I madly love everything that adventurously breaks the thread of discursive thought and suddenly ignites a flare illuminating a life of relations fecund in another way. -Andre Breton
Poetry should be made by all. -Lautreamont
The Surrealists and Dadaists initiated the most radically liberating critique of reason of the century. Their brilliant investigations were conducted through art and polemic, manifesto and demonstration, love and politics. Love it or hate it. The movement freed words and images with scandalous aplomb. Forget the logical systems of classical art. These radicals pawned the weapons of premeditation brandished by their predecessors in favor of cannons loaded with chance, accident and spontaneity. Think of Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou where the eye is sliced by a razor to destroy normal perception. Absurd, magical images and unpremeditated insights spring from this literal opening of the eye. But most specifically and remarkably, it was through games, play, techniques of surprise and methodologies of the fantastic that the Surrealists subverted logical, rational order and undermined the reasonable and the respectable. Thank the eternal chaos!
Okay. I admit I went Christmas shopping yesterday and simply couldn't resist buying just a little something for myself. A book of Surrealist games. It seemed to leap out at me from the well-ordered display table. Ironic? Perhaps. But I cannot get enough of it.
The exercises go way beyond The Exquisite Corpse which you are most likely familiar with. The players sit around a table and each writes on a sheet of paper a definite or indefinite article and an adjective, then folds the paper to conceal the words. The next player writes a noun and conceals it, the next a verb etc. until a wacky sentence is produced. Fun, no? Included in the book are other language-based chain games of chance and creative collaboration as well as visual tricks and techniques. We may be eschewing scrabble for a new sport at my family's table this Christmas if I have my way.
Still reading? I apologize for my enthusiam. But the above is merely an intro to today's passion. The Dadaist poem. The rules:
To make a Dadaist poem
Take a newspaper.
Take a pair of scissors.
Choose an article as long as you are planning to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Then cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them in a bag.
Shake it gently.
Then take out the scraps one after the other in the order in which they left the bag.
Copy conscientiously.
The poem will be like you.
And here you are a writer, infinitely original and endowed with a sensibility that is charming though beyond the understanding of the vulgar. -Tristan Tzara
I decided The Surrealists and Dadaists would allow my breaking the "rules" here a bit. We're having a wicked Nor'easter and I didn't get the newspaper. Instead I recreated Poe's The Raven, first stanza:
Door tapping volume at a pondered more rapping chamber
A someone forgotten muttered
Tapping, nodded, suddenly nothing
Visitor of only chamber and midnight rapping
Once door gently curious
Tis my weary dreary quaint napping
At weak lore over a while
I my nearly and of this I while and many came
I some upon there as.
And, one more, via Clement Moore. Merry Christmas to all. Read at a slow, lilting pace, these "poems" pack more pluck than you'd think:
House heads were children
Soon care would kerchief their chimney had St. Nicholas winter's creature hung
Sugar-plums be snug their stockings
Visions settled the night through in while by not
The all in nestled where that stirring long the beds just were
Mama cap before danced of a mouse
'Twas with was down a not
In there all hopes and the Christmas
A nap I my in even her in for and when.
Poetry should be made by all. -Lautreamont
The Surrealists and Dadaists initiated the most radically liberating critique of reason of the century. Their brilliant investigations were conducted through art and polemic, manifesto and demonstration, love and politics. Love it or hate it. The movement freed words and images with scandalous aplomb. Forget the logical systems of classical art. These radicals pawned the weapons of premeditation brandished by their predecessors in favor of cannons loaded with chance, accident and spontaneity. Think of Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou where the eye is sliced by a razor to destroy normal perception. Absurd, magical images and unpremeditated insights spring from this literal opening of the eye. But most specifically and remarkably, it was through games, play, techniques of surprise and methodologies of the fantastic that the Surrealists subverted logical, rational order and undermined the reasonable and the respectable. Thank the eternal chaos!
Okay. I admit I went Christmas shopping yesterday and simply couldn't resist buying just a little something for myself. A book of Surrealist games. It seemed to leap out at me from the well-ordered display table. Ironic? Perhaps. But I cannot get enough of it.
The exercises go way beyond The Exquisite Corpse which you are most likely familiar with. The players sit around a table and each writes on a sheet of paper a definite or indefinite article and an adjective, then folds the paper to conceal the words. The next player writes a noun and conceals it, the next a verb etc. until a wacky sentence is produced. Fun, no? Included in the book are other language-based chain games of chance and creative collaboration as well as visual tricks and techniques. We may be eschewing scrabble for a new sport at my family's table this Christmas if I have my way.
Still reading? I apologize for my enthusiam. But the above is merely an intro to today's passion. The Dadaist poem. The rules:
To make a Dadaist poem
Take a newspaper.
Take a pair of scissors.
Choose an article as long as you are planning to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Then cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them in a bag.
Shake it gently.
Then take out the scraps one after the other in the order in which they left the bag.
Copy conscientiously.
The poem will be like you.
And here you are a writer, infinitely original and endowed with a sensibility that is charming though beyond the understanding of the vulgar. -Tristan Tzara
I decided The Surrealists and Dadaists would allow my breaking the "rules" here a bit. We're having a wicked Nor'easter and I didn't get the newspaper. Instead I recreated Poe's The Raven, first stanza:
Door tapping volume at a pondered more rapping chamber
A someone forgotten muttered
Tapping, nodded, suddenly nothing
Visitor of only chamber and midnight rapping
Once door gently curious
Tis my weary dreary quaint napping
At weak lore over a while
I my nearly and of this I while and many came
I some upon there as.
And, one more, via Clement Moore. Merry Christmas to all. Read at a slow, lilting pace, these "poems" pack more pluck than you'd think:
House heads were children
Soon care would kerchief their chimney had St. Nicholas winter's creature hung
Sugar-plums be snug their stockings
Visions settled the night through in while by not
The all in nestled where that stirring long the beds just were
Mama cap before danced of a mouse
'Twas with was down a not
In there all hopes and the Christmas
A nap I my in even her in for and when.
I think I'll try the Lord's Prayer next. If there turns out to be a God after all, I may end up in Hell. But I'll get to hang out with Marcel Duchamp.
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