What May Come of Doodles

I'm taking a class this semester called Creative Writing and Cultural Studies. One week's unit was on Micropoetries. Maria Damon gives an incomplete list of what might be considered Micropoetry: "graffitis, prison poetry by non-literary inmates (as distinct from figures such as Oscar Wilde, Osip Mandelstam, et al.), slogans, private (scrap-book or diaristic) or semi-private (correspondence, blogs or social-network) writing, poetry written by children or their strange and charming utterances, “écriture brute” (outsider writing), thieves’ cants and other argots or vernaculars, and so forth, may be considered micropoetries, as might newspaper poetry, greeting card verse, prayers, idiolects."

After being told what I'd brought it as an example wasn't Micropoetry, I'd have to add to that definition to art-that-wasn't-intentionally-art. But anyway, in this business of art, we shouldn't sit around defining art. I suppose. Micropoetry seems like a category created by academics in order to define non-academics. In other words, if you produce Micropoetry, you probably don't consider yourself an artist of any kind.

Why I bring this up is not to start a debate on what is or isn't but to showcase a Chicago friend of mine, Will Larsen, and my delight with his process. Although I do believe Will considers himself and artist and poet, the process of how this particular work began seems to fit in well with Micropoetics.

Notes from Dante a la Will Larsen.

His sometimes updated blog is here. The artwork on this blog essentially started out as doodling in class and at his job. In terms of Micropoetries, I think that his illuminated notes (above) are a good example. Micropoetries, although the study of them is confined to the academic world, their existence creates a thread between all artists, in that, whether you choose to consider yourself an artist or not, these doodles, scraps of paper, ticket stubs glued in a scrapbook, have a kind of artistic merit. And that how we look at them will certainly change over time. Today's pop lit is tomorrow's literature and what have you.

More great textures by Will Larsen

I love the idea of responding to information in a visual way. I myself have gotten into the habit of drawing pictures in reaction to my colleagues' poetry - which for me makes sense, since so much of poetry is visual...even if it is made solely of text.

The result of workshopping one of my poems. Clearly, this responder could see into my inner soul.

Process and Print, pt. 1

One rainy day in early winter '10, I was sitting languidly on our hand-me-down couch from the urban gardeners across the street, and flipped through a collection of Alex Toth's Zorro comics from the late 50's. Trying to digest three Booches' burgers and two pints of pale ale, the cushion's broken spring stabbing my rump, and I couldn't have been happier. The weather was perfect for ruminating, and I had a brand new tome of Toth to savor between naps. Somewhere in that afternoon, I concocted a healthy desire to write a Zorro story, and give myself an excuse to draw him, and a conversation with myself about the character. After reading Toth's foreword, I was reminded of my own childhood fascination with the character. That foreword, and his brilliant landscapes and eye for composition, of course I wanted to challenge myself. and here we are:

The crafty fox had gotten into my brain.

 I immediately tried to develop further context around the character. I wanted to see what had been said about him already. My first impression of Zorro was the Disney show, starring Guy Williams, that played in the 50's. (The same show much of Toth's scripts were based on, only he based his Zorro on a mix of Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn, and Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.) Delving deeper into the legend, I started to ponder what other characters Zorro had met on his travels, what other heroes he'd faced with a grin.

Bat vs. Fox! En Garde!

It occurred to me that I'd been wanting to write another short story focusing on a major character, and that in many versions of Batman's origin, he's been watching Zorro in the theater with his family the night they were slain. In Batman's world, Zorro was a fictional character, and in realm of fiction (and outside) was in many ways influenced Bruce's vigilantism. So, the mojo was mixin, and I needed a story I actually cared about. I focused on the parallels between both men, and their methods. Wits, training, nerve, eccentricity, and a hidden talent for acting. Weapons. Alignment. I had finding new ways of understanding both characters and quickly started filling sketchbooks with thumbnails and layouts, bits of dialogue and narration. Every page was labored over numerous times.

Final page going once, twice...

Three times!

With many starts and stops (I inked the second page, only to be separated from my studio at that time by the snow) I began to work on the story proper off and on for almost a year. At first, I was so impatient to start. but the intervening months have proved invaluable to my body of work and development. By the time I was halfway through

Early summer

the brush had really loosened up, and I felt a slightly different vibe from the beginning. But, the momentum was back, and I spent my free time between other projects tweaking BatZorro. I wanted to see the resolution of the confrontation I arranged.

Put on the finishing touches today.

If you add it up, my rate was a little more than a page a month. As the pages filled, I grew more aware of the encroaching issue of publishing. I couldn't wait to get this stuff online, get it out to people, a few of whom had even heard about it before now. But, when I finally started lining up the pages, I knew that it was meant to be read. I had written the pages to be flipped, and while this gives me ideas about further digital publishing, I knew the issue of print publishing was at hand...
 
...and shall be explored as I further explore the process of self-publishing.

-Jam

The Giant Cell Phone in the Room

I'm sure enough has been written about black and white photography. I too lusted after it. It wasn't until this year that I really got into the nitty-gritty of it - darkroom chemicals and everything.

Two years ago I watched the entirety of The Wire on weekends and sick days.. Like most police detective shows, there's always an element of voyeurism, portrayed by the large film camera with a zoom lens. I assume it's film because it makes an audible clicking sound that digital cameras don't actually make. Furthermore, if you're on a stakeout, why the hell would you want your camera to make a sound? Later, darkroom footage/1 hour photo at Walgreens removed, the detectives are looking at 8x10 black and white photo prints on a billboard. Remember: this is set in the mid to late 2000s. Again, I must ask, why black and white? Wouldn't a detective want to see his suspect in color? Is the dirty truth that Kodak is sponsoring all this?

We're so nostalgic for it that TV shows know we rarely ask such obvious questions. Even for the digital kids, black and white IS photography. Loud, clicking cameras ARE photography. For those born in the late 90s and 2000s, it is a nostalgia without a palpable source. But they know. They know what a manual camera sounds like, they know what a payphone is even though they've never used one; although most of them can't remember life before cellphones were readily available.

I'm not saying this kind of nostalgia is bad. It's lovely the way old things take hold of young people. Maybe the digital age longs for a slowness that isn't readily available to them. When I started the darkroom photography class, there was a lot of grumbling and frustration. Here we were, taking days to do what could be done in a manner of hours with digital camera and a computer. Darkoom photography teaches us patience in a world that's short on it. It's not just photography - it's a revival of many slow things: knitting, gardening - the list could go on.

In writing, the choice to use digital or non-digital items can tell you a lot about a character...and the narrator: is it done self-reflexively or merely inserted into the text? The objects date the author, setting and the text itself. I'm always telling students "make this more concrete." What I mean, mostly is, to riff on Milan Kundera, put some weight on that emotional hot air balloon. Throw some stuff in there, make it yours. The pockets are deep, buy whatever you want, or inherit it, if that's your thing, hold onto it, and then, when you're ready to really obsess about it - put it in your poem or story.

(c) Kristin Fitzsimmons

A wee bit of my darkroom handiwork. "Avant Gauze Tea Party."