Art's Method: the great chef metaphor

Much of the beginning poetry I hear seems to be narrative, and much of it is quite literal, a record of the writer's feelings - writing as a form of autobiographic sorting.

At its best, this can be transformative writing that reveals to us our common human condition and creates meaning for both the writer and the reader. At its worst, this intention can result in a sort of emotive belch that relieves the writer but leaves everyone else staring at the floor. The difference lies in the writer’s breadth of exposure to good writing and good poetry.

A great chef, (to use an extended metaphor for a great writer) doesn’t fall out of the womb with a souffle pan in hand. A great chef doesn’t only cook - but loves to eat, to taste and smell the subtle aspects of various dishes, finds romance in flavor and texture and in discovering the potentials of an ever reaching list of ingredients. A chef in training would sample a variety of cuisine - French fare, Italian, Arabic, Mexican, Japanese and Chinese as well as American dishes. By learning the range of possible flavors, and how they are traditionally combined, and by making great experiment to combine them in new ways, he would would build his own palette, and his own colorful works of culinary art. (Another metaphor!)

Even so, a writer, like a chef. must sample the range of available styles, forms and themes by - READING - in order to develop a broad-based sense of language, and to evolve his own style .

When I ask a want-to-be poet or writer what they are reading, what are their favorite books, poets, essayists, topics - and in reply I get a blank look and a shrug, I draw conclusions.

One last question: if our hypothetical chef had only ever eaten at McDonalds - what do you think he would cook?

- Mar  Walker

Eco-technic Con – a poem about pollution from Inverse Origami

Will technology and science save us from our busy productive, mess-making lives? From our decaying infrastructure, from our out of control technologies?  Or are the things we love the root of the problem? Nobody wants to give it all up.... The poem:

Slick streets,

Black-macadam hydroplane.

Slick world,

screaming 'round death's edge on two wheels.

Curling carburetor exhalations,

a boiler's breathing,

a flatulence of furnaces,

white-metal bones empty of marrow:

cooling coils empty, cans empty,

underground tanks empty,

jugs and jars and

50-gallon drums, all empty.

Dip these parts in the sonic washer,

clean them with a soft brush

the bosses used to say, and

when the fluid begins to cloud.

Pour it out in the parking lot.

Hey you want a job or what?

It won’t hurt a thing, take my word...

My well is near here.

Please don't ask me.

This stuff makes me cough.

Please don't ask me.

But I got a mortgage.

I got kids who need to eat,

Kids who need to play Nintendo

in air-conditioned peace,

who need lobster bisque in Lennox bowls,

compact disc players, Spandex cycle pants

and grad school.

Drink this cup of poison, they say.

Drink it now or we'll find somebody who will.

Breath this. Breath it now

or we'll get somebody to do it cheaper.

The health plan will be canceled any day,

two days before you retire,

the day you're laid off.

YOU KNOW HOW IT IS, NOTHING PERSONAL.

Yes, we know how it is

but...OSHA inspects next week...

WAIT! DON'T POUR IT DOWN THE SINK.

WE'LL CUT YOUR PAY. WE'LL LAY SOME PEOPLE OFF.

WE'LL RAISE PRICES, WE'LL GET RID OF IT NICE AND LEGAL.

WE'LL ADVERTISE AS:

``POISONS INC, THE ENVIRONMENTAL COMPANY.''

Nervous men,

50-gallon drums and pickup trucks

cruise at 2 a.m. in the rain,

drizzling an inconspicuous trail,

down the interstate,

down narrow roads,

past the shacks,

past the housing projects,

past exclusive homes,

in the best secluded suburbs,

Hey — everybody share the risk,

after all they own it,

or they want to own it,

or they work there

or they want to work there,

or they buy the products

or they want to buy the products...

So we hide its byproducts

under a layer of grass

under a layer of dirt

under a layer of clay

under a layer of plastic

on top of two plastic liners

in a concrete pit, then

siphon off the seepage in Medusan pipes.

Industrial parks border the universal swamp,

jaundiced liver of earth, a new stew,

the complex primordial ooze, the

embryonic fluids for the chips we love,

(286, 386, 486 Pentium a series

like generations of children.

so many megahertzs strait to hell,

Zero wait state, dual pipe streams)

brought to you by the Game boys

and the home boys, the valley boys

down in Santa Clara.

And software is a clean industry, flashy

and fun, games and elegant logic so clean.

but first the hardware.

Brains, born in steaming sulfuric

on Germanium and silicone platters round as sums

shining with gold 'n aluminum 'evap'

Layer on layer on layer,

mapped in photoresist purgatory,

etched deep in Hydrofluoric hell

cleaned in brown porridge thick as shit,

stinking and simmering under reverse-flow hoods

Down in the clean room,

Down on the line,

Get me some B-12 injections in time.

50 to the inch where the acid's hit...

Down in the clean room

we all are sanctified

in our pure white robes

in our pure white hats,

The priests of this new theology,

offer chemical sacrifice

asking mysterious questions.

How many circuits

can dance on the head of a pin?

And every industry and all their customers hold mass,

celebrate the efficacious ritual sacrifice:

drink the blood of the present,

eat the flesh of the future.

The makers of batteries,

the metal platers, the printers, the copy machine makers,

the chemical makers, the makers of paints and paper,

of printed circuit boards,

the molders of plastic, the industrial opticians,

the weapons makers, the television makers, the stereo makers,

university researchers,

the private inventors,

tinkers in basements,

artists in attics,

the drivers of cars, the cleaners of ovens and toilets,

the removers of spots,

the strippers of paints, the strippers of life...

bug killers, weed killers, fungus killers,

Killers all,

(or merely motivation for mutation),

And every single living man and woman

pours a pint of poison.

We are too many.

There are too many pints.

So what if the damn unions don't like it?

And so what if 60 Minutes and Prime Time don't like it?

WELL THEN,LET THE TAIWANESE DO IT

LET THE JAPANESE DO IT

LET THE CHINESE DO IT

LET THE MEXICANS DO IT

LET THE KOREANS DO IT

LET THE AFRICANS DO IT

Let them breath it,

and drink it,

and compose odes to it...

Don't make me make this choice,

between the water

and my children's rice...

Rio Grande (Love canal II?)

HELL, WHO ELSE CAN WE GET, THE MARTIANS?

ROBOTS, THAT'S IT.

THEY NEVER CALL IN SICK.

THEY NEVER TELL.

THEY HAVE NO CHILDREN.

Sun shines.

Rain falls.

Salmon swim upstream.

Swallows come home to roost.

Land kissing air, air kissing sea, sea kissing land,

Endless passionate liplock over the whole earth,

infinite molecular exchange.

Love Canal,

I, II, III, IV, and V

mysterious chemical cesspools

as yet un-named

raining,

draining to the sea.

Meanwhile

doddering uncle EPA

fondles bloated lawyers

in the back seats of court rooms

in the anterooms of accountants

in the labyrinth

of futures

of northern oceans

of barnacles, of plankton, of small amphibians,

of dolphins, of the tribes of man.

In crusty heaps, corroding drums

on the murky floor of every harbor,

on the murky floor of rolling oceans,

the great dump,

the last material infinity:

finite, vulnerable.

And deep and uncharted, the bones and skins

of nuclear submarines

ticking, ticking

plutonium half-life ticking

half a million years.

Oh yes, go down to the shining sea

where tumored turtles die.

Cancer buds, like caulifower

on the Ancient Reptiles

encrusting the eyes,

encrusting the necks,

signs along a path,

in the garden of many paths.

Turn around. Turn around. Turn around...

Slick streets,

Black macadam, hydroplane

Slick world,

screaming 'round death's edge on two wheels.

Don’t make me make this choice,

says the mother: earth.

Will she die? Spin askew,

lifeless as Mars or Moon?

Will she metamorphose

too hot? too cold?

or spawn a viral giant-killer

and we will sleep sightless in gaseous pockets,

with tyrannosaurus rex

in perfect equality, in perfect unity,

in perfect harmony with the earth,

in perfect patience waiting to be tapped

and our crude dark form refined at last,

consumed in light resplendent,

illumining the blessed meek who inherit:

who crawl from crevices to listen

in empty kitchens

for footfalls that never come.

---

--- Mar (Mistryel) Walker, © 1998

Page 25, Inverse Origami - the art of unfolding (1998, Puzzled Dragon Press)

Three dogs on a bench

Moved from the Metaphoratorium Gallery

Sorry I haven't been posting. A relative in the house has a broken arm and I am tending them as best I can, while trying to work at home. Also, I as I can find splinters of time, I have been working on an e-zine. The first issue is not up yet but will be up online in April.

This is a purely digital drawing, no physical component. I have dog, she is not allowed on benches. There are two chairs where she is allowed to sit. The couch is off limits.

Poppies, pen & ink from the Misti days

This pen and ink and gesso work dates from the "misti" years that's 18 years ago or better. It's on thin paper that has yellowed some. It also has a few wrinkles were the paper ducks under the matting. I took it out of the frame to take the picture and tried to add a tiniest bit of paper texture in Painter Essentials. This is a very fragile piece and am very glad to have a decent picture of it. These jpegs on the web are low res. I have high res files for many of them. Actually, I can pretty much tell how long I have known someone by which of my names they use...

Sculpture: seated figures

Both of these greenware sculptures were made in separate classes I took at Wooster Community Art Center a few years ago, one taught by Janice Mauro (may not be the right spelling) and the other by Alexander Shundi. The figure on the right, I took back to the school after it cured and it was fired in the kiln there. It became more or less white in the firing process. It's out on an end table in the living room. The one on the left took a fall here as dry greenware. Limbs flew. The poor guy fell apart. Both were made in classes with a live model.

with hair and pages flying...

Dancing Poems!

For a long while now I have been fascinated with visual art that incorporates text in different ways. With all the leaping going on in this mixed media collage, a lot of the movement here is in the varied angles of the text. The text is actually pages torn from my chapbook Inverse Origami, which are collaged to this canvas, as was the dancer, who was drawn on plain paper in crayon and oil pastel. In addition there is some acrylic paint applied to weave it together.

Process: Visual metaphor, psychological metaphor

This work is from the Maine years, most specifically from the year I lived in Brownfield, Maine. The face here belongs to a first cousin once removed, or my rendition of her. She is a beautiful woman, not that you can see that here. The wide open mouth pictured belongs to her mother, and I am not sure what the hell I meant by any of it. Seat of the pants metaphor, I guess. Nor do I recall exactly what I was thinking at the time. Except that the child was the  quiet one and the mom was very  talkative (though not particularly teary.) It is my probably mistaken impression of something hidden in them....

As to the content:

Unfortunately, this is one of those works where people look at me and offer their condolences on my suffering or inquire about possible substance abuse. Understand - I am always stone cold straight and sober when working, (and 99% of other times too) and I am NEVER suffering when I am making a picture. While picture making, I am totally unselfconsciously absorbed in what color should go where, if something is needed to balance something, how the eye travels around etc etc etc. This is also true of writing a poem, or an essay. Music and acting however, are more problematic for me psychologically. They cost something very personal to produce.

The medium here is oil pastel and watercolor on 18 x 24 inch paper. The combination is interesting because, the oil pastel will not absorb the watercolor, and the watercolors can be drawn over with the oil pastels.

- Mar  Walker