Killer of Sheep, & Two Poems

I just watched Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep again, this time with my partner, who hadn't seen it before.  An amazing film, a devastating film (many of the scenes remind me of my hometown, Detroit, tho take place in the Watts district in SF).  I'm still amazed by the use of music in this film (for which Burnett was told he had to pay nearly full royalties to the execs of the recording companies, thus stalling the full release of the film until 2005).  I'll post a short essay on this work in the coming days or weeks, but for now I'm interested in calling attention to the fact that you can order this film easily now, which comes as a surprise to a lot of people, and did so to myself when professor film at Bard, Marie Reagan, colleague of mine, screened the picture for Bard's annual L&T film series. It had been the second time I'd seen the film, but the first time on a big screen with good sound. Watching/hearing in such a way truly brings out the sheer invention of the filmic conventions, some borrowed by European avant-gardists that Burnett was then in conversation with (as grad student in the 70s), some very much Burnett's own, such as the use of jump cuts from a moving platform (e.g., a train) as it pans across.  The music is a whose-who of artists from (not only) the 60s--Earth, Wind, and Fire, e.g.  

Since last year I've been slowly working on, first outlining, now beginning the writing process, a cycle of poems, quasi ekphrastic translations of the film's scenes, one poem per scene.  Maybe the title will be Catching Trains.  I don't know.  But I'm enjoying this process--nothing quite like getting to know a film (or anything, yes?) well by writing thru it.  A couple poems below. Everything is yet rough.  Though I sense this project won't, like many of my projects, simply die on the vine, as I've made the leap and committed a couple pieces to journals--Aufgabe & Cannot Exist.  No turning back now.

Need less to say the say sound make-s-

In the hiding in the want-as need as lay

As soft under-the said to de-claim -skin-

 

Cover you-sound a full wound un-desolates

Your un-peeled body con-cept you asked it

Open asked if desire not need needs in -the-

 

In made-need in the -shine- of this stuck tonic-

Clonic body para-meter if not yet and if -now-

                        Then our shadows are fully not us not yet –yet-  

 

--To CJ Martin

 

I mean to meant to track to tracks I open I lay mean to rail-hum to cheek I laid I means to

 

Track your I meant to hear you mean to bare your skin to gravel I meant to mean you de-

 

Mean I to you so vibrates I meant to blood scents I meant to track to hand to search with

 

Meant a track a cosmetic I’s crumbles to iron rail a cheek meant is tracks you dis-appear

 

Ekphrastico! Matina Stamatakis on Her Beautiful Chapbook, ek~ae

Some months back, for students of a prior course I was teaching, I posted this. It's poet and editor (of Venereal Kittens) Matina Stamatakis's response to a couple questions I asked during conversation about ekhprastic work, text-image poems, and other things that came out of my interest in reading her Dusie chapbook ek~ae.

If you are a student in my classes, you're embarking on manuscript projects, book making, performing text, and so forth, this should be of interest. If you are someone else, this should still be of interest - unless you don't "do" text or image, at which point I do not know what to tell you.


If you could say anything about this piece, what might you say/write/recursively respond to?

When I set out to design this book, I was heavily into French poetry at the time. One book in particular, The Cubist Poets in Paris: An Anthology, really fueled my interest for the visual and textual. Although this book isn't exactly "ekphrastic", it helped me formulate my own view and approach to making an ekphrastic piece work:

1. creating disconnection with the visual and textual.

With ek~ae, I focused on a point of reference with each image. Rather than looking at the image as a whole, I visualized a tiny part of the image, a sliver, then worked it into a poem that stood on its own, but also worked with the image--in some cases, against it.

2. writing on a picture outside the picture

When I set out to write this book, I was more interested in what wasn't shown. For example, in the case of Dissecting H, there was an image of graffiti mixed with snippets of torn newspapers. Rather than writing a poem about the graffiti, or even the words surrounded by graffiti, I focused on the feeling of chaos, disjointed appearances, rough and unrelenting landscapes. By doing this, I was able to create an image that worked outside of the given image, which, in effect, made the overall impression stronger.