Coming Out

After maintaining two anonymous blogs for two years, plus two relatively instrumental (i.e., less colorful) ones with colleagues, I appear to have decided to "open the kimono" and maintain a public blog regarding my [solo] creative work. (Yes, I use the term "solo" guardedly and skeptically for all the reasons anyone curious about a blog titled "material metaphors" would surely already appreciate. I use the word "creative" courageously and optimistically.)

We'll see how long I keep this up, the non-anonymous blogging about material culture and such. Here's the thing: even though I have no real interest in generating an audience for this blog, I'm affected by the virtual public-ness of this space and I'm generally interested in the way my writing evolves when it's done here rather than in one of my written or laptop journals. And, of course, I'm retaining my anonymous blogs for the private stuff. And yes: I see the irony.

OK, so why now? Because this morning's discussion about the incipient "Mapping [Sub]Cultures" course inspired me even moreso than usual. My teaching partner and I met with a gifted assemblage artist who, among other things, used a phrase that resonated with me: "assemblage as poetry." With that phrase so much of my private and professional work fell into place. For many years I've been a community-engagement writing professor with a research background in material rhetoric and a lifetime of experimentation with words and images--not as an "artist" but as someone who collects and cobbles and ponders things. In grad school I found a way to name it--from Erasmus, of all people--it's my copia, my cache of concepts, of things representing parts of things and of things representing other things. It's my cache of synecdoche, of metaphor. Figures of thought.

I have no formal training in the craft of transforming my cache into self-standing works. What I have is experimentation with words, with oriental calligraphy and brush-block painting (Sumi-e, Haiga, this and that), with photography, a little needlework, a little collage, a little poetry, a little gardening, t'ai chi, yoga. I need to include the last three because everything intertwines with everything else. I learned more about Emersonian rhetoric from gardening than from any other form of study. Watching things grow--intentionally, unintentionally, serendipitously--brought me insight and confidence, particularly during a time when much else was falling apart.

And now co-creating this pilot course is similarly encouraging, emboldening even. I'm ready to see what I might make of that generative concept: assemblage as poetry. What is most exciting to me personally is this: when I see the phrase "assemblage as poetry" I also see this one: "poetry as assemblage." That's the phrase that beckoned me. It's the one that gave me a place to go with what I've been wanting to do.

For this I am so grateful.



Image: Avatar by Elif Ayitar