Love poem essay to Surrealism – Andre Breton -Mad Love Part 1
by JeanieS
Posted to Action Poetry on 2001-05-17 12:42:00
This is an experimental essay as love poem to Andre Breton auhtor of Mad Love and founder of the Surrealist Revolution. First of seven letters. Copyright Jeanie S Dean 2001
Letter I Lost Objects
Dear Andre
Not finding the
notebook to write
this shudder of grief
fear and aspiration
resisting
longing
to find to meet
to write you a reply
the apotheosis
of artistic endeavor
the passive yin receptive
response
Like her letter to you that day in Montemarte
Fearing your abject rejection
of my longing
like the many ‘chance comers’
of your “Sunflower Poem”
You speak of love
Andre
I personally address you
anonymous reader – (you reading me now Dada )
through the host of words
in the desire to love
primordial
fearing rejection
responding
recognizing
your anthem
the desire to love
the dive in to synergy
relation
joint aspiration
DanteÂ’s Yes Yes Yes
I say to
Your work Mad Love
LÂ’Amour Fou
Surrealism
exploring
stratas of unconsciousness
not evident
implicit in all expression.
Surrealism beyond real
an inquiry
an alchemy
of the genie libre (free spirit)
how to
free the submerged layers
of soul/self
from idyllic vision
to creation with
nothing less
than the
transformation of artistic
scientific, social, philosophic
and political forms
a movement of artistic comradery
at the beginning of the twentieth century
In Mad Love
you say Surrealism is
“the recreation of this particular state of mind . . .
disdaining in the last analysis the prey and the shadow. . .
Behind ourselves we must not let the paths of desire
become overgrown. . .
nothing retains less of desire, in art in science,
then this will to industry booty, possession.”
Surreal
beyond real
implicit exposed
merging mystic
and material
You say
“The blood and shadows must not be confused”
with the moment of desireÂ’s waiting
blood and shadows
like LautreamontÂ’s vampire
like the ruby slippers of Oz
sydapose to your Crystal Glass Slipper
of Cinderella
symbolizing the quest for love
in the moment of waiting
in CONFIDANT FAITH
FUL
EXPECTANCY (therefore
Arriving is NOT
(the) Getting/Going - There
and
Attaining is NOT (the)
Desiring
A Surreal Principle 1.
Beauty is found
a trouvaille
recognized as
“the marvelous precipitate of desire”
Sense perception recreates desire.
We see as we desire
surrealist state of mind
present to the signs
of mindÂ’s generation
examines chance
to discern
A Surreal Principle 2.
“The sympathy existing between two or several beings
seems to lead them toward solutions they would have never found on their own.”
Shared Pursuit
Shared Desire
Fraternity Love
Long Longing
Wanton Wanting
My friend Surrealist
I claim personal
affirmation
with you
lest we not lose
this
Personal Affinity
you celebrate
in the Crystal Slipper
trouvaille
found object
revealing the pursuit
ItÂ’s purpose now full
spontaneity goes back
to the flea market
of potential potency
relation
fraternity
between
We read on Â…
to the surreal beyond real
We postmodernists
say we resist text
love and fear
I offer a premise
a surreal dialogue
Larry calls on the telephone
He is my Man Ray
a Photographer of the Arts
Larry calls this trope
a love letter
This essay on Mad Love
to you Monsieur Breton
is a love letter,
the premise an emotional response
How do I reach you
How do you reach I
reach this place
of real
seen in the ideal
this recognition of
shared vision
across time
You are dead
from my hovel of
of cold hunger
broken appliances
intelligent technology
gaudy emotionalism
of con-verse
congress among
recorded word expressions of
ItÂ’s spring 1934
in between the wars
You try to recall the date
the day the hour the moment
the poem
“The Sunflower”
your poem automatic writing
recalls moments
meanings lived
before the event
yet whose meaning eluded and illumed you
Today I read this
In 2001
Thinking of when I was young
In 1971
In love as you were when
On the tail of a similar social movement
During the 1960Â’s of
optimism and chance
punctuated with Rock & Roll
anti-war protests and the civil rights
Equality Fraternity Liberty
about to crash into mediocrity
after “the four dead in Ohio”
were picked off by sharp-shooters
so the protestors and flower children would go home
and they did
You wrote “The Sunflower”
In spring of 1924 or was it 1923
Assuaging the centuries
my father was born the same year as you
I his late offspring
raised on the scarcity and excess of the
Great Depression of the milk spilled over
the marvel of indoor toilets
bridging three centuries
Now I commend
the Surreal Manifesto
a shared vision
some revisions
time is moving into
our We
the time of all modernity
despising yet craving
antiquity
we dredge the past
the romantics
to bridge the classical world
in Dante, Milton and Shakespeare
from Ovid Homer, Herodotus
Pythagoros and Flavius
retelling
the Egyptian, Sumerian, Vedic
histories
bridging the Antediluvian
lost in the archetypal myth of Jung
presumed surreptitious
mere stories spontaneously generated
visions of a collective unconscious
the real beyond real
How do I find you
today
in our shared quest
for love transcending time
my ideal
my real realm
of the caress
of concepts
I patterned here
in the obscurity
Parisian garbage heaps
Why now how Milwaukee
So mundane
so monumentally PRIMEVAL
Oh If I could touch you
isnÂ’t this what the literary essayist
means in all our exudations
God if I could touch you
Love Again
LÂ’Ondine