Last week I carved a rubber stamp of my rondo design which is great for printing on the back of mail art envelopes, Add & Pass books and etc. Below is my rondo image – it shows a mother & child, but also other images from Mother Nature. It’s meant to be an abstracted, organic, fluid pattern.
Today I took the vectorized design, which is just a smoother edged image, and applied it to products sold by a website called Red Bubble, where the image is repeated in a pattern on some of the available products. I earn a small percentage of the money they make selling these products with my design on them. You can view other designs for Red Bubble at that website as well.
Dream de-interpretations are what John M. Bennett calls the poems which he improvises on the spot from short two to four word phrases that other people write down from their nocturnal dreams.
This year (June 2019) at Fluxfest Toronto during events taking place at The Sheldon Rose Gallery, I collected people’s short accounts of nocturnal dreams written on the back of small ticket stubs. Unfortunately, the ticket stubs got left behind in the gallery that night and were not available for the following day’s performance; but Allan Revich, this year’s coordinator of the festival, mailed the ticket stubs to me later. Finally, John and I sat down and recorded his dream de-interpretations based on those ticket stubs. Note that John did not read them before we began recording. Allow 5 minutes to listen to this audio clip at my Sound Cloud site:
The following link is to a video of a JMB performance which included Dream De-interpretations collected and performed in early July 2019 at the AfterMAF (Marginal Arts Fest) in Roanoke VA, an event we’ve been going to annually for about as long as we’ve been going to Fluxfests! (Approx. 10 years). Click at 32:20 minutes into the video for the start of Dream section, [Viewing time is under 10 minutes]:
TWILIGHT CANTOS is a newly published book of poetry by Iván Argüelles, a poet from Berkeley CA. This marks the tenth book of his published by Luna Bisonte Prods since 2011 via the Lulu P.O.D. website.
AFTERWORD to Twilight Cantos – written by Jack Foley
If—as Iván Argüelles is doing—you publish a book at the age of eighty, you must be prepared for the possibility that it will be your last book, especially if you have experienced death at close hand in the form of a son and a twin brother who have—there is no better word—“gone.” “I have borne much,” writes this poet, “and for this have come to know / the archaic gods not in night dark / or in dreams but in broad noon-light.” Twilight Cantos. But this does not mean a diminishment in power. The actor James Cagney once remarked of George M. Cohan, whom he portrayed, “The creative drive was so strong in him, it must have given him no rest.” As we age, we discover that death is simultaneously a terror and an opener. It is the great secret that is withheld from youth. From the beautiful, askew opening line of this book, “as much are the years gone now as snow,” to the profound concluding speculations—“Is the world made in the shape of language?”; “A lifelong search for sound in meaning”—Twilight Cantos reaches into a darkness few books, few films, few songs, few symphonies, few paintings—few artists—even recognize. Argüelles has always been a powerhouse, but there is a lifetime singing in every line of this book:
just so my body waking still another day full conscious of emanations of light from the depths and a scholastic philosophy hidden in the rose will speak to the error and maze of taking steps marble on one side and perforated sandstone on the other where the goddess has grazed her heel
The one good thing that can be said about death is that it strengthens the will to live. You will find that will in all its linguistic glory on every page of Twilight Cantos.
Poetry by Iván Argüelles published by Luna Bisonte Prods:
TWILIGHT
CANTOS [2019]
CIEN
SONETOS [2018]
LAGARTO
DE MI CORAZÓN [2018]
FRAGMENTS FROM A GONE WORLD [2017]
LA INTERRUPCIÓN CONVERSACIONAL [2016]
ORPHIC CANTOS [2015]
D U O P O E M A T A : ILION—A TRANSCRIPTION & ALTERTUMSWISSENSCHAFT [2015]
Interesting story about the center line of this poem: I stole it from my doctor’s office during my annual “wellness” exam. As I’m now 65, they gave me a memory test, asking me to remember those three words. After I performed a directed “activity” with pencil and paper, I was to recite those three words from memory. Now I ask you, who would NOT remember SUNSET BANANA CHAIR ? !! It’s a perfect 3 word poem.
I took an acrylic paper marbling workshop and later found all these shapes within one of the sheets I'd made. The background is stamped ink patterns that I made by rolling textured beads on the stamp pad & then in lines onto the paper. I had made the beads years ago but had never used them to make jewelry. - C. Mehrl Bennett
BIRD LINGO artistamp design by C. Mehrl Bennett printed on preperforated stamp sheets from Pedro Pescador, of Black Rock City Post Office, 2019
Little book edition from my marbled critters project. This begins with an 8″x8″ inkjet print of nine scanned images (there are about a dozen total, cut from one sheet of marbled paper). Once I spray with clear acrylic/UV protectant & make strategic cuts, it will fold into a 2.55″ x 2.55″ booklet. If I unfold it at the center it will mail nicely in a first class envelope.
I am not a TOOTH You are not WE I am not MOST PEOPLE WE are not A TOOTH but What are TRUTHS? THIS is not THAT WHICH is THAT witch Which remains INSIDE A TOOTH of TRUTH but What are TRUTHS? THIS is what YOU WE I Wake up thinking at 5:30 in the morning.
Interesting story about the center line of this poem: I stole it from my doctor’s office during my annual “wellness” exam. As I’m now 65, they gave me a memory test, asking me to remember those three words. After I performed a directed “activity” with pencil and paper, I was to recite those three words from memory. Now I ask you, who would NOT remember SUNSET BANANA CHAIR ? !! It’s a perfect 3 word poem.
