Found sapphics: The Modern Palmist
 

Okay, so here's my revision.

I have:

repositioned the bird-fish and tidied him up, adding some nice plant wings, too.

Digitally manipulated the clover illustration so that it looks (hopefully) like it's something the bird-fish (I shall call him Henry) is feeding from, sucking out of the palm.

Fitted the illustration to within the palm image.

Changed colour on erased text so that it isn't quite so blocky and blends a little better with the image

Added text of the first three lines of the found sapphic at the bottom of the print (this is number three in the sequence of four)

https://sarah-janecrowson.com/wp-con...5/Fishbird.jpg

Original image:
https://sarah-janecrowson.com/wp-con...-Ecologist.jpg

[Although I'm calling this a 'found sapphic' it's also an erasure poem, meaning that if I placed the source text under the image, the words would fall in exactly the same place as they do in the image.]

My source text is The Modern Palmist, D.B Jackson, (1953) Clay Books, Suffolk. It's a book whose ideas I disagree with - not because they're mystical, but quite the opposite - the 'scientific' way of palm-reading the author postulates verge on (at worst) eugenics, and (at best) stereotypes. It's disagreeable in a more than 'of it's time' type of way, for me. This is why I wanted to reinvent it, and make new narratives from it]

I'd be really interested in what anyone thinks, about the poetry or the image, or both. I can change/tweak these.

To put it a bit in context, the full 'found sapphic' is here:

art and bone, the palmist must shape the fingers;
rules and lines an intricate spider's web work –
free from blame he dances and sways through fortunes?
delicate worries

Each line has a similar image.

Sorry for long explanation!

Sarah-Jane

I prefer image to text, I guess because it’s already trying hard to be poetry so I lose the alchemical transformation.

I had my palm read on Venice Beach by a defrocked Russian Orthodox priest. I was young and with a lady, and before starting, he said You are not a couple. I thought that was a huge dice throw and was very impressed.

Cheers,
John

Thanks John,

I have a few decisions to make with these four - I think at the moment they read visually cluttered with the text as a pure erasure, and there are other things I can do with the text that might be more sympathetic with the image, so it's very helpful to hear your thoughts.

Sarah-Jane

Sarah ,

Seems like your off to fine start.
I like the placement of the words, how they spread out at the fingers then gather in the palm area. The poem does well in its conveying of a palm reading in that way. The word dances seems to have some of its ink reflecting in the globe of water. The fish bird looks to be building a nest of leafy sprouts which could interpret as new starts around a globe of water. Good fortune. I think you’ will succeed at reinventing this. Be open for any unusual or less ordinary fortunes and maybe the unbelievable but true ones and misfortunes. Like John’s experience, I bet there are some strange tales out there. I like the entire sapphic as well, I feel it would be a good header or intro.

What other words were around "blame"? If that's an ok question or not.

Hi Sarah-Jane,

I think the word blame dangles there very nicely! As Jason points out. OTOH, reflecting on your comment, I think the center of the palm may be a little cluttered at the moment, and the bird, lovely as it is, looks a bit like a sixth finger, if that's a bug, not a feature for you.
I very much like your thought of using a palmreader's palm as your template here.

Cheers,
John

Hi Sarah,

You mentioned the image being cluttered, I wonder if removing some of the branches or fading them so the lines of the hand come through, but keep most of the leaves. I like the mushrooms and they go with the meaning of the palm reading, I wonder those are too many maybe , but bring them out more.

Hi both,

Thanks for coming back to this.

Jason, the words around 'blame' are 'The owner of the Empty Hand does not feel things deeply. Praise or blame do not affect him greatly'. It goes on to say that 'He goes through life rather like a cabbage, with little sensitivity'!

John, I think that's a good point about the position of the bird-fish.

I think what I'm going to do is try to move the bird-fish and manipulate some of the lines so it looks as if the bird-fish is sucking them out of the palm - that will work to sustain a narrative of the palm-reader somehow sucking on futures like honey, which I quite like.

It'll take me a while, but I'll post a revision once the work is done. In the meantime, thank you! Your comments have helped me think of a way to improve this (I hope).

Sarah-Jane

Revision posted.

Hi Sarah-Jane,

I like where your edit has taken this: it feels less cluttered, the bird isn't a finger, and there's narrative thrust to the bird and the lines of the palm. I'm not sure you need your complete text at bottom, though. Anyhow - very much enjoyed. I still like the palm as template and think a series might be possible.

Cheers,
John

Thank you John, that's helpful.

I think whether I leave the text at the bottom depends on where/how these develop. I have four, all first drafts from April's slog of poem-a-day. I don't think the source text could stand more. It feels like archive research, sometimes, making these. Combined with chance and the dérive, which is probably at the heart of most of the work I make.

Onwards!

Sarah-Jane

Ah, the derive! You might on that note be familiar with Rimbaud's Le Bateau ivre. He was about eleven when he wrote it (well, eighteen). It's here: https://www.ipreferparis.net/2012/08...-rimbaud-.html

And four I think makes for a nice series.

Cheers,
John

That's interesting, John. Thank you.

I know that Debord, and the Situationists and psychogeography were hugely influenced by Rimbaud, although I don't know Rimbaud's work well.

So, I'm reading the poem as part of the precursor to the narrative of the Situationists, who, in my reading, were explicitly looking for some kind of difference (to capitalism) in their explorations of cities?

Sarah-Jane

Hi Sarah-Jane,

I've not heard of the Situationists or Debord but their notion of derive sounds both helpful and a possible debt to Rimbaud. That's exactly how his boat drifts, after all. btw the boat is his narrator, not any human.
Rimbaud tends to get neglected by C19th literary critics, at least in English. I find him startling, troubling, weird - truly epochal - as Verlaine is not and Mallarme is maybe. And he quit poetry at twenty. His dying words (at 37) allegedly were Poetry is shit. If you'd like to read some, I'd suggest A Season in Hell and Illuminations, both of which I think can be read in English if need be. Illuminations is largely prose poems, which gives translators more space and freedom.
Here's an amazing sonnet he wrote at 16, inspired by the Franco_Prussian war: https://blogs.transparent.com/french...ormeur-du-val/
Rimbaud was a rebel from a conservative mother, running away to Paris at 16 and shacking up with the much older (and married) Verlaine, who tried to shoot him later. It does little credit to Verlaine in my books. There is definitely progressive thought in his work, sympathy for the poor and downtrodden, but there's also drugs and the search for the absolute in art. He then went and ran guns to Ethiopia and married a Muslim lady - he may have helped Ethiopia defeat the Italians, unique in African history, so OK, a bit anticolonial, a bit anticapitalist. But I find neither central to his art. Don't know about his thought.
Rimbaud became a big icon to a lot of people, which I think some critics resent. He can be sexist - I have poems of his students dislike - but mostly, he wanted to push the envelope, and I think he is without peer in the history of poetry for teen writing. Mostly 16-18, before he quit. And rebel, absolutely so.

Cheers,
John

Oh - he was also quite beautiful. You can google an image if you like.

Hi Sarah,

I like the revisions here: the butterfly on the finger and close to blame, the new bird position, the globe looks to have a hole in it, and the hand and images line up better and have a clearer significance.

I think it's more developed now and you probably won't need the text at the bottom because the words and images are pretty much doing it on their own, at least for me.

I do like the dandelion seed ones, they kind of have a fingerprint effect on your original.

Thank you John and Jason -

Jason - thank you so much - it's really helpful to me to find where and why you think this is working for you now.

John - that's interesting - and thank you for the signposts to Rimbaud's work - I will go and read those poems.

Debord is interesting, too, perhaps. He writes from a radical marxist perspective, and articulates a counter-narrative to mass culture - The Society of the Spectacle is probably his most famous work. It, for me, very much leads on from Walter Benjamin's Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction but I'm not a marxist scholar, and I'm sure there are nuances I'm not picking up on.

Best online resource for Debord that I've found is here - http://www.notbored.org/debord.html

I am ambiguous about the Situationists. Things that (apart from the complex politics and context) stand out for me are that -

- they used early tech in their explorations of Paris (walkie-talkies)
- they are very self-consciously radical
- Lefebvre lost them in the rural

Psychogeography is/was fashionable a few years ago, but, like everything, perhaps where it came from is just as interesting as what it has become (which seem, for the most part, to be historical or alt-narrative walks, and arts 'walking practice').

Sarah-Jane

Hi Sarah-Jane,

Ah yes, fashion. I'm going to guess Lefebvre left the Communist Party in 1957 because of Hungary, 1956, as many in France did. Many in France of course did not, Sartre among them. Radical Marxists - Soboul - controlled French Revolutionary historiography up to about the 1960s, dismissing Lafayette for instance, a man who participated in three revolutions and went to prison for it, as they had not, as a reactionary. It is all very convenient. It's good to hear they found ways to improve the experience of going for a walk, walks are worthwhile things. So is Walter Benjamin, of course, a writer of whom I have a high opinion. The Society of the Spectacle sounds like an interesting title, I'll have to look out for it. And yes, I would say that Rimbaud is worth reading.

Cheers,
John

Hi John,

I'm going to guess Lefebvre left the Communist Party in 1957 because of Hungary, 1956, as many in France did.

He was expelled from the Communist Party. His ideologies were distinctive. I hope you enjoy The Society of the Spectacle if you read it at some point.

Just editing swiftly as that sounded really snippy when I read it back and I didn't mean it to! I think your points about Lafayette are really interesting - and yes, walks are interesting, and I do think that the Situationists elevated them into something that was also radical!

(apologies, I was/am just tired and wasn't thinking about how my reply read back)

Sarah-Jane

My post sounded snippy! My apologies, I have my opinions about French fashion and Marxism‘s place in that, but I don’t need to bang on about it. Thank you for the links to things I don’t know. 1957 was a tough time for French Communists.

Cheers,
John