Issue 02 - Language & Image
Daren Berton, Editor
With its second issue Surreal Poetics seeks to answer the question: how does the modern-day Surrealist perceive our world—that which is visible to all and that which only becomes visible through their poetic intuition? We seek the visionary poet.
Visionary poets are all around yet unappreciated for their ultra-sensitive perception. Sometimes ascribed the labels of seers, divergent thinkers, autistic, dissociative . . .—the mad poet—, we wish for all who possess the ability to make visible the invisible to feel at home in Surreal Poetics; they do not have to hide within the masses nor repress or sacrifice their perceptive ability for conformity. And what of their “poetic intuition”?
We asked each poet to provide some insight into what “poetic intuition” means for them or, better yet, how it works through them. How has this intuition allowed the poets to assimilate known forms and create new forms? How has this intuition put them in a position to “embrace all the structures of the world, manifested or not?”[1] As we move from one poem to the next we must remember Breton’s words: “poetic intuition” provides the “thread” that ties the poet to a path toward “Gnosis as knowledge of a suprasensible Reality, ‘invisibly visible in an eternal mystery.’”[2] For it is only poetic intuition that could have served as the uniting thread, a fil conducteur, through which the poets could communicate with each other on a subconscious level, as evidenced by the recurrence of shared images without any prior conscious communication. Through whichever means the poets used to achieve their ends, they have successfully reached the region of the mind where, as Breton notes, "desire arises unconstrained, a region which is also that where myths take wing."[3] No better metaphor applies to the poets in this issue considering the preponderance of bird references in their poems.
Issue 02 is a collaborative work that focuses on language and image.
Let us remember that many a surrealist text has been born out of poetic collaboration; think of The Magnetic Fields, in which André Breton and Philippe Soupault subject themselves to sessions of heightened states of “pure psychic automatism” to allow their unconscious thoughts to emerge as automatic writing; think of surrealist word games, such as the “exquisite corps”; think of the “Creole Dialogue” between André Breton and André Masson in Martinique: Snake Charmer.
What static visual art best exemplifies the resolution of disparate, juxtaposing images into a new reality . . . a surreality?
Collage!
As such, we have paired a collage with each poem to further heighten the illuminating potentiality of the poem’s images.
Dear reader, as you explore the verbal images of each poem juxtaposed with the visual images of each collage, allow yourself to become ensnar(l)ed in a web of possibilities. Open your eyes and mind to the illuminating sparks that ensue, and let the linking threads of that web reflect and refract the rays of poetic light to reveal images obscured by the shadows that lie behind and between the visible lines.
Visionary poets are all around yet unappreciated for their ultra-sensitive perception. Sometimes ascribed the labels of seers, divergent thinkers, autistic, dissociative . . .—the mad poet—, we wish for all who possess the ability to make visible the invisible to feel at home in Surreal Poetics; they do not have to hide within the masses nor repress or sacrifice their perceptive ability for conformity. And what of their “poetic intuition”?
We asked each poet to provide some insight into what “poetic intuition” means for them or, better yet, how it works through them. How has this intuition allowed the poets to assimilate known forms and create new forms? How has this intuition put them in a position to “embrace all the structures of the world, manifested or not?”[1] As we move from one poem to the next we must remember Breton’s words: “poetic intuition” provides the “thread” that ties the poet to a path toward “Gnosis as knowledge of a suprasensible Reality, ‘invisibly visible in an eternal mystery.’”[2] For it is only poetic intuition that could have served as the uniting thread, a fil conducteur, through which the poets could communicate with each other on a subconscious level, as evidenced by the recurrence of shared images without any prior conscious communication. Through whichever means the poets used to achieve their ends, they have successfully reached the region of the mind where, as Breton notes, "desire arises unconstrained, a region which is also that where myths take wing."[3] No better metaphor applies to the poets in this issue considering the preponderance of bird references in their poems.
Issue 02 is a collaborative work that focuses on language and image.
Let us remember that many a surrealist text has been born out of poetic collaboration; think of The Magnetic Fields, in which André Breton and Philippe Soupault subject themselves to sessions of heightened states of “pure psychic automatism” to allow their unconscious thoughts to emerge as automatic writing; think of surrealist word games, such as the “exquisite corps”; think of the “Creole Dialogue” between André Breton and André Masson in Martinique: Snake Charmer.
What static visual art best exemplifies the resolution of disparate, juxtaposing images into a new reality . . . a surreality?
Collage!
As such, we have paired a collage with each poem to further heighten the illuminating potentiality of the poem’s images.
Dear reader, as you explore the verbal images of each poem juxtaposed with the visual images of each collage, allow yourself to become ensnar(l)ed in a web of possibilities. Open your eyes and mind to the illuminating sparks that ensue, and let the linking threads of that web reflect and refract the rays of poetic light to reveal images obscured by the shadows that lie behind and between the visible lines.
[1] André Breton, “On Surrealism in Its Living Works,” Manifestoes of Surrealism, Translated by Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane, U of Michigan P, 2010, p. 304.
[2] Ibid., p. 304.
[3] Ibid., p. 299.
[2] Ibid., p. 304.
[3] Ibid., p. 299.