that space. By bringing a mixture of poetry and art to the people in this way, the poster or broadside became part of daily conversation

The modern broadside has the very same mission, each being an original literary-visual collaboration, an evocative combination of poetry and art meant to be enjoyed by a wide audience.  Thus displayed for all to see, the age-old mission of the broadside as street literature is accomplished. Any given viewer on any given day may be stimulated both by the language of the poem and the visual image, each in the service of the other

Whereas early broadsides were ephemeral, the modern broadside, using archival inks and papers, and executed by printers of high literary merit, has no such short life. Today, as in early works, text and graphics appear on a large sheet.  Each eloquent art poster or broadside is a work which represents a unique and innovative collaboration between a poet and an artist. In rendering a modern broadside, the visual or graphic artist experiments with forms and techniques influenced by his/her individual association with the poet.

The broadsides shown here are from the literary/visual collaboration of poet Irene Mitchell and artist Daniela Bertol.  They have created two series of distinctive broadsides "Seduction" and "Heart of the Matter", each a limited first edition archival print, numbered and signed.

 Choosing the Éclair

Epistle

Chiaroscuro

 

 Every Bright Green Yet Uncorrupted

 Gazing with Galileo

N.B.  “Gazing with Galileo” appears in Mitchell’s collection Sea Wind on the White Pillow (Axes Mundi Press).  All other poems appear in her new book, A Study of Extremes in Six Suites (Cherry Grove Collections)

April Poetry Month

Events | Celebrating National Poetry Month : Venice of the Mind

We almost at the end of April : we celebrate the end of 2011 "National Poetry Month"with visual poetry a collaboration between a poet and video artist.

Events | Celebrating National Poetry Month

According to an essay by David Orr (“O! Poetry,” The New York Times Book Review, March 17, 2011), “ …poetry can’t approach mass culture with any sense of swagger.” Orr was referring to the April 2011 issue of The Oprah Magazine: “Spring Fashion Modeled by Rising Young Poets.”

Most poets, however, don’t have to worry about outfits or about how to extend poetry beyond the literary culture so that it reaches Everyman - because there is National Poetry Month to bring poetry home, at least in April, all springing buds being equal.

National Poetry Month is a movement begun in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets. Its mission is to foster an appreciation of poetry within the popular culture, and the Academy advocates ways in which this may be done: put a poem in your pocket, chalk a poem on the sidewalk, attend a poetry reading or festival, enclose a poem with your letter, memorize or recite a poem, and, of course, buy poetry books and poetry broadsides.

To become acquainted with broadsides, for example, you may wish to view “Seduction,” the first series of four broadsides, wrought as a collaborative effort between poet Irene Mitchell, and artist Daniela Bertol.

There is also that increasingly captivating aspect of poetry, its connection to the visual, or “visual poetry.” You are invited to view excerpts from the visual poem, “Venice of the Mind.” The the video is by Daniela Bertol, the text by Irene Mitchell.

Irene Mitchell

Thoughts | The Sublime

The Sublime - and Other Dimensions – in Poetry

SUBLIME – The sublime rises from the nobleness of thoughts, the magnificence of the words, or the harmonious and lively turn of the phrase; the perfect sublime arises from all three together.

Wm. Addis (probably 1604-1662)

As a poet, I cannot claim to ever have written in an exalted, grand or lofty style. That is not my intention as a lyric poet. I can, however, deliver a “lively turn of the phrase.”
In fact, I have rarely read a poem that I considered to be sublime – except for a very few , and those that come immediately to mind are: Poetry by Pablo Neruda, Dickinson’s I Died for Beauty, Ted Hugh’s translation of Ovid’s Venus and Adonis, and his translation of Racine’s Phèdre.
What I aspire to as a poet, is not the sublime in my art, but the duende, as named by Lorca, and described by him as a creative force or protean spirit, such as that of flamenco singers, in all
arts. It is said that the magical quality of a poem consists in its always being possessed by the duende, “a thunderbolt beautiful and terrible …so that whoever beholds it is baptized with dark water.”


Irene Mitchell

The Poet’s Habitat

“Be still not only in the room where you write, but in the place where you live, coming to know it by your unknowing relationship with it. In this way you will come to know the world.”
Wesley McNair

Making a poem intimate and individual but, ultimately, universal carries with it that sense of imaginative achievement which is a primary factor in life and in art. Equally vital is a need to have an uncharted relationship with the stillness of the place where the writing occurs.
Every poem is an enactment. As it unfolds, it suggests multiple meanings which can never be fully fathomed, although the poet cannot impede its true impulse.
There is never an answer in a poem, but the poet and the reader are there to discover what they did not know they knew, and to use that knowledge as a compass bearing.

Irene Mitchell

Poetry Reading, May 17, 2009: Irene Mitchell and Paul Genega

“I’ve been listening to Irene Mitchell’s poetry for more than five years,” said Craig Hancock as he introduced the poet to the listening audience at the Kinderhook Memorial Library. “She pays a great deal of attention to language, but the language choice is always in service of the poem. Irene, like the best of poets, writes poems which are particular and universal – both at the same time.”
Mitchell, whose new collection, Sea Wind on the White Pillow, was just published by Axes Mundi Press, talked to the audience about her poetic style. “Nowadays,” she said, “poetry is a little pill, easily swallowed, instantly digestible. I strive to go beyond that prescription, preferring to write poetry that is remarkable for its layers of meaning, its musical quality, its blending of playfulness and profound seriousness.”
These are the qualities, among others, Mitchell finds in the work of poet Paul Genega, who shared the limelight that evening. Genega is the author of four full-length collections and four chapbooks. His awards include an individual fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the “Discovery”/The Nation Prize, and a citation in this year’s Allen Ginsberg Awards.
Among those present at the reading were Daniela Bertol, publisher of Axes Mundi Press, James Werkowski, Linda and Emily Bonin, Carol Derfner, Julie Johnson, Mark Hirschberg, and others who came to lend an ear to poetry. The poets signed copies of their collections following the reading at the library in Kinderhook, New York.

Sea Wind on the White Pillow

New From Axes Mundi Press

SEA WIND ON THE WHITE PILLOW

a poems collection by

IRENE MITCHELL

as reviewed by Karen Schoemer:

From afar, poets can seem a rarified breed, locating transcendance in an overturned leaf and the secrets of humanity in a riverbed’s glistening pebble, where the rest of us see, well, a leaf and a pebble. But in Irene Mitchell’s work, the common world and its uncommon dimensions both come beautifully into focus. The poems in her first collection, Sea Wind on the White Pillow, spring from small details: a runner on her daily route stops beneath a blue bridge; a couple pushes off downstream in a canoe; a swimmer ignores a lifeguard’s whistle and plunges with a “mighty trudgen crawl” into open waters. But from these minor moments, magnificent meanings unspool. The runner’s past looms up, uninvited; the couple’s river journey spans marital decades, taking them from adventurousness to complacency; the swimmer finds herself overpowered by an undertow, reeled back toward shore by the tide’s invincible pull and forced to confront her own limitations. Mitchell’s language is eloquent and erudite, yet unexpectedly playful. “Don’t get colloquial with me, kiddo!” barks a passenger on a cruise ship when a member of the wait staff becomes overly friendly. Her cadences, though steeped in classicists from Homer to Donne to Eliot, maintain a conversational freshness. In “Gazing with Galileo,” the collection’s masterwork, Mitchell suggests that all of us, poets and nonpoets alike, have the capacity to be children of greatness, “daughters/so mindful/of the fluid kick that connects us to the divine.” We can all taste and touch the physical world; Mitchell’s revelation is that the spiritual and metaphysical worlds lurk just beyond it, and we can encounter them as well if we allow ourselves the opportunity.

Karen Schoemer