From the Eye of Hart Crane
María DeGuzmán
"Blurred Face and Oxygen Bubble" by María DeGuzmán, digital photograph, 2019
Blurred Face and Oxygen Bubble
You with an eye for the shirtless diver waiting by the grotto in buoy-red swim briefs, what are you whispering to me about the dead? From your parted lips, lost to the Gulf of Mexico after that headlong leap off the S.S. Orizaba just before noon that fateful April day in 1932, do I see sparks flying and a rainbow eidolon flashing equivocally? They say each drop of water has a face of its own. Are you telling me that forms pour out of the light from the curveship of a wave? That in another world, you are gloriously alive? Here you appear deathly pale, a revenant in shades of chalk and charcoal and sepia tint for flesh tones, mute blurred emanation from light waves riding waves of cupped water.
All we know of Heaven — and not for long — is a melee of emperor penguins in a shivering Antarctic blaze, an iceberg island adrift in unfreezing seas. And, in warmer climes, Heaven dwells in the brief exuberance of spinner dolphins out on the desert of the open ocean where meditation on the sun is all, under the cathedral of the sky that shades, by sextant degrees, into a Chartres blue.
All we know of Heaven — and not for long — is a melee of emperor penguins in a shivering Antarctic blaze, an iceberg island adrift in unfreezing seas. And, in warmer climes, Heaven dwells in the brief exuberance of spinner dolphins out on the desert of the open ocean where meditation on the sun is all, under the cathedral of the sky that shades, by sextant degrees, into a Chartres blue.
"Eye of the Spoon" by María DeGuzmán, digital photograph, 2018
Eye of the Spoon
No Bishop Renaud is there to demand such a hue of blue and then, after sacrificial extortions, not live to see his stained-glass windows placed. To the humbled eye, the world is already dimensional. Magnified storms churning toward earthly shores rear up wave upon wave of drowned souls to crash in thundering echoes upon the sand. Does this flow have a face — yours, reconnoitered from the fatal tides?
"Sailor" by María DeGuzmán, digital photograph, 2019
Sailor
And do you appear as one you loved — a diver descending from your eye and a cig of sweet, sinuous smoke between your teeth under mustachioed lips? And do I, looking down through a mirror darkly, scan bright waves of light breaking in a sailor’s cap becoming pearlescent abalone of paradise?
About the Author
María DeGuzmán is a scholar, conceptual photographer, writer, and music composer/sound designer. Her photographic work has been exhibited at The Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA, USA), Watershed Media Centre (Bristol, England), and Golden Belt Studios (Durham, NC, USA). She has published photography in Abstract Magazine, The Grief Diaries, Coffin Bell, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Map Literary, Two Hawks Quarterly, Harbor Review, The Halcyone, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, Ponder Review, Alluvian, streetcake: a magazine of experimental writing, Galdrar of Tempered Runes Press, The Closed Eye Open, Gone Lawn, Apricity, and Phoebe; creative nonfiction photo-text pieces in Oyster River Pages, La Piccioletta Barca, and Tiny Seed Literary Journal; photo-text flash fiction in Oxford Magazine, Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts, On the Run, and The Bangalore Review; photo prose poetry in Landlocked Magazine; visual poetry in TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics, Roanoke Review, and 45th Parallel; poetry in Empty Mirror; and short stories in Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas, Huizache: The Magazine of Latino Literature, Sinister Wisdom, and Obelus Journal. Her SoundCloud website may be found at: https://soundcloud.com/mariadeguzman.
About the Work
"This visual poetry piece composed of photographs and text functions as an informal ode to the work of US 'Modernist Romantic' poet Hart Crane, particularly to the collection White Buildings which contains “Voyages,” a mystical and queer lyric poem sequence. “From the Eye of Hart Crane” is steeped in ecological concerns and an awareness of intensified ephemerality and extinction. The photographic images accompanying the text portions were obtained by agitating water with a spoon in a small bowl and photographing the water while stirring it. The naked eye cannot see what is happening at the time. The camera captures intriguing relations between chaos and order, between formlessness and form, between that which eludes the naked eye and visionary optics."
About the Author's Process
"For the last six years, since one bright hot morning in early July 2017, I have been composing visual poems, prose poems, and creative (non)fiction pieces from what is suggested to me by the interaction of light with water I have stirred up in a cup or bowl. I photograph the water while I stir with one hand. The small handheld camera, in my other hand, captures some arresting visual images out of the stream of images forming every millisecond within and upon the swirling water. By “arresting,” I mean those images I have chosen from the myriad photographic images obtained in any given ritual meditation session of stirring and photographing water. Over days, weeks, months, and sometimes years, I dwell on the photographic images I have chosen. From that d(welling) emerge the stories told in these poems and creative (non)fiction pieces. I view the process, from commencement to infinity, as telegraphed interference patterns produced by the interaction of waves — waves of light, waves of water, and waves of thought, open to ongoing interpretation."
María DeGuzmán is a scholar, conceptual photographer, writer, and music composer/sound designer. Her photographic work has been exhibited at The Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA, USA), Watershed Media Centre (Bristol, England), and Golden Belt Studios (Durham, NC, USA). She has published photography in Abstract Magazine, The Grief Diaries, Coffin Bell, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Map Literary, Two Hawks Quarterly, Harbor Review, The Halcyone, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, Ponder Review, Alluvian, streetcake: a magazine of experimental writing, Galdrar of Tempered Runes Press, The Closed Eye Open, Gone Lawn, Apricity, and Phoebe; creative nonfiction photo-text pieces in Oyster River Pages, La Piccioletta Barca, and Tiny Seed Literary Journal; photo-text flash fiction in Oxford Magazine, Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts, On the Run, and The Bangalore Review; photo prose poetry in Landlocked Magazine; visual poetry in TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics, Roanoke Review, and 45th Parallel; poetry in Empty Mirror; and short stories in Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas, Huizache: The Magazine of Latino Literature, Sinister Wisdom, and Obelus Journal. Her SoundCloud website may be found at: https://soundcloud.com/mariadeguzman.
About the Work
"This visual poetry piece composed of photographs and text functions as an informal ode to the work of US 'Modernist Romantic' poet Hart Crane, particularly to the collection White Buildings which contains “Voyages,” a mystical and queer lyric poem sequence. “From the Eye of Hart Crane” is steeped in ecological concerns and an awareness of intensified ephemerality and extinction. The photographic images accompanying the text portions were obtained by agitating water with a spoon in a small bowl and photographing the water while stirring it. The naked eye cannot see what is happening at the time. The camera captures intriguing relations between chaos and order, between formlessness and form, between that which eludes the naked eye and visionary optics."
About the Author's Process
"For the last six years, since one bright hot morning in early July 2017, I have been composing visual poems, prose poems, and creative (non)fiction pieces from what is suggested to me by the interaction of light with water I have stirred up in a cup or bowl. I photograph the water while I stir with one hand. The small handheld camera, in my other hand, captures some arresting visual images out of the stream of images forming every millisecond within and upon the swirling water. By “arresting,” I mean those images I have chosen from the myriad photographic images obtained in any given ritual meditation session of stirring and photographing water. Over days, weeks, months, and sometimes years, I dwell on the photographic images I have chosen. From that d(welling) emerge the stories told in these poems and creative (non)fiction pieces. I view the process, from commencement to infinity, as telegraphed interference patterns produced by the interaction of waves — waves of light, waves of water, and waves of thought, open to ongoing interpretation."
