About/Contact

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About Me, Poem Form:

Long though I toiled in The Tower Of the City of Knowledge A faithful acolyte of Science

There was always in The wilds Howling a Dark Mistress.

But I did love my home That I spent my youth Serving one

and denying The Other Forced a crisis

(times known as “Formatting

your Dissertation” will do

this to even the most

devoted).

 

So I set forth to meet her Clandestinely And at night; my lab Coat upon a hook

Proof of my daily return As I journey I laugh At myself,

Well done, you: Seek the sole pursuit Less lucrative

than Academic research:

Art.

 

Let this be a record of The Journey.

 

Please use the form to contact me – thanks!

109 comments

  1. Pingback: Holy ! Holy ! Holy ! – www.bukowski.space
  2. Pingback: Muir Woods – www.illustrated.bukowski.space

  3. hi marcy, thanks that you vistited & follow my blog. i like the way, how you illustrate poems!
    i send lots of good wishes and thoughts over the ocean there 🙂. wally

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  4. Pingback: www.beat.company | Holy ! Holy ! Holy !
  5. Pingback: www.beat.company | Asia

  6. Marcy,
    Thanks for stopping by and following my blog. I’m glad to finally get a chance to sit down and browse your work. You have developed quite a following! It was great meeting you and Emily on Saturday night!

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    1. Tom! The pleasure is mine – thank you for following IP! There is a great community of artists and writers on WordPress and it has been an amazing support for me in this endeavor. Thank you for being a fantastic table-mate and dinner companion! Both Emily and I are already enjoying your blog. I would vote for Dave from Dave any day!

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  9. Dear Marcy,

    I have just emptied my postbox and found the long expected card of yours. A collage called «An Ancient Dream» accompanied by words of friendship and solidarity. This card now has been framed and positioned right next to a facsimile page of Allen Ginsberg’s poem «Howl». Right above my computer screen and typewriter – so, anytime I get lost in thoughts while writing about my beloveth Beat poetry – I shall look up to those two artefacts. They have found their right places – inspiring and reminding of the analogue world behind it all. May we never forget, that art and inspiration – in the end of the day – arises from real people and not the surreal surroundings of the internet’s digitality – which we use to communicate these days and which has made friends of Marcy and I – I may proudly note here.

    To anyone visiting this site «Illustrated Poetry» for his attention: Treasure, value and cherish this site – you are visiting right now. It is a golden place and more than worth a while. Stay tuned and let it become a bookmark of your journey. I first met Marcy on Sunday, November 23th 2014 at 11:49 am – as you can see right above this statement – and I shall never let her go: Let Marcy enfold you.

    Your friend

    Matthias

    «Let It Enfold You» – a poem by Charles Bukowski (From: «Betting on the Muse», 1996)

    Either peace or happiness,
    let it enfold you

    when I was a young man
    I felt these things were
    dumb, unsophisticated.
    I had bad blood, a twisted
    mind, a precarious
    upbringing.

    I was hard as granite, I
    leered at the
    sun.
    I trusted no man and
    especially no
    woman.

    I was living a hell in
    small rooms, I broke
    things, smashed things,
    walked through glass,
    cursed.
    I challenged everything,
    was continually being
    evicted, jailed, in and
    out of fights, in and out
    of my mind.
    women were something
    to screw and rail
    at, I had no male
    friends,

    I changed jobs and
    cities, I hated holidays,
    babies, history,
    newspapers, museums,
    grandmothers,
    marriage, movies,
    spiders, garbagemen,
    english accents,spain,
    france,italy,walnuts and
    the color
    orange.
    algebra angred me,
    opera sickened me,
    charlie chaplin was a
    fake
    and flowers were for
    pansies.

    peace and happiness to me
    were signs of
    inferiority,
    tenants of the weak
    and
    addled
    mind.

    but as I went on with
    my alley fights,
    my suicidal years,
    my passage through
    any number of
    women-it gradually
    began to occur to
    me
    that I wasn’t different

    from the
    others, I was the same,

    they were all fulsome
    with hatred,
    glossed over with petty
    grievances,
    the men I fought in
    alleys had hearts of stone.
    everybody was nudging,
    inching, cheating for
    some insignificant
    advantage,
    the lie was the
    weapon and the
    plot was
    empty,
    darkness was the
    dictator.

    cautiously, I allowed
    myself to feel good
    at times.
    I found moments of
    peace in cheap
    rooms
    just staring at the
    knobs of some
    dresser
    or listening to the
    rain in the
    dark.
    the less I needed
    the better I
    felt.

    maybe the other life had worn me
    down.
    I no longer found
    glamour
    in topping somebody
    in conversation.
    or in mounting the
    body of some poor
    drunken female
    whose life had
    slipped away into
    sorrow.

    I could never accept
    life as it was,
    i could never gobble
    down all its
    poisons
    but there were parts,
    tenuous magic parts
    open for the
    asking.

    I re formulated
    I don’t know when,
    date, time, all
    that
    but the change
    occurred.
    something in me
    relaxed, smoothed
    out.
    i no longer had to
    prove that I was a
    man,

    I didn’t have to prove
    anything.

    I began to see things:
    coffee cups lined up
    behind a counter in a
    cafe.
    or a dog walking along
    a sidewalk.
    or the way the mouse
    on my dresser top
    stopped there
    with its body,
    its ears,
    its nose,
    it was fixed,
    a bit of life
    caught within itself
    and its eyes looked
    at me
    and they were
    beautiful.
    then- it was
    gone.

    I began to feel good,
    I began to feel good
    in the worst situations
    and there were plenty
    of those.
    like say, the boss
    behind his desk,
    he is going to have
    to fire me.

    I’ve missed too many
    days.
    he is dressed in a
    suit, necktie, glasses,
    he says, ‘I am going
    to have to let you go’

    ‘it’s all right’ I tell
    him.

    He must do what he
    must do, he has a
    wife, a house, children,
    expenses, most probably
    a girlfriend.

    I am sorry for him
    he is caught.

    I walk onto the blazing
    sunshine.
    the whole day is
    mine
    temporarily,
    anyhow.

    (the whole world is at the
    throat of the world,
    everybody feels angry,
    short-changed, cheated,
    everybody is despondent,
    disillusioned)

    I welcomed shots of
    peace, tattered shards of
    happiness.

    I embraced that stuff
    like the hottest number,
    like high heels, breasts,
    singing,the
    works.

    (don’t get me wrong,
    there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism
    that overlooks all
    basic problems just for
    the sake of
    itself-
    this is a shield and a
    sickness.)

    The knife got near my
    throat again,
    I almost turned on the
    gas
    again
    but when the good
    moments arrived
    again
    I didn’t fight them off
    like an alley
    adversary.
    I let them take me,
    I luxuriated in them,
    I made them welcome
    home.
    I even looked into
    the mirror
    once having thought
    myself to be
    ugly,
    I now liked what
    I saw, almost
    handsome, yes,
    a bit ripped and
    ragged,
    scares, lumps,
    odd turns,
    but all in all,
    not too bad,
    almost handsome,
    better at least than
    some of those movie
    star faces
    like the cheeks of
    a baby’s
    butt.

    and finally I discovered
    real feelings of
    others,
    unheralded,
    like lately,
    like this morning,
    as I was leaving,
    for the track,
    i saw my wife in bed,
    just the
    shape of
    her head there
    (not forgetting
    centuries of the living
    and the dead and
    the dying,
    the pyramids,
    Mozart dead
    but his music still
    there in the
    room, weeds growing,
    the earth turning,
    the tote board waiting for
    me)
    I saw the shape of my
    wife’s head,
    she so still,
    I ached for her life,
    just being there
    under the
    covers.

    I kissed her in the
    forehead,
    got down the stairway,
    got outside,
    got into my marvelous
    car,
    fixed the seatbelt,
    backed out the
    drive.
    feeling warm to
    the fingertips,
    down to my
    foot on the gas
    pedal,
    I entered the world
    once
    more,
    drove down the
    hill
    past the houses
    full and empty
    of
    people,
    I saw the mailman,
    honked,
    he waved
    back
    at me.

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    1. Dear Matthias, You are so welcome! I am so pleased that “An Ancient Dream” made it safe and sound – I wondered how long it would take to reach you. I am honored to have my art hung in such proximity to a Beat masterpiece! And I completely agree – the art we create and the community we forge here is real and supplants any of digital “surrealness” of the internet! Thank you for your friendship, support, and kindness! The last few lines of “Let It Enfold You” are inspiring – I have added it to the list of poems to illustrate. Your Friend, Marcy

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      4. @Marcy – if I got me counting right, the above poem has 308 lines…

        You may well call that “coming always straight to point” …

        He was “Born Into This”.

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    1. Hi Sophia! Thank you so much! It is my pleasure – I am looking forward to more of your stories. I am so glad that silencekilledthedinosaurs introduced us through her blog awards. I hope you are having a great start to 2016!

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      1. Me too!! So far 2016 hasn’t been too bad – I hope you have a wonderful year as well!! 😀

        I am also really glad silenceofthedinosaurs introduced us too! (She’s a great one!)

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    1. Thank you so much! I approach my art in the way I often approach my science – I pursue the experiment (medium) that I think will answer my question (illustration). And like in science, the answer is not always what I think it will be! 🙂
      I am a great admirer of the short story (I am currently reading the newly released anthology of short stories by Lucia Berlin – excellent!!) and crafting one is such a skill, so I am eager to read more about your process and your work!

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  13. Thank you for the visit. I really appreciate that! I’m a big fan of William Blake so naturally I’m drawn to anything with illustrations. And yours are quite remarkable. So I”m going to follow your blog so I won’t miss any of your work.

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    1. It was my pleasure! Thank you so much for the kind words – I’m glad to have you joining me for the journey here at IP! I am really enjoying reading your perspectives about New Orleans (I have visited there but once, but found the city quite a compelling place and hope to return one day) and your poetry. I look forward to more!

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  14. Hi Marcy,

    Thanks for stopping by our blog – and for the opportunity to see yours! I very much like your drawings and their pairing with poetry – inspirational!

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  15. Marcy thank you for following me, I hope you enjoy your visits. You have an incredible talent and a wonderful grasp of symbolism. I must look at more . . .

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    1. It is my pleasure. I am enjoying your posts – especially the “daily quips”! Thank you for stopping by IP – I wish you the same: I hope you enjoy your visit(s) here!

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  18. What an interesting and well written About page, Marcy! I agree that poetry (in my case prose/fiction) is far less lucrative than academic research, but so much more personallly rewarding. I hope your ‘poetic’ journey proves to be very successful. 🙂

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    1. Thank you, Millie! In some ways, poetry/prose/fiction is so much more tangible than research, where you come up empty-handed so often. If you have written something, you have a thing you can hold or look at. Like a rough sculpture, it may need some work, but it now exists – which is a long way of saying I agree with you! 😀

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  19. Thank you for visiting and liking a couple of my blogs/pages! I love your poetry and the kind of art you make. This is really inspiring – your embrace of science and art! I’m a kindred spirit and it’s taken me decades to embrace both sides of the same coin. I look forward to more of your blog.

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    1. It is my pleasure! Thank you so much for the kind words! I love the desert and missed it terribly when I was on the east coast – so I am so glad I stumbled across your blog. I have always had a secret dream to have a little eco-friendly house in the desert – perhaps one day. Three cheers for science and art together!

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  20. Pingback: RonovanWrites #Haiku #Poetry Challenge Review 62 | ronovanwrites

    1. It is my pleasure! Thank you for participating in the fundraiser – it is a worthy cause and I have enjoyed following and reading all of the poet’s posts about it. Thank you for visiting and following Illustrated Poetry!

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  24. What a beautiful about me poem… Interesting journey… thanks for the opportunity to linger here a while…
    Hope your evening is most beautiful…
    Michael

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    1. Hi Jeni,
      Pleasure to meet you as well! I am so glad that you found your way here – especially through such a great route as Geo’s blog! Same here, I am looking forward to your posts and seeing more of your art, poems, and photographs.

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  28. Hi Marcy,

    I noticed you have woven your way through my catalog, which is a sufficiently rare event so as to merit a flag or two by my pattern recognition system. Thank you… One question: will there be any poems on cataclysmic depolymerization on the horizon here?

    In Gratitude,
    Michael

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    1. Dear Michael,

      It’s my pleasure – I’ve been enjoying your poems! It often feels like archived posts disappear down a hole (at least they do on IP, so I try to revive a few from time to time), but I often find great posts in the “back issues” of blogs – and yours is no exception. Good stuff.

      Well – I did spend a lot of good years studying dynamic instability and cataclysmic depolymerization for my graduate work – you would think a poem on the topic would have germinated along the way! I didn’t have any plans, but your question has got me thinking…

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  33. I’d like to say I love your About me poem. You have a wonderful smile, love your hair too. I had my head shaved too back in 2013 ahaha. I felt naked nonetheless happy. Cheers! I’ll be back to read more.

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    1. Thank you so much! I hope you enjoy looking around Illustrated Poetry. I know what you mean – the first time I shaved my head, I spent several days absentmindedly trying to push a non-existent lock of hair behind my ear – I guess it was “phantom hair”!

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  34. Thanks for spending time on my blog. I like your idea about illustrating poems. I get a poem a day in my e-mail from poets.org. You can get it, too. Sometimes they come at just the right time. You might want to see some examples I’ve used. Your blogs makes me realize I should start a category for illustrated poems. I like what you did with the tree shape from your coffee! I’m following you now.
    http://skybluedaze.wordpress.com/2014/12/28/snow-fairies/
    http://skybluedaze.wordpress.com/2014/11/18/tree-house/

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    1. It is my pleasure – I look forward to reading more of your posts! Thank you for following Illustrated Poetry – I’m thrilled it has inspired you to do more illustrated poetry on your blog. I enjoyed the snow fairies illustration – the picture of the rose quartz in the snow is appropriately other-worldly. I will check out the poem-a-day email, thanks for sharing it!

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  36. Marcy I love your haircut! So thick and dorable. I have short hair, but it’s fine. I couldn’t pull off cutting it any shorter. I love short hair.

    Clever poet finding time to grace us with your beautiful words.

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    1. Thank you so much – thank you for the encouraging words!

      I’m right there with you: after I cut all my hair off and donated it about 10 years ago, I have never looked back and simply love short cuts.

      Thanks again!

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  39. Hello Marcy. Thanks for your recent visit and follow. I’m learning to appreciate poetry just as much as other written and visuals art forms so I figured I’d poke aroud here to look at your stuff.
    I like what i see – you too have a new follower 🙂

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    1. My pleasure! Thank you! I am so excited about pre-ordering a copy of Soundings and perusing all the gorgeous books from St. Brigid press. The book as art is very close to my heart. Thanks again.
      Cheers,
      Marcy

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. Thanks so very much, Marcy. Most kind of you. Your copy of “Soundings” will go out priority mail on Nov 10th. I printed 200 more pages today — we’re rollin’!
        Again, my thanks, and I look forward to reading/seeing more of your work as well. All best to you.

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  43. Hi Marcy – thanks for following my blog! I was exploring yours, and I like what you’re doing. I always say that I can’t draw or paint to save my life, so I try to paint with words. You’re doing what I would have loved to be able to do – write AND illustrate poetry.

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    1. Hi Shery, Thank you for checking out Illustrated Poetry! I appreciate it – I’ve had so much fun putting it together and pairing poems with art (which occasionally approximates what I see in my mind’s eye when I read poetry :-)), it’s wonderful to hear when others enjoy it too. I’m loving all the fantastic poetry on your site and I’m looking forward to new poems and posts.

      Cheers,
      Marcy

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      1. Hi Marcy – Wonderful that you’re having fun with this. Poetry does lend itself to so many types of collaborations: music, song, art, etc. I’m happy you’re enjoying my poems. Looking forward to visiting your blog and to visits from you!

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  44. You make a great work! Wonderful and very creative idea. You bring up lo life poems and beautiful lines that had sunk into oblivion! Thanks for sharing 🙂

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    1. Thank you so much! I’m pleased you are enjoying the art and poetry – I felt the same way about your blog – I thoroughly enjoyed your poetry, especially the visual poetry. I am linking to it in today’s blog post. Thanks again!
      Sincerely,
      Marcy

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  45. Hi, Marcy — I’m thrilled you chose to follow my “Randa Lane…” haiku blog! I hope you like it here and will comment freely on my writing. I have just joined your blog as well and already know I will be glad I did!

    Respect and Admiration,

    Ron

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    1. Thanks, Ron! I appreciate it. I’ve always enjoyed haikus but have a heightened appreciation for them since starting to make my way through the book Haiku in English: The first 100 years. I am happy to find such beautiful new ones on Randa Lane!
      Cheers,
      Marcy

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      1. Some women can make it work. 🙂 I actually wrote an article about short hair not long ago. A bit of humor but actually a lot of the way . . .well this man looks at it. 🙂
        Much Respect
        This Historian is Jealous of you in Boston
        Ronovan

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  48. Thanks for the kind comment on my site. But moreso, thanks for the interesting insight into E.E.Cummings (if that’s your picture, then it’s a great one) for the bird tattoos and for the excellent links also. The ‘cut up poems’ were brilliantly done. Glyn

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    1. Hi Glyn, My pleasure. Thank you for your kind words. The ink drawing with [-in Just] is by me, I’m so glad you liked it. I completely agree – the “cut-up poems” are fantastic and are by the very talented Mr. Steve Mitchell from his blog http://fisherlane.wordpress.com. Thanks again for stopping by – I hope you will be back.

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