PAINTINGS THAT READ MY MIND & POEMS THAT READ MY PAINTINGS

Carmi presents a collection of poems inspired by, and about, his own paintings.

The poet explores transformation and transcendence in this hybrid book of poetry and art. He notes in an introduction that painting reminds him that everyone is interconnected and that the cardinal sign of art is that one feels awe when one sees it. Carmi’s paintings offer variations on themes, with brush strokes that evoke tree roots, aerial maps, or even a brain or lung scan laid atop splashes of watercolor. He discusses his creative process in his poems, vacillating between wanting to “give this thing / Some love” (“Time to give it love”) and feeling betrayed by his artwork: “The colors turned their backs / On me / They wouldn’t listen to / Sensible talk / They are running fast away” (“As you want them to be”). He delights in a sense of rebirth and explores the concept that when one is happy, the “big mind” of collective consciousness experiences that emotion, too. Indeed, he describes feeling one with the world, stating, “Look through me / And see yourself / Everywhere” (“Transparent”). However, the paintings are so abstract that their relationships to the poems are murky, and the subject matter is so ethereal that readers have little that’s tangible to hold on to. When Carmi does include concrete details, however, he does so beautifully: “The wind freezes the moments / And sends them to the meadows” (“A being of now”). He is also insightful and inspiring in statements such as “hope belongs / To the future” (“Smoke signal”). The psychology underlying the poems is often compelling, as well, as when Carmi discusses a healing technique in which one carries pain like a foreign object in your pocket, until “you get familiar with the feeling of it being there, and you go on with the business of life that now includes this uncomfortable feeling” (“The child has stopped crying”).

A sometimes-vague but often engaging self-referential creative mashup.