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Artistic Manifesto

Image, metaphor, myth, depth, and cadence are for me:  the pillars        of the poetic.  I recall as a child no more than four or five years of age finding a deck of mysterious cards in an old shoe box that my mother had stowed away in small closet of the first house we lived in on Navidad Street on San Antonio’s Westside.  The box contained an old tarot deck set.   Although I could not articulate what was going through my febrile young mind, I was moved by the imagery, and despite the overwhelmingly powerful emotions created by those images, I can still intuitively enjoy the essence of that incantatory moment.  A writer should utilize all the tools available to him.  It’s his job to create writing that appeals and engages readers on separate levels. Writing that presents readers with divergent ways of looking at the world. Writing that reaches out from the individual to the universal.  Writing that flows outwardly and connects with each reader in a deep and satisfying manner.  Writing unafraid to be different, real, and risky.

A poet must calibrate his words to resonate with feeling and power   to convey a real human condition and render each experience in an intelligent manner appealing to the mind and the soul of the universal.  Lines must seek to live up to the inspiration that triggered the poetic eruption. The lyrical and the formal should collaborate to engage the visceral as well as the cerebral and to produce a timeless work on equal footing with any noteworthy painting, sculpture, musical composition, film or novel.  A poet must become his craft.

 In the furnace of curiosity and exploration, my quest for art and poetry was fired.  Ever since, I have sought to fuse both the power  of art (whether painting, sculpture, music, film, etc.) with that of poetry so that an encounter with the written word provokes                 a multi-sensory and cinematic experience. To that end, I have collaborated with local artists and sculptors in San Antonio combining poetry, painting and sculpture, and presented our work     in local exhibits, arts shows and poetry readings throughout the city.

Charles Baudelaire’s maximBe a poet even in prose has long since become my mantra.  It is a lifelong commitment one makes towards his craft with respect and honor to his predecessors aware of the present moment while anticipating the future.

 

Out for Song