Saturday, June 25, 2011

The Man Who Drew Humanity

It's been a year of too many goodbyes.

Gene Colan passed away this week, almost exactly a year after the passing of his wife, Adrienne. Gene was an illustrator of monumental achievements, known worldwide for the fluid grace and power of his creations. To pinpoint the moment I became a fan of his work, you'd have to go all the way back to 1968, when as a ten year old, I picked up a magazine he had illustrated called Dr. Strange...and I was hooked for life.

In a medium not known (at the time) for emotional depth, Gene's illustrations showed dimension and subtlety, capturing above all the countless nuances of the human face and form. As I grew from the boy enraptured by the dynamism and emotion of his art into a young man striving to find my own voice as a creator, I would return again and again to Gene's work, because above all I wanted to explore the depths and subtlety within people, and his art was a beacon shining across that landscape.

Thirty-seven years after I picked up that Dr. Strange book, far along my own creative path as a poet, I found out that Gene and his wife were living not far from the part of Florida I had recently relocated to myself. I was shy about the idea of approaching him; he had been one of my idols for so long, he seemed on an unapproachable plane to me. But I had heard across the years that he was a remarkably warm and open man, and so I took a deep breath and wrote to him, expressing my admiration for his work, and thanking him for the inspiration he had given me in my life.

Gene wrote back immediately. He wanted to know all about me; he was genuinely delighted that I had written. His wife Adrienne also sent a note, saying that she was an avid lover of poetry and had done a web search on my name -- she had found and read a number of my works, and was just as delighted as Gene at the opportunity for us to become friends.

For a long time I remained starstruck, but they were so gracious, so enthusiastic, so warm. I fell in love with them both. My own Mom had passed away over twenty years before, and my Dad was distant and indifferent; I thought perhaps it was unfair of me to feel so drawn to Gene and Adrienne in the filling of that void, but in the years that followed, their interest in my life never wavered. I would write poems for them on holidays, and Adrienne would write me long letters telling me her own favorites among the great poets (many of which we shared). She laughed and told me wildly funny jokes, and Gene would cheer every time a new work of mine appeared. I had begun a philanthropic effort called "Poets Against Abuse", inspired by a story done by another idol of mine, Don McGregor, and Gene. Both of these great-hearted men gave me permission to include their work in an online anthology to support survivors of abuse, asking nothing but the honor of helping women and children caught in environments of pain and danger.

In 2006 we talked for the first time about Gene illustrating one of my works. Along with his career drawing the exploits of larger-than-life characters and superheroes, he had a keen interest in what he called "Fine Art", and had done sublime and powerful portraits and other non-commercial works. But he didn't want to draw something easy. He asked me to choose the most complex, most emotionally layered of my works...and after much deliberation, I sent him a long poem I had written called "Dining on Twilight", in which I explored the difficult emotions in my parents' marriage right up to her death from cancer, cast in a kind of mythic imagery. A challenging work even for me to get a grip on. I thought Gene would say I was crazy -- that it could not be drawn.

Instead, he wrote to me with immense enthusiasm, saying how much the piece had moved him, and he would love to try creating an image for it. He told me he didn't want to let me down, and asked me question after question about my own emotions in creating it. Finally he said he was ready, and in a few months he would send me the work. When he did, I was staggered by its beauty, its depth, and its amazing grasp of the humanity in a man and woman who loved one another but struggled for dominance in a joining filled with both passion and pain. Here it is: Gene Colan's rendering of "Dining on Twilight".



To this day, I look at the drawing in awe. Gene asked me, nervously (to my amazement), if I liked it. I told him he had done the impossible, and captured every emotion, every subtle shade of the poem. He thanked me, and I could only mutter equal thanks in return.

Gene wanted to do one more of my existing poems, and then, he said, he wished I would write something special for him -- a new work to illustrate, which he would tell me about. The second work we chose was a poem about a man and a woman walking in a blizzard, and feeling only warmth, as they were lost in their love for each other. Here it is, called "Plough and Stars".



Once again, Gene blew me away -- this time with the richness of this evocation of love.

And so we talked about the third piece. It would never be completed, as Gene's health declined, and tragedy would arrive in the death of his beloved Adrienne. But I wrote the poem for it, after a long talk with Gene in which he described to me a visionary image of what he felt love to be. He had moved from the painful, complex image of my parents, to the loving and warm depiction of a love that could defy all worldly cold -- his own vision of love went beyond death itself. In it he saw a man on a train platform in winter, and as he stood there a vision of spring would appear, as frozen vines and plants around him would seem to spring into life. A train would appear, coming toward the platform, and at that point he realized that he had died, and had been waiting -- the train would be carrying the love of his life, and soon they would be reunited. I don't think Gene ever envisioned a world in which his beloved Adrienne would be gone before him, and so he was the man on the platform, and she the one who would come to him. It didn't work out that way.

Though the third drawing was never done, it lives now in my mind. And it is Adrienne who has been waiting on the platform, for the love of her life to join her. In my heart and in my dreams, they will always be together. I am grateful beyond all words for the chance to have had them both in my life. Here they are, and here is the poem I wrote from Gene's vision.


On the Platform
 Dedicated to Gene Colan


In the middle distance,
the tracks seemed to run together
into a single line, until they turned,
bending from sight,
in the direction that she would come.

He stood on the train platform
with afternoon dimming.
A brief lull in the day’s snowfall;
lights would soon bathe
the stark, grey space
in yellow radiance,
waiting.

Behind him was a high concrete wall,
and there were roots and vines,
January stark, clinging to the stone.
At winter’s close, perhaps,
they would yearn for color,
to thicken,
graced with hints
that would be flowers, in their time.

As he watched the wall,
the tangled lines of life
in hibernation
opened out, and he saw thorns,
ice-covered, on the vines.

He took off his glove, and reached out,
resting a fingertip
on that tracery of life,
of withered pain, and the scent
of phantom petals against stone.

He didn’t even feel it prick,
and was surprised to see
a drop of blood left there.
Winter flower,
a rose,
to freeze and grace the wall
until the sun came.

When he’d died,
only one thing
had been cause for sadness.
Leaving love behind, after so many years,
to wait here
until the day that she would join him.

The lights had gone down
while he’d let his thoughts wander.
He saw, then
the headlamp of the approaching train,
as it turned that distant bend,
and came, arrow-straight,
pushing a different sun before it.

Soon she would arrive
at the platform.
He would leave his glove off
so he could take her hand,
here, where winter ends.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Visionary Sensuality: Creating "Eros - The Divinity of Passion" with H. Samarel

I'm often asked what it has been like to work closely with so many artists in my writing career. Friends and readers have seen how devoted I am to the joining of words to art; it's been a fascination of mine since as a young man I fell in love with the visionary works of William Blake, who saw art and poetry as vivid partners in the presentation of ideas. In my own creative world, I have seen my concepts wedded to stunning visuals with gifted artists like David Cuccia, Marge Simon, Gene Colan, Felipe Echevarria, and Steve Mannion. My most recent poetry/art creation is with one of the foremost artists of sensuality in the world: H. Samarel.


Samarel and I have worked together before, creating some intense collaborations of individual poetry and art, but when we decided to do a book together, I knew it was going to be something special.

How does a book like this take shape? For Samarel and I, there was no need to start from scratch, learning about each other before cautiously taking the steps to craft a book project. He and I have usually worked using the technique of ekphrasis, which is the dramatic re-imagining of a work of visual art. To that end I asked Samarel to choose twenty of his artworks and send them to me to muse over. We discussed the basic feel we wanted for the book, and decided on works that were sensual and powerful, but also less explicit than some of our other works, so that we could strive for a classical feel to the book. Needless to say, when Samarel sent me his choices, I was blown away by their subtlety and strength. I felt that using them we could craft a journey into the heart of passion itself, tying it to spirituality as we went. Here is what I would ultimately write about that in the introduction to the book:

Spirituality and sexuality are long overdue for a re-connection. Somehow in modern life those two great sources of passion have fallen into conflict. There was a time when respect for the Sacred Feminine was a way of life. Down through history, even patriarchal cultures like that of ancient Rome had a place for the concept of Bona Dea—the Good Goddess—a figure suffused with life, and linked with the pleasures of sexuality. Before that, in the Egyptian personifications of Isis and Osiris, sex was celebrated as an experience leading to resurrection and the soul’s immortality.

Contrast that to today, where demonized sex is presented over and over in terms of negativity: lust is a vice, nudity shameful…the hungers of the body considered to be violent things, to be tamed in the name of decency. Needless to say, I don’t agree with that vision of passion.

Throughout our separate careers in the arts, Samarel and I have championed the beauty of sexual feelings. The glory of the flesh when set alight with fires of the soul. In this book we explore that, shaping a journey that moves from loneliness and isolation to the reclamation of sexual power, to the tempering and humanizing of that power. The lovers we portray are framed in both darkness and light—ultimately, we hope, finding balance.

That we chose a woman for the embodiment of that journey is done in full awareness that our perceptions as men will be tested—carried far into waters that echo the ocean-deep strength of the Sacred Feminine. And if the images burn brightly enough to even partly illuminate those waters, then so too can we join our lovers in journeys of transcendence; incandescent in our desires and their fulfillment; crowned with fiery halos; finding heaven, in each other’s arms.

So I spread Samarel's twenty images in front of me, and started to order them in a way that I thought fit the goals of that journey. Beginning with loneliness and a desire for empowerment...

Cut me free
from all that is hesitant in my soul.
I have pulled the stars from the sky.
Let the steel of night itself
become my sword,
severing me from weakness.
A dark incarnation
will be the first step.
Filled with frenzied joy;
wanting nothing more
than to scream each climax
into the void.
Sky and city crash together;
all lights of home
may be left behind.
The part of me
that sadly longed
for an embrace to anchor and fill me,
feels instead the dizzying ascent
into the liquid black heavens.
I will be borne
on the razor’s edge.
Let me become that which cuts
but never bleeds.



The images take a dark turn: an exploration of desperate and hungry sexuality.

So she rises.
All generations
have had a name for her.
Inanna, Lilith,
Kali, Nox;
woman of scarlet and obsidian.
She brings the release
that comes from surrender to her.
She answers to no god.
Approach her as you would
a pillar of fire;
with respect born of time
in the cold dark,
coupled with the lust for heat.
She is subtle,
her face curtained in liquid strands
behind which her eyes wait,
knowing you.
She does not suffer fools.
Seraphim and magi
might speak to her
as they would
to a coyly smiling sphinx;
considering what words to choose.
Hoping to coax from her
all the secrets of evening.
Lovers of this goddess
are bold and foolish at once.
She eats them alive,
after telling them the word
which sets their souls to flight
on crippled wings
that tremble with ecstasy.
Call her what you will
before you die in her arms,
parting that crimson curtain of her hair
to see the deadly, loving
abyssal and beautiful eyes,
knowing you.




Though intense, those feelings are ultimately unfulfilling, and the journey continues to a place of self-awareness...


Perhaps…
perhaps there was
too much sound and color,
too much heat and speed.
Perhaps the ache,
the unquenchable thirst of want,
struck too hard;
dragging me down
even as it raised me up.
I overwhelmed my loneliness
by enlarging myself;
embracing the persona
of a goddess who stands alone.
I banished emptiness
in a dizzying vision of raw sex.
Perhaps I missed
a true answer for loneliness,
for emptiness.
But where, where do I go?
In what shape?
How red should my lips be?
Ensanguined, like blood?
Can I still hold the black
of the night sky, of the abyss
in the pupils of my eyes?
Can I still be Nox, Mother Night;
still be Lilith, Wife of Knowledge?
Yes, yes, the answer must be yes.
But there must be more.
A deeper legacy to claim,
that knows…what?
The heart?
Or perhaps
just the simplicity of love.



...and a re-connection with body, soul, spirit and nature.

Life bursts from every pore.
A sensual communion
carrying the seeds
of nature’s fierce will
to join, to bond, to create.
The burning strength
she has carried within her
spreads upward
along the graceful lines
of her legs, her sex,
her stomach, her breasts.
Everything that has known
the joy of growth,
finds a new home
in the heart of her body.
She is bronzed
by rays of a sun
that blazes
behind her own eyes;
tendrils of energy,
having risen to her crown,
dip down again,
caressing her
in the crackling aura
of life, life, life.
Of all the goddesses
she has touched,
bringing them into herself,
it is Persephone in Spring
that possesses her now.
Stolen by a dark lover
and carried to the underworld,
she returns,
to embody the welcome
of a world
uncurling in silent heat.



From that place, the joining of a couple both sexually and spiritually can happen (and does, as the book concludes).

We must never forget,
or forsake this bond.
Never lose
the consummation
of our joined souls.
The secret words of sex
are no mystery.
Take and offer.
Receive and offer.
Listen,
listen for the sound
of pain to be soothed;
dreams, so fragile
to be nurtured.
We must remember
the dark,
and how harsh the sun is
in our eyes,
when we have lingered
too long without light.
Yet how healing
the warmth of sky,
the warmth of our flesh
when we yield up
our hibernating spirits
and awaken.
We must never forget
that to be uncaring,
unthinking
can leave wounds
all but impossible to heal.
We must remember
what it feels like
when our bodies are joined,
in brief moments
of completeness;
echoing an eternal joining.
Love me as I love you,
here standing
in the divinity of passion.



Those are just a few of the poems and artistic vistas in the book. Creating this vision with Samarel was exciting and illuminating, and we hope that others will enjoy following the journey that we crafted. To a place, as I wrote above, where we can find heaven, in each other's arms.

Eros: The Divinity of Passion is available here:

EROS: THE DIVINITY OF PASSION

Visit Samarel's website HERE
Visit R. Paul's website HERE