The Art of Interpretation: Poetry by Doug Tanoury

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The Art of Interpretation: Poetry by Doug Tanoury

By Scene 360

Published on March 14, 2011

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Introduction

Poet Doug Tanoury

Doug Tanoury began writing poetry in elementary school and continued writing poetry all of his adult life. He attended Wayne State University, University of Detroit and Cleary University.

Tanoury began writing and publishing poetry on the Internet in 1996. He founded Athens Avenue, an international group of Internet poets that wrote together and supported each other in writer’s colony fashion. Tanoury’s poetry has been featured in the New York Times, The Detroit News, The Denver Quarterly, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Writer’s Digest, Yahoo Internet Life, as well as many others. He has read his poetry in venues in Los Angeles, CA, Greenwich Village, NYC, London, UK and numerous locations around Detroit, including universities, television and radio readings.

Scene 360 invites Doug Tanoury to interpret four paintings of renown artists: Kent Williams, Antony Micallef, Kristine Moran, and James Jean. The poet is only shown the artwork and original titles, no other hints are given about subject matter. The end result is a special literary feature that shows Tanoury’s vivid imagination and talent for storytelling.

Year of the Steel Widgets

Poetry by Doug Tanoury. Artwork by Kent Williams.

Kent WIlliams, 1962, 2010, 62 x 56 in., 157 x 142 cm.

"1962," 2010, oil on linen, 62 x 56", © Kent Williams.

Western and Chinese zodiacs converged,
When I met her sitting at the bar.
It was there that I watched for the first time
A flight of ideas,
Feathered things
Twisted and intertwined—
Verbs embraced adverbs,
Adjectives put arms around nouns,
And pronouns touch
The bare shoulders of prepositions
In that moment of conjunctions
When stars aligned.

I sat on a barstool
Next to her,
Our faces bathed
In the shimmer
Of bar room light,
As I watched a story unravel.
Her mouth forming words
Like a metal press stamping out parts,
The staccato of syllables
Falling from her mouth
In rapid succession
As a punch pounds out steel widgets.

Full of restraint and reserve,
I listened. I remember
The arcane alchemy of the moment
When my yang addressed her yin;
As I spoke, slow and simple,
Understated and without devices,
It was with a hint of sadness,
That at the time I did not understand,
But only now fully comprehend.
It was the melancholy mood
Created in classic Chinese verse
When poets speak of distant love,
Far away, over tall green mountains.

Angel of Death

Poetry by Doug Tanoury. Artwork by Antony Micallef.

"Beautiful Bomber" © Antony Micallef. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2010.

In a dim background
Of a weak December sunrise,
Passing tail pipes smoke,
Bellow exhaust, and leave behind
Grime and soot smeared across
A new morning snow,

And it is on these colorless days
When the light is grainy and fuzzy
Like old black and white photos
From my childhood
That frame an atmosphere
Of frozen air that cannot be breathed,

That I realize most fully
That there is an angel of death stalking me
Quietly,
Wearing new sneakers
With soles that leave a deep waffle print
Stamped upon the snow-covered walk,

As it stands at my front door,
Ringing the bell that interrupts everything,
Holding twin shell-casing martini shakers;
Its head encircled by a nimbus of doom
Marked with skulls, mushroom clouds and hearts.
It coyly waits what seems like forever,

And when I open the door, full black wings
Engulf and wrap me tightly like a shroud,
Folding me in the tight dark embrace
Of sudden annihilation
And oblivion that confers
The richness of full exoneration.

The Hidden Carousel

Poetry by Doug Tanoury. Artwork by Kristine Moran.

Like a figure in a Dali print,
My body opens like a bureau.
From the most critical places
Of my anatomy: forehead,
Chest, abdomen and groin,
I open to expose the underwear
Of my most inner soul,
And the thought of a carousel
On a summer day
That sits mostly forgotten
In some seldom used drawer
Left slightly ajar,
With old arcade tokens,
Pens that no longer write,
Pocket knives grown dull
Alongside lone cuff links
That have lost their mate
And a pale blue rabbit’s foot.
Amid this jumble of unused junk
There is a centrifugal force that
Pulls me this way and
Pushes me that,
As a calliope plays a merry tune
In endless repetition
As time turns back
Upon itself –
The July sky above the trees
Has painted white clouds
On a rabbit foot blue afternoon,
As brightly colored horses gallop
Toward the black and white August
Of long ago,
Supported by clunking worn machinery
That spins merrily on forever
Toward failure.

Disambiguation (A Fairy Tale Kiss)

Poetry by Doug Tanoury. Artwork by James Jean.

Ballad. Acrylic & Oil on Paper, 41 x 60", 2008.

It was a time of childhood innocence
When things were still simple.
It was when we loved most purely,
An uncomplicated time when
Evil and goodness held fairy tale clarity,
And we could see clearly,
With no obscurity or ambiguity,
Through a person—
Into the stepmother’s dark heart
And the frog prince’s wounded soul.

That was long ago, before
Babel and Jabberwocky
Grew up between us, words spoken
Without love, sharp edged, jagged
Rough and cutting, that defines the tone
Of all our current conversations
As if an evil spell, that cannot be broken,
Has been cast on us, blinding us
To each other’s goodness,
Making us forget our past.

So we remain in the powerful grip
Of something truly evil,
The hapless enchanted victims
Of the dark insidious magic that binds us,
Steals our vision and clouds our memory.
Neither long discourses, verbose explanations
Nor any other adult devices can break the spell,
But only a child’s trusting blind belief
In the transforming and liberating power
Of a fairy tale kiss can free us.

All poetry © Doug Tanoury.

The Artists' Websites:
Kent Williams
Antony  Micallef
Kristine Moran
James Jean

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