surreality by richard lynn livesay

• “In this realm as in any other, I believe in the pure Surrealist joy of the man who, forewarned that all others before him have failed, refuses to admit defeat, sets off from whatever point he chooses, along any other path save a reasonable one, and arrives wherever he can.”

Bohemian “Beats” go to Dylan, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg & Kerouac

My Take:

Surreal poetry meta-morphs the mind, releasing a desired esoteric movement

Palpitating the emotional process of association and extracting shadows

Centering the worldly poetic void, flash shadow colors of excitement

Then pull the the psychic lever of entangled post-neurotic automation

Transgress records and reconstruct the super conscious unconsciousness

Exposing the absurd cleavage of inspiration’s vitality of semi-chaos

Reinvent the mundane mantra of soul’s esoteric arsenal of verbiage

The maker makes, juxtaposes, matches and dissects with pristine sovereignty

Emancipating literature’s Broadway towers and monarch constructed stiff

The self expressed melody of uninhibited exaltation can purify and heal.

Paris, France in the 1800’s was full of surrealistic poets, writers and playwrights:

(1) An evil figure in Les Chants de Maldoror by Comte de Lautreamont, Maldoror was opposed to God and humanity, nihilistic, violent and macabre.

…but this prose written in six cantos inspired many surrealists.

(2) Aurthur Rimbaud 1854-1891 proposed derangement of all the senses. He was a restless Libertine, described by Victor Hugo as “ an infant Shakespeare” Some of his work of 42 prose poems are in a book titled, “Illuminations”

(3) French surrealistic poet and playwright, Raymond Rousels noted for phonetic distortion and the precursor to “theatre of the absurd”. A quote from his novel, “Locus Solus” is “…there is a huge glass diamond filled with water in which float, a dancing girl, a hairless cat and the head of Danton(a French Gov’t official)

(4) Known as the “pope of surrealism”, Andre Breton published a “Manifesto on Surrealism, was editor of “La Revolution Surrealiste”

After studying medicine and psychiatry he wrote a second novel called “Nadja” which begins with, “Who am I?” and ends, “ beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all”. In another he said,” It’s like he heart of a heartless flower”

Two interesting American surrealist poets that I ran across are:

(1)   Phillip Lamantia 1927-2005

“the road to the pit in the sky: to see a dog typing into a cat’s liver.

No breakfast for the flying spider, the dream of a labyrinth is the shark’s love for humanity leaning to the unknown the geometric wave’s scorpion biting on a window pane of sodomized glass.”

(2)   Will Alexander 1948- now very ill, his home always in L.A.. His first works published in 1981. he is not easily categorized by his critics but is surrealistic in nature. In his, “Above the Human Nerve Domain” he says, “I am thinking of aroused electrical blockage

                of human monsoon killing as treaty

                as breach

                as strangled impulse by identity.”