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Film, as far as I'm concerned, is my area of artistic endeavor, so I never think of a movie that gets released as being all done-it's just when they took it away from you.

quote by John Dykstra
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Allegany Camp

amazing grace circus camp
amazing grace day camp
amazing grace hallelujah jeremy camp
amazing grace jeremy camp
amazing love jeremy camp
amazing place chalet pigeon forge
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amazing race games for camps
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amazon camp dutch lodge oven
amazon camp in sweetwater missouri
amazon cast iron dutch lodge camp
amazon dutch oven camp
amazon lodge dutch oven camp
ambassador camp at lake waccamaw nc
ambassador camp inc
ambassador chalet
ambassador chalet at doral
ambassador chalet wgc
amber bowers
amber camp lazlo
amber pow camp
amberg germany dp camp
ambition camp hockey pro
ambler baseball camp
ambleside scotland school camp
ambon pow camp
ambor island pow camp
ambor pow camp
ambulance bower
amc camp dodge
amc camp movie summer
amc camp summer theater
amc little lyford camps
amc movie camp
amc movie camps
amc north west camp bear mountain
amc pinkham notch camp
amc summer camp for s
amc summer camp for s 2007
amc summer camp movies
amc summer movie camp
amc summer movie camp 2007
amc summer movie camp 2008
amc summer movie camp arlington
amc summer movie camp ontario california
amc theater camp hill
amc theatres summer camp
amcmovie camps
amelia earhart in japanese war camp

[...] Read more

poem by Rwetewrt Erwtwer
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Washed Away Under Work Loads

artists feel frustrated
when achieving not
when producing art not
not realizing images
in shifting vision mind

artists should
be producing art
no time for cooking
no time for cleaning
no time for hair cut

artists should not
not be able to keep up
with fermenting ideas
rain weather changes
haunting wake up calls

not creating art
is wasting artistic souls
is wasting artistic lives
in dry season droughts
withering artistic minds

work income human activities
life necessity farming for wages
dependent on salary climates
fifty sixty wage slave hours
is change devastating for artists

this drought no time for artistic activities
is crop failure starvation of artistic minds
leading to artistic suffering on massive scales
droughts are caused by lack of fertility rains
extended over long periods of wage slave times

slight brief rains slight artistic showers
is normality artistic not enough spring rains
to ground absorb artistic evaporated minds
artist is dehydrated lacking soul rejuvenations
plants animals need sustaining life waters

artists need self generated creativity waters
least art dies death of artistic dehydrations
art is main ingredient in artistic food chains
plants die from lack of water therefore animals
eating these plants will also die in drought cycles

artists true artists deprived of art wither drought dies
in mind soul lacking artistic flowering rejuvenations

[...] Read more

poem by Terence George Craddock
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Artistic

Artistic
It's artistic
Grace in your movement
Is artistic.

Artistic
It's artistic
Sweetness in your voice
Is artistic.

Artistic
It's artistic
Gleam in your eye
Is artistic.

I'm filled with inspiration
In my dormant artistic pursuit...

With brush in hand
I'll paint your every move

With hidden treasure of words
I'll weave poems of what you say

And I'll move as you command
By the gleam of your eye.

poem by Tirupathi Chandrupatla
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Girls On Film (Night Version)

See them walking hand in hand
Across the bridge at midnight
Heads turning as the lights flashing out
Are so bright
And walk right out to the four line track
There's a camera rolling on her back
On her back
And I sense a rhythm humming in a frenzy
All the way down her spine
Girls on Film
Girls on Film
Girls on Film
Girls on Film
Lipstick cherry all over the lens as she's falling
And miles of sharp blue water coming in
Where she lies
The diving man's coming up for air
'Cause the crowd all love pulling Dolly by the hair
By the hair
And she wonders how she ever got here
As she goes under again
Girls on Film (Two minutes later)
Girls on Film
Girls on Film (Got your picture)
Girls on Film
Wider, baby, smile and you've just made a million
Fuses pumping live heat twisting out on a wire
Take one last glimpse into the night
I'm touching close
I'm holding bright, holding tight
Give me shudders in a whisper,
Take me up til I'm shooting a star
Girls on Film (she's more than a lady)
Girls on Film
Girls on Film (Two minutes later)
Girls on Film
Girls on Film (see you together)
Girls on Film
Girls on Film (see you later)
Girls on Film

song performed by Duran Duran
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Girls On Film

See them walking hand in hand across the bridge at midnight
Heads turning as the lights flashing out are so bright
Then walk right out to the fourline track
Theres a camera rolling on her back on her back
And I sense the rhythms humming in a frenzy
All the way down her spine
Girls on film
Girls on film
Girls on film
Girls on film
Lipstick cherry all over the lens as shes falling
In miles of sharp blue water coming in where she lies
The diving mans coming up for air
Cause the crowd all love pulling dolly by the hair, by the hair
And she wonders how she ever got here
As she goes under again
Girls on film (two minutes later)
Girls on film
Girls on film (got your picture)
Girls on film
Wider baby smiling youve just made a million
Fuses pumping live heat twisting out on a wire
Take one last glimpse into the night
Im touching close Im holding bright, holding tight
Give me shudders with a whisper take me high
Till I Im shooting a star
Girls on film (shes more than a lady)
Girls on film
Girls on film (see you together)
Girls on film
Girls on film (see you later)
Girls on film
Girls on film (two minutes later)

song performed by Duran Duran
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Silent Movie

(corky laing/ian hunter)
Well the school bell rings
I carried your things
Getting on the yellow bus
With the whole world watching us
And our love was like a silent movie
Aint got nothing to say
Our love was like a silent movie
I wish we could have kept it that way
Now the door bell rings
Im gonna get my things
Take another bright (? )
At the lions side
Cause our love was like a silent movie
Aint got nothing to say
Our love was like a silent movie
Thats the all-american way
Silent movie
And our love was like a silent movie
Theres nothing to say
Our love was like a silent movie
And thats the all-american way
And our love was like a silent movie
Theres nothing to say
Our love was like a silent movie
I wish we could have kept it that way
Our love was like a silent movie
Silent movie
Our love was like a silent movie
I wish we could have kept it that way

song performed by Ian Hunter
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Restricted Area

High voltage in the air
No way to know its good or bad
Dont try to trick it down
Otherwise you could be dead
So just look out
It may be mean
Just cant be too afraid of this machine
A hole in the middle of the night
In the middle of the night
Restricted area
A hole in the middle of the night
Restricted area
Your brains been mesmerized
And in your mind this place is full of steel,
So full of steel
So shift to overdrive
Crash away the gang with the men from another space
So be aware
Just leave the scene
The worlds been metallized by this machine
A hole in the middle of the night
In the middle of the night
Restricted area
A hole in the middle of the night
Restricted area
A hole in the middle of the night
In the middle of the night
Restricted area
A hole in the middle of the night
In the middle of the night
Restricted area
A hole in the middle of the night
In the middle of the night
The worlds been metallized
A hole in the middle of the night
Restricted area
A hole in the middle of the night
In the middle of the night
Its a restricted area
Hold on - hold on - hold on
Your brains been mesmerized
A hole in the middle of the night
In the middle of the night
Youre heavy metallized
A hole in the middle of the night

song performed by U. D. O.
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Experimental Film

The color of infinity
Inside an empty glass
I'm squinting my eye
And turning off and on and on
and off the light
It's for this experimental film
Which nobody knows about and which
I'm still figuring out what's going to go
In my experimental film
Yeah, you're all gonna be in this experimental film
And even though I can't explain it
I already know how great it's
I already know the ending
It's the part that makes your face implode
I don't know what makes your face implode
But that's the way the movie ends
And in my experimental film
Which nobody knows about but which
I'm still figuring out your face implodes
At my experimental film
Yeah, you're all gonna be in this experimental film
And even though I can't explain it
I already know how great it--
Even though I can't explain it
I already know how great it's
The color of infinity
Inside an empty glass
It's for this experimental film
Which nobody knows about and which
I'm still figuring out what's going to go
In my experimental film
Yeah, you're all gonna be in this experimental film
And even though I can't explain it
I already know how great it's gonna--
Yeah, you're gonna be in this experimental film
And even though I can't explain it
I already know how great it--
Even though I can't explain it
I already know how great it's

song performed by They Might Be Giants
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Tentative Decisions

Now that I can
Release my tensions
Let me make clear
My best intentions
Girls ask and i
Define decision
Boys ask and i
Describe their function
Oh the boys
Want to talk
Like to to talk about those problems
And the girls
Say theyre concerned
And they are
Concerned with these decisions
And its all
Hard logic
To follow and the
Girls get lost
And the boys
Say theyre concerned
But they are
Concerned with these decisions
I wanna talk
I wanna talk as much as I want
Im gonna give
Im gonna give the problem to you
I wanna talk
I wanna talk as much as I want
Im gonna give
Im gonna give the problem to you
Decide, decide
Make up your mind
Decide, decide
I told you what to say
Confuse, confuse
Describe what I found
Confuse, confuse
I told you what to say
Oh the girls
Still want to talk
Want to talk about those problems
And the boys
Say theyre concerned
But they are concerned with these decisions
And its all
Hard logic
I know
And the girls get lost
And the boys

[...] Read more

song performed by Talking Heads
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Sentimental Movie

You better change your attitude
Cause you know you want it to
You bring me all your pride
But I know you hold it too
I can feed your bounty, yeah
If you feed my head as well
And I wont give you empty promises, yeah
When the quarters in the wishing well
But this ain't no sentimental movie
Where dreams collect like dust
You talk to me with innocence in your eyes
So now, who can you trust?
You think you look so cool
Yes you do
You take me for your fool, yeah
Itching' for your... of the hug
Baby I want a new start, but dont you be true, yeah
I can see through your door
You put my head into these walls
You take my heart to the dockside, yeah
You put me in the car
And take me for another ride
But this ain't no sentimental movie
Where dreams collect like dust
You talk to me with innocence in your eyes
So now, who can you trust?
Trust
Trust
Put a path on to your veins
And antique and old whore's our new pain, yeah
The tears you cried
All the tears you cried tonight
Yeah
You put me down
But you can't get out of sight
And this aint no sentimental movie
You push it on
You grab it on
But I dont see the TV?
This ain't no sentimental movie
Yeah, see the screen
Youre startin to scream
Abusin confusin
Your programs over?
This aint no sentimental movie
Yeah, you look so cool
Dont take me for another one of your scenes?
This aint no sentimental movie
This aint no sentimental movie
The tears you cried

[...] Read more

song performed by Guns N' Roses
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The Film Of My Love

Co-starring you
And co-starring me
Starring us both together
The film of my love
Will travel the world
Forever and ever and ever
A back lot romance
A scripted affair
The screenplay a blessing from heaven
Were gone with the wind
On the orient express
To join the magnificent seven
The film of my love
Will travel the world
And travel the whole world over
The film of my love
Will travel the world
Over and over and over
The film of my love
Will travel the world
Over and over and over
Over and over and over again
Over and over and over
A close-up of yours
A long shot of mine
Superimposed together
Ill zoom in on you
With a love that is true
In cinemascope forever
A clapper board kiss
Theres an oscar in this
A hit or a miss whatever
A box office wedding
A premier for two
Well be on location forever
When pathe recall
The thrill of it all
Theyll edit us both together
A legend a classic
An epic of love
Captured on film forever
A lasting embrace
That time cant erase
Let them censor the wind
Or the weather
The film of my love
Will conquer the world
Forever and ever and ever
The film of my love
Will travel the world

[...] Read more

song performed by 10 Cc
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Inside My Head

This song will discuss four main parts of the brain, the cerebrum, the
cerebellum, the limbic system and the brain stem and one individual's use or
misuse of these parts.
Verse 1:
Inside my head, or inside my brain,
is that part of me which keeps me sane,
which helps me discern between right and wrong,
and other things I'm gonna talk about in this song,
It's time for the people to know, so now I tell 'em,
what goes in my cerebrum and my cerebellum,
the though process that helps me get dressed,
get up and go to school, sit down and take a test,
it helps me determine if a girl is fine,
and the steps necessary to make her mine,
it tells me if something is cold or hot,
and I don't mess it up with crack, coke, or pot,
it helps my hearing, taste, touch and sight,
and smell so that I can tell that everything's alright,
it tells me when to get up and when to go to bed,
this is some of what goes on inside my head,
inside my head, I wonder what might happen,
if the day came and I stopped rappin',
would I still have friends or be all alone,
do they like me for me or for the microphone,
and also, when I go on a date,
to a fancy resteraunt, a hundred dollars a plate,
and people stare, is it because they recognize me,
or are they knee-jerk reacting to what they see,
I'm sorry, let me make it somewhat clear,
do they look with joy or do they look with fear,
do they think 'oh wow, Young MC is near',
or do they think, 'yo, get that nigga out of here',
I don't know, it's an unfortuante case,
that I can't read your mind when I see your face,
but on the other hand, you can't read mine,
so I guess that the status quo's just fine,
for instance, say I'm in a tall building,
looking out the window, what if I illed and,
jumped out, would it really matter to some,
and if they had my funeral, just who would come,
would they cry for me after I was gone,
well don't worry, that's not how I'm gonna move on,
cause I wanna go to heaven after I am dead,
but this is what I goes on inside my head
Chours 2: (spoken)
the cerebrum is the part of the brain which is responsible for thinking,
reasoning, problem solving, and initiating resposes to external stimuli. It
is comprised of four lobes: the frontal, which is concerned with speach and
voluntary muscle activity, the partietal, which is concerned with the
interpetation of sensory stimuli, the temporal, which is concerned with

[...] Read more

song performed by Young MC
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You're A Movie

I fearlessly walk into battle
With a shine on my boots and my teeth
Never flinch, never blink, never rattle
My blood is like ice underneath
Oh, I'm the reincarnation of Patton
And I've got Hannibal's heart in my chest
God told me I would have rivalled
Alexander the Great at his best
(You're a movie)
Quite
(You're a movie)
Yes
(The exception)
That's right
(You're the final kind)
(You're a movie)
More of an epic
(Please include me, send us to the line)
Mm, that's right
Very good
Bullets repel off my medals
And my men are in awe when I speak
All chaos my strategy settles
My mere presence gives strength to the weak
For me it seems really alarming
I'm really just only a man
With five million sheep in this army
I seem to be the only one fit to command
(You're a movie)
I'm quite aware
(You're a movie)
Yeah
(The exception)
Oh, you've noticed
(You're the final kind)
(You're a movie)
Hey, very true
(Please include me, send us to the line)
Mm, if you're lucky
I must go now and save the world
Move aside mere drop of water, let the ocean pass
(You're a movie)
Quite right
(You're a movie)
(The exception)
(You're the final kind)
(You're a movie)
(Please include me)
Mm hmm
(Please include me)

[...] Read more

song performed by Alice Cooper
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Notes On An Unadorned Night

after Rene Char

Let's agree that the night is a blank canvas, a station
break, a bridge of a song.

Let's agree further that activities at night—movies,
campfires, reading by a lamp—are all
basically an homage to the day.

I have come to regard these two statements as
contradictory. Let me explain.

First, set aside that one could see a movie, torch a fire,
and read with the sun blazing over us.

The in-between aspect of night need not spark a flurry of
activity, is all I'm saying.

You could do nothing at night! Just lay and sleep!

A Cézanne sketch I looked at last night bears
mentioning.

A big Gallic face, reclining upwards, looks up at three
boxcars on train tracks.

The man's eyes are wide open and unfulfilled.

The two disemboweled deer I saw the night before also
bear mentioning.

The torsos of both deer were connected to faces, both
looking up.

I assumed they were struck by trains near the house
where I was sleeping.

Anyway, it occurred to me that as I looked into these
two dead deer's eyes that so much has fallen at
me, rather than simply by me.

I want to be among people. I do.

But I just want the easy parts skipped, for bodies to rub
up against each other, to always feel as new flesh
touches new flesh.

Those deer weren't an emblem of anything. I'm not like that.

I don't need dead animals to mirror my own interior world.

[...] Read more

poem by Daniel Nester
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A Wonderful Beetle——Shi Xiaoqun

Beetles, beetles beautiful movie star,
Shi Xiaoqun is the emperor's lover of Ir star,
Beetles, beetles beautiful movie star,
How I wonder who you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like an empress in the star,
Beetles, beetles beautiful movie star,
How I wonder who you are.

Beetles, beetles beautiful movie star,
Shi Xiaoqun is the emperor's lover of Ir star,
Beetles, beetles beautiful movie star,
How I wonder who you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like an empress in the star,
Beetles, beetles beautiful movie star,
How I wonder who you are.

When the world loses love and tolerance,
When I no more love you,
When you no more love me,

Then you know what will happen!

Beetles, beetles beautiful movie star,
How I wonder who you are.
Beetles, beetles beautiful movie star,
Shi Xiaoqun is the emperor's lover of Ir star,
Beetles, beetles beautiful movie star,
How I wonder who you are.

poem by Zhijian Jiang
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This be the last time we use the phrase 'Slumdog

We, as Indians, have reasons
To be proud of having
Created history by the film
“Slumdog Millionaire”
At the same time, we, as human beings,
Have to have hung our heads for
Having created slums

Slum, as it means
An overcrowded area of a city,
Where the housing is in a very bad condition
And people live in unhygienic conditions
With no basic facilities

And who created slums,
Not the people residing there
But those whose greed has brought
These slum dwellers into these
Unfit-for-living conditions

The technicalities employed in
Filming this movie deserve all praise
While the different ways of living
Of the slum dwellers equally deserve attention
Of the entire human race
For correction and improvement

The film was declared to be
The best-directed
While the slum tribes have no directions
And they have no one to direct

The film was declared to be
The best film
While the slum where the film was shot
Is the worst place
For any human being

Let the recognition of the film
Bring to light the plight of slumdogs
To the fore
And let the human race do everything
Possible to move these people
Out of the slums, wherever they are,
And to help them live a decent, if not better, living

We shall be doing a great service
If this becomes the last ever time
We use this phrase “Slumdog”

poem by Bashyam Narayanan
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Hollywood Movie Girls

(g. heideman)
Today I went out on a movie call
I saw a million nervous faces
I knew them all
Hollywood movie girls
Were all wearing our one good interview dress
The one showin our legs
Aah, were lookin our best
Now, who will be chosen for the screen test?
Its your guess
Hollywood movie girls
And each and every potential star
Drives home in the night in her economy car
Whoever thought home would be a one-room flat?
Well, as simple as that
Hollywood movie girls
Each morning up early to call on the phone
Agents, producers, oh, theyre never at home
Like door-to-door salesmen, we are selling ourselves
Ooh, nothing else
Hollywood movie girls
And each and every potential star
Drives home in the night in her economy car
Whoever thought home would be a one-room flat?
Well, as simple as that
Hollywood movie girls
And just about bedtime each one of us asks
Tell me, when will I make it to the big-time at last?
Oh, small parts youre offered
Aah, but those too shall pass
Nothing lasts
Hollywood movie girls
Yeah, and each and every potential star
Drives home in the night in her economy car
Whoever thought home would be a one-room flat?
Well, as simple as that
Hollywood movie girls
Oh, star light, star bright, wont you wish on me tonight?
Wish I may, wish I might
Shine your light for me

song performed by Dusty Springfield
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The Reoccuring Dream

Words and music by joni mitchell
This is the reoccurring dream
Born in the dreary gap between
What we have now
And what we wish we could have
More fulfilling--and less frustrating!
Out of the envy in our eyes
Look!
Glamorous picture people rise
Radiant!
Gleaming down from screens and pages
Ooh--glamour--before your very eyes!
Isnt it true--isnt it true?
Good question--i know--who cares
Look here they tell you
If you had this
If you had that
Latest styles and colors
If we had that for us mmmmm
Wouldnt it be fabulous
If you had that house, car, bottle, jar
Your lovers would look like movie stars
Movie stars, movie stars, movie stars
Order your youth secrets of the stars
Call now--just $9.99
Our discontent is their delight
They offer relief for the purchase price
Love in a bottle
Love on four wheels
Is that our new car charles?
Isnt it true--isnt it true?
We guarantee it--pick up your phone and dial
See here they sell you
If you had this
If you had that
I want a new truck!--more power!
If you use this shampoo
True love will come to you
If you had that house, car, bottle, jar
Your lovers would look like movie stars
Movie stars, movie stars, movie stars
Hollywoods greatest legends
Recognize this?
Dreamer
Soft sexy hair
Dream on
Hes going to love me in this ruby, ruby lipstick
Others will notice!--sexy!--who cares!
Recognize this?
Dreamer

[...] Read more

song performed by Joni Mitchell
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Joseph's Gloss On God

When Joseph tells his brothers: “I
am not God, ” he perhaps implies
that unlike God he sometimes lies,
and unlike Him, is doomed to die.

The words that Joseph never said
are wrong, as we find out when burned;
God often lies, a lesson learned
from history, and God is dead.

Inspired by a review by Paul Buhle of R. Crumb’s The Whole Book of Genesis, in Forward, October 10,2009 (“In the Image of God: The Ambition of R. Crumb’s Graphic Genesis”:

To say this book is a remarkable volume or even a landmark volume in comic art is somewhat of an understatement. It doesn’t hurt that excerpts of the book appeared during the summer in the New Yorker and that the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles is opening an exhibit of the original drawings from which the book’s contents were adapted. “The Book of Genesis, ” Robert Crumb’s version, nevertheless stands on its own as one of this century’s most ambitious artistic adaptations of the West’s oldest continuously told story.
No comic artist has been more influential than Crumb. In terms of sales, his work is dwarfed by the superheroes and, in comic art prestige. Art Spiegelman, and a short list of others including Alison Bechdel and Marjane Sartrapi may have displaced Crumb. But Crumb’s influence abides and endures in his occasional LP/CD covers, in his volumes of collected work (16 volumes so far and counting) , his artistic prizes and a generation of artists who have incorporated his particular view of humanity.
Surprisingly, his best work in 20 years has actually been in the genre of adaptation, specifically an adaptation of Franz Kafka, dating to the mid 1990s. On that highly curious point, any consideration of this “Genesis, ” as a highly personal comic art, properly begins. Notoriously, Crumb is a gentile who fled from his deeply dysfunctional Delaware family to the Cleveland neighborhood of Harvey Pekar and the arms of the first of two Jewish wives. “Crumb, ” the 1994 film documentary, was in many ways about emotional pain (including a brother doomed to suicide) and his craving for a certain kind of woman, who, although possibly any female with a bemuscled backside, was in fact most likely to be Jewish. She, reality and image, was his consolation. The strips that he drew of Jewish-American life, nevertheless, reworked stereotypes, some funny (he visits Florida with his second wife, and holds a tiny grandfather on his knee) , and some, doubtless, insulting to many readers.
In the pages of “Introducing Kafka, ” Crumb became his fictional protagonist with such depth of insight into the logic of the doomed writer, as well as of Kafka’s famed works, that many readers were simply astonished, this reviewer among them. Kafka is the exemplar par excellence of a type of ambiguous, tortured mittel European Jewish personality as it hovered between faith and uncertainty, shortly before the Holocaust. Not Spiegelman, not Ben Katchor, nor Sharon Rudahl, nor others who drew historical or quasi-historical strips about Jewish history, had taken the characterization as far as Crumb. An earlier escape from Middle American culture had propelled Crumb toward his satirical protagonist Mister Natural, a Zen-like, robed quasi-prophet of the 1970s-80s. Three decades later, Crumb’s robed prophets are far from Zen.
Crumb’s “Genesis” is then perfectly serious and the author wants us to know it. As he says on the cover, “Nothing Left Out! ” Every “beget” from the King James Bible can be found here, along with plenty of scenes censored from previous graphic adaptations. And more prose, in the final “Commentary” segment of the book, than non-writer Crumb may have put on the page anywhere, aside from his published letters. More striking for anyone but the seasoned Crumb fan: unlike previous Biblical comic adaptations, including some published and drawn by Jews, Crumb’s characters actually look Jewish, the women even more than the men. The contrast to the classic work, EC Comics’ “Picture Stories from the Bible” (1945) in that respect is most illuminating. But more recent works like the best-selling “Manga Bible” (2000) are not much different (nor was the “The Wolverton Bible” by one of the strangest of comic artists Basil Wolverton) . Close readers will see Crumb’s wife Aline Kominsky, to whom the book is dedicated, again and again, in various guises; perhaps only Chagall drew his beloved wife so often and with such varied imagination.
Not only are the characters Jewish here, they are all ages and sizes. If, for instance, there are more drawings of Jewish elders in any single volume of comic art anywhere, I have never seen them. The women here are beautiful when young, heavily busted with large, muscular thighs. The men are strong, their beards full and noble. The deity has a really big beard and retains his notoriously bad temper, as well as his commanding presence, and absolute demand for loyalty. The animals of Genesis (in Noah’s ark and elsewhere) may be where Crumb is most similar to earlier comic art adaptations of Biblical texts, but they are drawn, like everything else, with such loving care that they are special and demand repeated viewing.
In those extensive notes at the end, Crumb comes as close as he is ever likely to revealing the sources and depth of his commitment to the text. He had been puzzling, no doubt under a wave of feminist criticism, about the gender struggle, until Torah scholar Savina Teubel’s “Sarah the Priestess” (1984) gave him new insight: a matriarchal background, female deities and actual female power, in a society turning toward patriarchy but retaining some elements of women’s prehistorical strength and centrality to the direction of early civilization. If anything is reinterpreted purposefully in “Genesis, ” it is in gender, and Crumb does so not by scoring points but by rearranging the visual subtext. Gender issues also help him reframe somewhat the class dimension of tribal society, which endures not through brute force but because of the strength of its women.
The commentary on his visual choices and his broader interpretations explores and explains his few intentional deviations, not only in the name of narrative clarity but artistic intent. Mainly, his notes drive home how he struggled to interpret the text in suitable graphic form, chapter by chapter, sometimes even character by character. There is no doubting the artist’s integrity or hard work, in no small part because he redrew again and again, trying to find historically accurate clothing and scenery. The Old Testament of cinematic Charlton Heston, so to speak, became the Genesis of lived and perceived experience, socially real and super-real. Clues are provided with translations of specific Hebrew names within the visual text, essentially metaphorical in meaning. These clues may be the closest to footnotes that Crumb has ever provided.
Comics scholar Jeet Heer, has noted in “Bookforum” that Crumb’s biblical characters, with the exception of the deity, have no internal lives: only the deity has depth and personality. As with the original text, much more is implied in Crumb’s visual text than can be stated, because scenes rush by so fast and because the artist forever works out, pen or brush in hand, a unique meaning that escapes easy interpretation. Even closer to the mark, Heer argues that above all, this is a book about bodies, the natural expression of an artist whose work has, possibly more than any other master of comic art, been concerned with body structure and expression.
And offending the deity? Crumb treads with a caution all the more remarkable for an artist, who, short decades ago, allowed himself the full run of his imagination, heedless of the consequences. Crumb’s innovation might be summed up in his characterization of Joseph, brilliant in subjugating Egypt but weary of his own powers. In the final phrases of the book, the artist suggests a radical view several thousand years previous to Jewish Karl Marx. “In the very last chapter, when his obstreperous brothers fling themselves at this feet and proclaim, ‘Here we are, your slaves, ’ he says to them, “I am not God, am I’ Joseph has learned a much finer humility than the fear-driven kind shown by his barbaric brothers.” So says a humble Crumb.

10/22/09

poem by Gershon Hepner
Added by Poetry Lover
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Water's Edge

I went to the water's edge, forgot I couldn't swim
I went to the water's edge, all ready to jump in
I saw the water shimmer
I heard the wind howl
I saw my own reflection
I just can't see it now
You say it's the way of the world
To somehow co-exists
That eventually life unfurls
A path to happiness
So I whisper your little secret
And repeat it under my breath
I'll save it for you in my heart
In case we both forget
Oh, I wish you could wrap yourself around me
I am gripped by a loneliness
Oh, I wish you could wrap yourself around me
I'd be released in your tenderness
I'd be released in your tenderness
I went to the water's edge and saw my life eclipse
I went to the water's edge and then felt myself slip
I dreamed that I was floating, just coast until I grew fins
I want to catch this tide back home and feel you again
Oh, I wish you could wrap yourself around me
I am gripped by a loneliness
Oh, I wish you could wrap yourself around me
I'd be released in your tenderness
Oh, I wish you could wrap yourself around me
I am gripped by a loneliness
Oh, I wish you could wrap yourself around me
I'd be released in your tenderness
I'd be released in your tenderness
I'd be released in your tenderness

song performed by Cyndi Lauper
Added by Lucian Velea
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