The Muse Who Wrote Poetry

As students, we are presented with poetry in the most complex forms, causing a sort of alert to go off every time poetry is approached.  Poets had structure, and parameters to stay within, and then the avant-guardists hit, throwing the perfect techniques utilized out the window and creating a lack of limitations as to what can be poetry, and who a poet was.  

Using different techniques led to different types of outcomes in the poems that were produced.  One poet in particular, Alice Prin, also known as Kiki de Montparnasse, wrote in a way that left every feeling on the paper.  She would write the thoughts that came to her, allowing them to flow out through the pen.  If she came across something she did not want to keep for the final product she would cross the line out, leaving it there for the viewer, but yet separating it.  

Man Ray in front of a portrait of Kiki

Kiki served as a muse to many, but her personal life is sometimes overshadowed by the magnetic effect she had on artists that surround her life.  She did paint, and wrote her own autobiography in her 20's that was published and read as a document of the sought after world she was so involved in.  As a poet, she is even less known, leaving the poetry she has written only in her published books.  For being such a sought after woman in the modern age, she has almost been forgotten outside of Man Ray. 

Sitting in a busy airport, I attempted to write in this way, leaving behind the exact forms that are given to us, and just writing everything down. (My homage to Kiki) I continuously crossed out the lines that I did not see to fit upon completion of it as I carried on writing.  The final product:

Portrat of Kiki by Man Ray

Sitting 

Cold hard ground

Just laying there beneath you----

Band of light in front

Crossing the tips of your toes

Waiting

The warmth is coming-----

A once upon a time

The crossover

Warmth without that. 

Light hits

Blinds---

This place I've never been 

Now

- Rashel, 2012

To Make A Dadaist Poem

Tristan Tzara wrote down technique instructions of how he believed to make a Dadaist poem.  This was also known as the cut-up technique, and goes simply as follows. 

Take a newspaper.


Take some scissors.


Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.


Cut out the article.


Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.


Shake gently.


Next take out each cutting one after the other.


Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.


The poem will resemble you.


And there you are--an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.

-Tristan Tzara

Now to actually do and create this seems rather simple, and as if it takes a lot less thought put in to the creation of a poem.  As Tzara says, you will have created a new "you". 

 Using a paragraph from scrap paper, lines were cut up, separating the intentional location of words from each other and placed in a cup.  After the shaking and dumping on the table the pieces were assembled in this way.

"From enthousiazein theory depicted him.  All man from GK. enthousiasmes-onument.  The monument features and racial a pen rather then the believe to.  Their claim is that the from the Stratford m cushion Enthusiasm in 1749 was substituted for the original, the original monument to "divine inspiration".  Shakespeare the theory is that according to the anti- or some other such aspire happiness as a commodity dealer.  Knowledge as a source."   -Rashel 2012

This may seem like a jumbled mess, but I invite you to read it aloud, for it most likely will not be completed by you without some sort of laughter, and realization that most falls in to place.  After the papers were poured from the cup, that was the moment of the mess, where I had to rearrange and make a conscious decision to move, turn, or leave them upside down.   It may appear as if there was no sense to the way they were laid out, but there is freedom in this.