What is surrealist poetry? An introductory talk by Gary Cummiskey

The following is the English version of an introductory talk I gave at a surrealist poetry event I participated in the Dai Art Gallery, Zamalek, in Cairo, on 14 December, 2022. The event was hosted by Mohsen L Belasy and Ghadah Kamal Ahmed.

An Arabic translation of the talk appears in Sulfur 'Surrealist Jungle'.

What is surrealist poetry?

It was about a month ago that Mohsen asked me to give a talk for this evening on ‘What is surrealist poetry?’ My reply at the time was that this was an almost impossible question to answer comprehensively, and that I was not sure if I could answer it. Now it is a month later, and I still do not have a comprehensive answer. And besides, I am suspicious of answers, and much prefer questions.

What is surrealist poetry? Well, among the French-language poets, we may have read Breton, Éluard, Péret and the great post-Second World War poet Joyce Mansour, who was Egyptian. 

Joyce Mansour

When we read their work we should get an idea of what constitutes surrealist poetry. And among the English poets, if we read the early work of David Gascoyne or Philip O’Connor, or that of Roger Roughton or Roland Penrose, we may get an idea of what constitutes surrealist poetry to the English. And then in the US, there is the work of the great Philip Lamantia – ‘the voice that rises once in a hundred years’ – as Breton said about him, or the work of the contemporary surrealist poet Will Alexander, and also the late Ronnie Burk. Unfortunately I cannot speak about surrealist poetry in Latin America, other European countries such as Spain, Portugal or Romania, or even countries such as Egypt, because I am not knowledgeable enough.

Philip Lamantia

But to get back to the question. For me, a problem with trying to explain something, to define it, is to risk limiting and restricting it – and that is the exact opposite of what surrealism has always been about.  If we say, for example, as is usually said, that surrealist poetry is characterised by dream imagery, then we are saying that surrealist poetry should contain dream imagery.  But is that true? And if we say that surrealist poetry is the result of automatic writing, then we are saying that surrealist poetry must have been written quickly and without conscious intervention or revision. But we know that is not true – Breton himself rejected automatic writing as far back as 1930. And neither Aragon, Char, nor Éluard – the great poets of surrealism –  ever practised automatic writing.

For myself, as much as I admire Breton, Éluard and Péret among the French-language surrealist poets, I much prefer the work of the more borderline or renegade surrealists – poets such as Artaud, Prévert, and some of the members of Le Grand Jeu, such as René Daumal and Roger Gilbert-Lecomte. None of these poets produced poetry that can be immediately recognised or labelled as surrealist. That is because their poems do not have the outward characteristics of what is considered surrealist poetry.

René Daumal

And in the post-Second World War period, moving into the 1950s and 1960s, I admire the work of the PANic movement – Arrabal, Jodorowsky, and Topor. There is the story of how Jodorowsky travelled from Chile to France determined to rescue surrealism, and when he finally met Breton, he was dismayed to find that the great leader of surrealism did not like rock music (actually Breton did not like any music!), science fiction, or comics. And so Jodo decided to form PANic.

 And among the American poets, much as I admire Lamantia, I also have tremendous admiration for the work of Bob Kaufman and Marty Matz, who are more usually associated with the beats than with surrealism. Then there is the psychedelic work of the poet, photographer, and film maker Ira Cohen, who would rigorously shake off any label, whether  ‘surrealist’ or ‘beat’.

Bob Kaufman

Ira Cohen

And then what do we make of the poetry of the US surrealist Ted Joans, who declared ‘Jazz is my religion, and surrealism my point of view’? As much as many of his poems are dedicated to surrealists, such as Joyce Mansour, with whom he collaborated, or reference surrealism or surrealists – a fairly famous one is about Breton – they generally do not have the characteristics of what we would expect from ‘surrealist poetry’. They are closer to jazz poetry, and indeed, Joans’s poetry seems more influenced by jazz than by surrealism. He is as frequently referred to as a jazz poet as he is referred to as a surrealist poet. He is seen by some as one of the fathers of spoken-word poetry. Yet Breton called him ‘the only authentic African-American surrealist of the hippie generation in America’.

 I have also been asked about surrealism in South Africa. Well, there is not much happening with regard to surrealism in South Africa, and certainly not amongst poets. One notable figure, however, was Sinclair Beiles, about whom I compiled a book, titled Who was Sinclair Beiles? Sinclair is better known for being a collaborator on the book of cut-ups called Minutes to Go, with William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Gregory Corso. He also helped with the editing and publication of Burroughs’s Naked Lunch. But he was also tremendously influenced by dada and surrealism, and while he was in Paris, in the 1950s, he met Breton and Tzara. He also later became very close friends with the Greek surrealist Nanos Valaoritis, who edited Sinclair’s selected poems, titled A South African Abroad. There is a long poem of Sinclair’s called Illuminations in White Tobacco Smoke, which is based on a poem by Tzara and dedicated to Artaud. In a documentary in the mid-1990s, Sinclair dismissed much South African poetry as ‘social realism’ and said he regarded his own work as surrealist. 

Sinclair Beiles

Incidentally, Sinclair once gave a poetry reading here in Egypt, at a Grateful Dead concert, when they performed at the pyramids in Giza in 1978.

 Well, I realise this talk has been rather meandering and so I want to return to the beginning, to the question ‘What is surrealist poetry’? Because, as I have already said,  I am aware of the dangers of definition, and I am even more aware of the danger of confusing outward characteristics with substance. In my opinion there is much contemporary, or near-contemporary, surrealist poetry that too often reads like a translation from the 1920s French. Such surrealist poetry is hardly innovative, but rather imitative, and if you want to bring a political slant into it, you could say that such poetry is more reactionary than revolutionary. It is such poetry that tucks surrealism safely away in museums and on to the walls of corporate boardrooms. It also reminds me of something that Sinclair Beiles wrote, that in its quest for unusual images, much (not all) surrealist poetry had become ‘mannered’, producing ‘beautiful seashells devoid of life’.

Ted Joans

In closing, I would like the quote the words of Ted Joans – words he uttered when I met him in Johannesburg in early 1994. Those words were: ‘The fantasy fades, but the surrealism remains’. He did not explain what he meant by that, but for me it is a matter of pointing out that the outward characteristics of ‘typical’ surrealist poems  – with images of oranges eating horses and eyebrows climbing over bannisters  (and those are my images, by the way, so you can’t use them!) –– will perhaps not fade as such, but become, in the words of Sinclair, ‘beautiful seashells devoid of life’. But the substance of surrealist poetry –– the spirit of surrealism – will remain.

 

 

 

 

 

Daniel Abdal-hayy Moore 1940-2016

I was shocked on Thursday to read of the passing of US poet Daniel Abdal-hayy Moore just a few days previously. Sometime around 2003-2006 we enjoyed a regular correspondence. I had read his second book, Burnt Heart, while in England in 2001 - on the outward and return journey from London to Worcester - and then when back in South Africa I bought his (then recent) collection, The Blind Beekeeper. I found his email address on the internet and contacted him. He sent me a photocopy of his first book, Dawn Visions, published back in 1964, and photocopies of posters and photos relating to his ritual theatre project from the mid-60s, The Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company. He wrote about friends such as Philip Lamantia, Ira Cohen and Angus MacLise. He sent me some poems, which I published in my literary journal Green Dragon. I also published a poem of his in an issue of Carapace that I guest-edited. I was amazed at how prolific he was. He told me he often got up in the middle of the night to write. He didn't write individual poems, but rather whole books of interrelated poems. In the last 10 years of his life he published about 30 books of poetry through his imprint The Ecstatic Exchange.

Why we lost contact with each other, I don't know. Even though we were friends on Facebook we did not really connect. Probably he was so busy with his life and projects and I was so busy with mine. I must admit that I also much preferred his earlier, pre-Sufi poetry, though perhaps if I reread his more recent work now I might change my mind.

The sad fact is that another great voice of tremendous poetic energy has gone.

The  photograph shows Daniel Abdal-hayy Moore performing his poetry at the Berkeley Folk Festival in 1965. Photographer unknown. 

From Journey West (All in August) by Ira Cohen

Published by Cold Turkey Press (France)

and Sea Urchin Editions (Rotterdam), 2013

Ira Cohen, Amsterdam, 1980

Photo: Eddie Woods, supplied by Sea Urchin  Editions, Rotterdam

The Majoon Traveller by Ira Cohen

CD of poetry by Ira Cohen, who reads poems such as 'Imagine Jean Cocteau', 'Song to Nothing', 'Tokyo Birdhouse' and 'From The Moroccan Journal 1987'. Includes music by Angus Maclise, Don Cherry, and Ornette Coleman. There is also a recording of the Master Musicians of Joujouka made by Paul Bowles and Brion Gysin in 1961.

The CD is dedicated to the memory of Brion Gysin.

Brain Damage in Oklahoma City

CD of recordings by musician and poet
Angus MacLise (1938-1979). An early friend of Piero Heliczer (who published MacLise's first poetry collection), MacLise worked with Le Monte Young and was the original drummer for the Velvet Undergound. He also worked with Daniel Moore in the Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company in Berkeley, late 1960s, eventually living in Kathmandu, where Ira Cohen published his works such as Subliminal Report and  The Cloud Doctrine.

Poem for Gerard Bellaart by Ira Cohen, 1975

The poem was published as 'Flaming angel' in Cohen's collection The Stauffenberg Cycle and other Poems, by the bilngual Amerstadam School Poetry Series, 1981. 

The Poem Again Is Yours: A Tribute to Ira Cohen

Ira Cohen was born in 1935 in the Bronx and attended Cornell University and Columbia University. In the early 1960s, he lived in Tangier and published GNAOUA magazine, an early venue for William Burroughs, among other Beat affiliates. He also produced Paul Bowles's recordings of dervish trance music (Jilala). Between stints in Spain, Paris, London, and Amsterdam, he returned to New York where he conducted shamanic experiments in photography and produced the films Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda and Paradise Now (documenting the Living Theatre's historic American tour). In the early1970s, he went to the Himalayas, studied bookmaking with native craftsmen, and continued to publish poets and writers such as Gregory Corso and Paul Bowles. In 1972 he spent a year in San Francisco reading and performing and mounting photographic shows. In 1981 he again returned to New York, where he lived between travels to Africa and Asia. In India, he documented the great kumbh mela festival in the film Kings with Straw Mats. In the latter part of the decade Synergetic Press published On Feet of Gold, a book of selected poems. Ira was a contributing editor of Third Rail magazine, a review of international arts and literature based in Los Angeles. His photographs have been shown internationally. Ira passed away on April 25, 2011. The following tributes by Ira's friends were compiled for RS by Steve Dalachinsky...Read more here 

Theo Green and Adele Oarker, New York City, with Dreamachine

Theo Green and Adele Oarker, New York City, with Dreamachine, December 2003.

Photo: Ira Choen

Ira Cohen obituary from The Guardian

Ira Cohen, who has died of renal failure aged 76, participated in the 1960s artistic counterculture as a poet, publisher, film-maker and raconteur. In the middle of the decade, he took up photography seriously. At his loft in Jefferson Street, New York, Cohen built a chamber with walls and ceilings made from sheets of Mylar, a reflective polyester film. Inside this chamber, he took portraits of William Burroughs, Jimi Hendrix, Alejandro Jodorowsky and the steady stream of hipsters who visited the loft....Read more here

Portrait of Theo Green by Ira Cohen

Portrait of Theo Green by Ira Cohen, New York City, May 1985
Photo courtesy of Theo Green

F A Nettelbeck and Ira Cohen

F A Nettelbeck and Ira Cohen, at Robert Lavigne's pad, Seattle July 1988.

Photo courtesy of Theo Green

Ira Cohen,an artist and a touchstone

Ira Cohen made phantasmagorical films that became cult classics. He developed a way of taking photographs in mesmerizing, twisting colors, including a famous one of Jimi Hendrix. He published works by authors like William Burroughs and the poet Gregory Corso. He wrote thousands of poems himself. He wrote The Hashish Cookbook under the name Panama Rose. He called himself “the conscience of Planet Earth.” ...Read more here

Winged Swallow Longing - Ira Cohen

 

The poem card Winged Swallow Longing by Ira Cohen was published by Cold Turkey Press, France.
Reproduced courtesy of Cold Turkey Press.

Ira Cohen: The Cosmic Traveller, by Indra Tamang

On Monday, April 25th, I received a call from Sky, an old friend who I have known for many years, letting me know that Ira Cohen had passed away moments before in St. Luke’s Hospital. She told me that I was someone Ira cared about, which is why she was calling, and I felt immediately very sad at hearing the news, and for having not seen more of him in recent years.

Next to Charles Henri Ford, Ira Cohen was one of the people I knew the longest in my life, even though I sometimes felt that in spite of how long I knew him, I didn’t know him deeply...Read more here

Book covers of titles by Ira Cohen

Ira Cohen: poet, photographer, film maker and publisher, February 3 1935 - April 25 2011.

"The wizard of Tangier and the sage of Kathmandu" - William Burroughs

"Reading your poems is like smoking raw nerves" - Henri Michaux

"Ira Cohen is a richly woven, mystically embroidered tapestry" - Deborah Harry

Message

I am standing at the side of the road when who should come along but the shamanic poet Ira Cohen, with his son, Rapheal.

I have a copy of Poems From The Akashic Record with me, and so I ask the aging poet to inscribe a message on the title page.

He takes the book from me and starts to write slowly, silently with a huge silver pen.

He returns the book to me and I read: “To Gary Cummiskey. Ira Cohen September 3, 2007.”

“But I wanted a message,” I tell him.

“There is no message,” he replies.