Murali Sivaramakrishnan is a poet, painter and critic. He is Professor and Head Department of English at Pondicherry Central University.
Artworks Keep Reading
POTENTIAL
the potential,
for creating digital autonomy;
an insistence,
directed by a Gabriel clone
about the inequity of reality;
and then sadly,
transmitted orally to one person (a life);
this dying is about a postmodern body
a lonely body, alone;
the situation becomes more impersonal
and still yet?
Transhuman potential, Keep Reading
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A Life
No intermediary in the passing night
Brought better news than what the heart revealed,
Sending from its furthest reaches news
Of bitter blood, infatuated calm
Or a tempest of delighted skin.
Thus at midnight, with the world beyond
Your fragmentary reach at goodnesses,
Silence then was best—you were just a guest
Of something larger than this sorrowing.
No use to reason why the crest of time
Has danced on you, then left a trampled rind.
You lived and knew the best, then left your life behind. Keep Reading
Three Verses on Our History
Verse 1 – Early Hominids
The third ape-shadow emerged, baby-curious,
From the primitive Mormon-mist.
A lucent moon watched
As ape-gene glowed, mutating with every touch.
Left alone at daybreak
Soul-light dazzled the primate mind
And the first divine thought of the universe
Contaminated all pure beasts
In one massive cloudburst
Saying
“I love”. Keep Reading
Publisher: Tupelo Press (October 15, 2010)
Paperback: 72 pages
Price: $16.95
ISBN-10: 1932195890
ISBN-13: 978-1932195897
Review by
Paula Hayes
Strayer University, USA
“True revelation occurs amid distortion”—The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 1: Religion
Southern poetry occupies an inimitable place in contemporary literature. Michael Chitwood, whose work has gained significant recognition and a wide readership over the last two decades or so, represents a current trend of an increased interest in Southern poetry. His latest collection, Poor-Mouth Jubilee, reaches back to the heart of what can bind a Southern town together—religion—in an effort to explore the meaningfulness and fruitfulness of human relationships. Chitwood’s usual positions of irony, skepticism, and cynicism toward Christianity are softened, considerably, in Poor-Mouth Jubilee. Still, the unrelenting quality of obstinacy that characterizes a particular sect of Southern literature from William Faulkner to Flannery O’Connor is ever-present in Poor-Mouth Jubilee. The concept of obstinacy in Southern literature translates into the idea that while it is impossible to overcome suffering through a transcendence of it, nonetheless there can be a repudiation of the belief that suffering is meaningless. Poor-Mouth Jubilee reminds us that meaning can be found in the smallest of appreciations. In the poem, “Now And In Our Time of Need,” Chitwood describes how a flock of crows can remind us of the need for prayerful meditation. Keep Reading
The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
Pub Date: Jan 2010
Hardcover, 176 pages
Price: $24.95
ISBN: 0-8108-6008-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-8108-6008-7
Series: African American Cultural Theory and Heritage
Review by
Pragna Paramita Mondal, Victoria College, Kolkata
Alexs Pate’s In the Heart of the Beat begins with an anecdote from his childhood days in North Philadelphia. Johnny, a boy in the neighborhood who survived a car accident, was subsequently involved in a conscious process of reorientation of speech as a means to counter his disability. What the ‘Professor’ (Johnny) and rappers share in common, however, is their sense of exigency in speech and their need to articulate and prioritize their distinct worldviews from a position of marginality and oppression. In fact, orality has been one of the defining features in Black cultural history, one that has sustained African American sanity and self-expression. In this book Pate, therefore, makes an attempt at disengaging the poetry of rap from the claims of music and hip hop beats and validates the ‘speech’ of rap by subverting the conventional notions that determine its popular consumption. Keep Reading
This issue is dedicated once again to a more definitive exploration of the interdisciplinary question in humanities, in the inquest which characterizes modern science and a corresponding investigation of the nature of artistic and imaginative pursuits. The essays in this collection bear evidence of the scientific temperament, to say the least, but more importantly an attempt to explain certain creative tendencies on the basis of findings in evolutionary studies and psychology. The concern in academy for a mechanics of perception has taken a turn. This is a very “philosophical” question. We cannot circumscribe its importance. Keep Reading
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Slobodan Dan Paich, Artship Foundation, San Francisco, USA
Abstract
Possible procedural similarities between abstract problems mathematically expressed, engineering problems mechanically resolved, collective tensions and yearning expressed as significant poetic, acoustic or visual manifestations in art will be explored through a series of open questions and reflections. We begin with a short analysis and comparison of the methodologies of Nicola Tesla and Leonardo da Vinci, and explore issues raised by examples of imagination in scientific discovery, such as the German chemist Friedrich August Kekulé resolving the riddle of the benzene ring in 1865. The exploration will include reflection on issues of:
1. Mastery and skill sets
2. Preparing the field and gathering elements for research
3. Cognitive modeling in Art and Science
4. Unexpected connections/discovery
5. Motivation to complete
Before ending with an open-ended summary, we will include the segment of questions and answers from an ongoing dialogue between the author of this paper and Dr. Paul Pangaro, Board Member of Artship Foundation, Cybernetics practitioner, theorist and the proponent of Conversation Theory. Keep Reading
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Maria Elisa Navarro Morales, McGill University, Canada
Abstract
As a result of the improvement in observational astronomy in the seventeenth century, particularly with the advent of the telescope, astronomical observatories started to be built to house the instruments for the observation of the heavens. With Tycho Brahe’s Uraniborg as precedent in the XVI century, the astronomical observatories of the XVII century were mainly institutional buildings with a political agenda. In contrast, the project for an Astronomical Palace by Juan Caramuel de Lobkowitz (1678-9), was neither a building to contain instruments, nor did it follow an institutional program. In Caramuel’s project, the building serves as an instrument for the observation and measurement of the celestial movements, integrating the instruments traditionally housed in the building and the building itself into a single structure. The present paper will look at the Astronomical Palace as an instance of architecture as an instrument to inquire into the natural world. Keep Reading
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Hrileena Ghosh, Jadavpur University
Abstract
The doctrine of plural worlds is an ancient concept which received a new lease on life as a result of developments in astronomy in the sixteenth century. In his epic Paradise Lost, John Milton repeatedly references this idea. Milton uses the concept of plural worlds in two distinct forms: at the literal level, he invokes the possibility of plural worlds within the created universe of the poem, and on a more metaphorical level, he invokes the possibility of the existence of several distinct but overlapping worlds. This paper seeks to consider how and why Milton uses this idea in the ways he does. Keep Reading