Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

"Matin Pour Matta" by Charles Henri Ford is a dense, surrealistic poem dedicated to the Chilean surrealist painter Roberto Matta, whose work often blended the abstract and the psychological. Ford’s poem, in homage to Matta, channels a similarly intricate layering of imagery and association. This piece exemplifies the surrealist tradition of juxtaposing disparate elements to evoke the complexity of the unconscious mind.

The opening line, "When the foot opens like a cup / miles and miles go in a gulp," sets the stage for a sequence of paradoxes and transformations. The human foot, usually a mundane part of the body associated with movement, becomes a vessel capable of consuming vast distances in a single, impossible action. This surreal twist immediately invites the reader into a realm where normal boundaries and physical laws are upended, reflecting Matta's own artistic exploration of space and existential themes.

Ford continues with "When the hand’s teeth drop out, / what no hand can chew begins to sprout." The image of a hand equipped with teeth evokes a bizarre, almost monstrous hybrid. The falling teeth could symbolize the loss of traditional means of grasping or understanding reality, while the subsequent sprouting suggests the birth of something new and unexpected. This line embodies a core surrealist belief: that destruction or the dismantling of the familiar leads to the creation of new, often incomprehensible forms. The idea aligns with Matta’s works, which often depicted chaotic, organic structures in states of flux.

The stanza "But no optical rake or hoe / prepares the ground for what you do not know" suggests that no tool or instrument of perception can ready one for the unknown. The “optical rake or hoe” metaphorically stands for human attempts to cultivate understanding through logic or sight. Ford’s assertion that these tools are inadequate emphasizes the inevitability of facing the unseen and unknowable—a concept Matta often mirrored through the distortion of landscapes and figures in his paintings.

Ford’s depiction of “The breathless rock that swims / eludes all synonyms” underscores the elusiveness of meaning. A rock, a typically solid and grounded object, rendered "breathless" and swimming, speaks to the surrealist aim of defamiliarizing the commonplace. By stating it "eludes all synonyms," Ford highlights the ineffability of the surreal experience—it resists being pinned down by language or traditional description.

"If the lips of the chest move with milk / cats from other countries learn to talk" introduces a further cascade of surreal images. The chest, a repository of breath and speech, imbued with nurturing milk, suggests a nurturing voice or sustenance that transcends boundaries. Cats, symbols of independence and mystery, learning to speak hints at a world where language, typically a human faculty, extends beyond expected norms. This line can be seen as an exploration of communication across barriers, an idea Matta expressed through the cross-cultural, almost universal language of abstract art.

Ford’s line “When knives are exhaled like words, / wounds flow with thoughts of birds” uses powerful imagery to conflate violence and speech. Words, depicted as knives, suggest that language has a cutting, potentially harmful power, while the subsequent image of wounds producing bird-like thoughts evokes a duality: from harm comes beauty or flight. The birds, often symbols of freedom or transcendence, imply that even pain can give rise to elevation or escape. This encapsulates the surrealist idea that pain and transformation are interconnected.

The stanza "And the breath you failed to catch / will hide in your hair like a bat" weaves the ephemeral nature of existence with a hidden, nocturnal symbol. Breath, representative of life and spirit, becoming elusive and then residing in the hair as a bat suggests that what is missed or overlooked may still linger, out of sight but close. Bats, creatures associated with darkness and intuition, echo the subconscious themes prevalent in both Ford’s and Matta’s work.

Ford’s reflective turn, “This is what I write / on a page torn from the scalp of night,” underscores the act of creation as something both violent and born from darkness or the unknown. The “scalp of night” suggests that the poem is extracted from the realm of dreams or the subconscious, reinforcing the surrealist conviction that art should emerge from the deepest, least understood parts of the psyche.

The closing couplet, “When you split the world in two, / one half lives, the other dies for you,” presents a stark dichotomy, embodying the cost of perception and division. This line could reflect the consequences of probing into the unknown or making choices that divide understanding into clear but opposing realities. In Matta’s visual works, this tension between life and death, creation and destruction, is often evident, as forms morph and bleed into one another, symbolizing an interconnected fate.

"Matin Pour Matta" by Charles Henri Ford is a masterful example of surrealist poetry that invites the reader into a realm where the physical and metaphysical blend. The poem’s strange and rich imagery mirrors Matta’s paintings that challenge and distort perceptions of reality. Through the use of non-linear logic and symbolic complexity, Ford captures the spirit of Matta’s exploration of subconscious landscapes, offering an experience that is both perplexing and profoundly resonant.

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