Elise Stewart Poet
Poet Elise brings us soulful Romantic poetry books that go beyond the limits in literature from the late 60′s to the early 90′s (1). She forces us to re think the Romantic poetry in its pure form. Her art emerges over a certain decadent literature brought by the virtual form of life, the way beings recently experimented them. In West Sussex England, she shapes the poetry magazine Decanto and Masque Publishing aesthetic for both established and upcoming poets. Like a “radiant child “(her facebook portraits) with an old mind, she brings freshness into that field so often corrupted by corrosive language.
Her poetry jogs our memory to what we all obviously forget: “love is divine” and emotions are illusions. Her book “For All Eternity” published in 2005 by Masque Publishing, captures a glance of heaven we often find in Giotto and Fra Angelico images. From the sublime to the uncanny, Elise allows us to read her naked spirit like the reality David Ellison states on, in his book “Ethics and Aesthetics in European Modernist literature (2).
Elise Stuart, a fallen angel who has no fear to abandon herself for an uncanny idyll:
I am the fallen,
Abandoning myself
To your beguiling ways
That rush over me
Wave on wave.
I saw draped ascetic fleshes with words; rambled in a beguiling ways, over the radiant light from a sacred realm. A few poem titles will tell us the story of divine matters she shaped: The Secret Dreams, Timeless Dance, Forgotten World, Nectar Of The Gods are poems of ecstasy (3a).
One who reads the book will remember “The Secret Dream” verses:
Let me wander ‘neath the soft bough of
Silent trees, and laugh and jest with life
Unseen.
—–
Or from “Timeless Dance“
Where I shall lift these eyes to mine
And there alone we shall drift
Through the empty solace moon
Silver in its wanton power.
Through the shaded empty gloom
And dance and dance each timeless
Waltz
Arond the turrets ag-ed rooms.
——————-
Her poem collection “For All Eternity” opens doors to mysticism (3) into a post Romantic set up, (not only in its nostalgic genre, but including the William Blake vision too). As well as a formal experience in poetry- Her metrical patterns link her to poets we might meet in slams open microphone soirées. In that world, words are not limited to semiotic effects that often castrated them, but to so called “Zap images” structures. Fragmented words travel into our visual cortex at the numeric speed and reveal their semantic patterns rooted on “spoken words” (the beginning was the verb’ said John the evangelist) as well as visual drafts. Like I wrote in my unpublished essay “beyond the post-modernity“, words can reveal their true nature through a Photoshop manipulation process more than Metz or Roland Barthes approach can do.
“Another Sentiment” published in 2003 captures, with an impressionist technique, the savour of a moment. She snaps vivid impressions “en vol” and scares our visual cortex with fragmented pixels, perhaps Turner paintings’ reminiscence, and lets us into a vague mist and powerless fire.
——
And all is vague, as vague as faded Winters
Or Summer’s passing days, uprising the hours
…the heart beats strong and fast, like racing drum
As if it will never calm again…
——–
We ensure and empower ourselves to cross that timeless litany of passing moments without browsing into the sorrow they carry. Elise has, like all the Romantic poets of all ages, that sorrowful mind. When it is time to look at objectivism, she fades out her vision and remembers only the absence of fact, a sort of “no-man land “where she curves her soul into a cocoon. She reveals the mechanism that drives her sorrowful mind to an endless torment. In her poem named time we read:
———
Eyes cast,
And eyes cast still
Eyes of she – of I
Eyes of I – of he
And all and all
Of endless time.
—————-
Space and Time in Elise’s poetic art
Like in a dream, we no longer make difference between past and present, and not even feel we are incarnate creatures, when we read Elise’s poems. Sometimes we have a glance of a post medieval abbeys surrounded by Giotto paintings and Gregorian chants. Philippe Sollers ‘ book in French” Vers le Paradis” profoundly illustrates the Elise universe (4). Other times, we simply float over timeless gas and star dust; there, we contemplate the power of the ascetic matters we become, and let tumble all our desires and attachments.
She wrote:
—–
Time is forgotten
In the radiant depths…
—–
Uncertainty leads her mind. Submissively, she let the yore manage her sullied thought; even she feels uncomfortable with its cruel rules. Like it was a faith, she endures the reality until, by magic, her power rises- erected by her late desire.
——-
But your silent tongue
lingers like words unsung.
And am I lost to your world
——–
She begs for certainty, even she already captured the radiant light in her prism. Absence of flesh, redemption of sin, such are the nature of her Judeo Christian torment.
———-
Render
me reckless
to the words of your
poet’s mouth.
Save me
from the throes
of my nocturnal
torment.
———–
She searches for a power that can spurt the magic dew into her ears and let the strong orgasmic “feeling vibes” into her flesh, from year to yore.
———–
Disperse
their silenced hymns
to your yearning
depths.
Until
all sanctum of my
earthly plight
is sacrificed.
Until
all words
…are yours.
—————-
In her recent videos, Elise explores poetry through slow motion sounds and images and she creates ecstatic parameters that let the words- waves sigh deeply and slowly set down, like Brian Eno’s 80′s video installations can do. We are intoxicated by divine mists and float over a sleepwalking feeling. Such reality sheers our vision and we become a character of her imagination, a sort of angel draped with words until they become elsewhere words. (5)
We can say, without any doubt, that Gothic moments she creates are very British and cannot be find elsewhere, with that vivid kind of depth. Castles, palaces, magic dews are Wales’ memory heritage and she used it in an accurate manner like a J. K. Rowling character.
Elise will be remembered for her devotion to the Romantic materials from the past she brought again to the surface, without breaking the recent formalist values poetry gains. Words are still the matter for her.
————————————————————————
References-
1 – “Art of the post-modern Era” from the late 60′s to the early 90′s by Irving Sandler; Icon Editions 1996. 636 pges.
2 – “Ethics and Aesthetics in European modernist literature:” By David Ellison – Cambridge University Press, 2001. 290 pages
3 – Mysticism: A study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness – book by Evelyn Underhill – Publisher Dutton, 1912 – 600 pgs
4- Vers le Paradis by Philippe Sollers: ISBN 978-2-220-06204-4
5-http://elisepoetry.webs.com
About the Author
Outdoor portraiture…in the eastern sierra. Flash filled, off camera strobes.
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