Poetry is art. Words with art. A great poet can move one to
laughter or to tears, can make a stanger fall in love, or tear
wounds with whispers of black and white. Without poetry, life
would be less magical, less beautiful, less real. Merriam
Websters dictionary defines poetry as; writing that creates a
concentrated imaginative awareness of experience, chosen and
arranged in language to create a specific emotional response
through meaning, sound, and rhythm.
The best moments in life are poetic. The best films are like
poetry, the best novels. The best paintings move us like poetry,
and the greatest music moves in metrical power with the grace of
poetic deliverance, to capture and captivate our souls. But the
essence of poetry, which can be nearly as powerful as life
itself, is as simple as a pen and paper. No funding necessary. No
label deal, no turnaround, no difficuly to produce, save for the
soul searching of the writer them self. Yet in its simplicity, in
its timeless ease, poetry has been and always will be one of the
greatest forms of art and celebrations of life on planet
Earth.
It is with this tribute to poetry, that we bring you here The
Hollywood Sentinel's first regulary series of poets, featured
weekly. This week, we bring you not only a poet, but also a
painter. When we had the pleasure to see the powerful exhibition
of MARLENE DUMAS, Measuring Your Own Grave, at the Museum of
Contemporary Art last year in Los Angeles, we were stunningly
impressed. Bordering on the surreal, the sublime, the sexual, and
the deathly, Marlene Dumas, also a prolific author, regularly
comments on her own work in short text and prose poems that
accompany her paintings. The following poem accompanied her art
piece titled Dead Marilyn. Here, we show you one of her more
lighter works, entitled,The Teacher. We hope you enjoy.
- Bruce Edwin
I am the woman who does not know
where she wants to be buried any more.
When I was small, I wanted a big angel on my grave
with wings like in a Caravaggio painting.
Later I found that too pompous.
So I thought I'd rather have a cross.
Then I thought - a tree.
I am the woman who does not know
if I want to be buried anymore.
If no one goes to graveyards anymore
if you won't visit me there no more
I might as well have my ashes in a jam jar
and be more mobile.
But lets get back to my exhibition here.
I've been told that people want to know,
why such a somber title for a show?
Is it about artists and their mid-life careers,
or is it about women's after-50 fears?
No, let me make this clear:
It is the best definition I can find
for what an artist does when making art
and how a figure in a painting makes its mark.
For the type of portraitist like me
this is as wide as I can see.