JOUNAL COVER #4 (collage) & ON MAKING COLLAGES (dreamku) by Roswila

ON MAKING COLLAGES

all these women friends!
I use the word “friend” lightly
“shadow” is more the
accurate term to describe
their odd or rejecting actions

yes Jung would agree
they are what I do not see
of myself shrugged off
by my ego’s posing in
its self-enhancing spotlight

“mirror” might also
fit, but these are living
women with their own
egos and shadows to cast
in this abstracted work

the miracle here?
that we can see to touch each
other truly at all
in this shifting collage of poses
and overlapping shadows


[four tanka on a dream of 5-3-12. Collage “Journal Cover #4” by Roswila. This collage of mine is many years old and grew gradually, picture by picture, over the many months I wrote in the journal. I.e., with most collages one chooses all the photos and determines the final arrangement before fixing them permanently in place. In this series of journal covers I permanently afixed each picture (or maybe two) days and sometimes weeks apart so I had no idea what the final design would be. The quote in the upper left is “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” I recall that on starting the journal I made a conscious decision to develop an intense and less pleasant looking design on the cover, as the previous three journal covers were (are) sweet and unchallenging. It's interesting after all this time to see some design problems -- as in the bottom third, too much red space.]

PLEASE NOTE that I never have nor do I now lay claim to having been the first to suggest writing about our dreams in the haiku form. In fact, the haijin (Haiku Masters of centuries ago) sometimes wrote haiku on dreams. But even more importantly, what I have been developing for several years now on this blog is not even truly haiku or tanka or monoku. The ways in which I have been using and experimenting with these forms makes the results more akin to kissing cousins of these small Eastern poetry forms. Therefore, I mostly use the term "dreamku" to distinguish what I do from those traditional forms. Click here for a more in-depth INTRODUCTION than follows below, including links to my THREE PART PRIMER on the basic (most haiku-like) dreamku form.

Also, the photo accompanying a daily dream poem or non-dream based poem is not necessarily meant to illustrate it, but to reflect some small, even slant aspect of the verse -- similar to Japanese haiga (illustrated haiku). I've also recently realized that although the dreamku (i.e. dream based poems) posted here tend not to have metaphor or simile, the accompanying photos almost always act as such.

To write a metaphor or simile into a dream scenario is something I rarely do. It can be confusing: did it really look like a hand, say, in the dream, or am I just being poetic to make my conscious point? As these dreamku act as a dream journal, my over-riding tendency is to try to stay close to the actual dream scenario itself. Admittedly making for a tendency to less "poetic" dreamku. Then why pay attention to any haiku, tanka, or monoku parameters at all when writing about my dreams? Because I find in even attempting to adhere to them I'm making choices that relieve my dream recall of a great deal of chatter so that I can get down to some important dream aspects. Here's a link to THE AREN'TS OF DREAMKU & ACCOMPANYING PHOTOS in which I go into some of the basic parameters for dreamku and the photos chosen to go with them (and with any non-dream based poems I post here, as well).

The archives in the sidebar hold years of the daily dreamku, tanka, monoku and photo posts I've made, grouped in one post by month. As I no longer post dreamku (or non-dream based poems) strictly daily, each post will appear below and then in the archives by the day on which it was posted.

There are many other sorts of posts here, not all dream-based. I indicate which are about or influenced by dreams. Some non-dream focused posts are book reviews, "regular" poems (some by other writers than myself), scifaiku, writing exercises, Tarot haiku, photos, haiga, and so on. However, most of those are in much older posts. There's a listing by month going back to early 2006 in the sidebar.

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‘til next time, keep dreaming,

[aka: Patricia Kelly]
**** If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”) **** My other blogs: ROSWILA’S TAROT GALLERY & JOURNAL; ROSWILA’S TAIGA TAROT; and OPENING TO THE LIGHT ****