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Pretty Time Machine
A collection of ekphrastic prose poems by mixed-media artist Lorette C. Luzajic. The poetry is inspired by a range of personal experiences, her travels, love and loss, and paintings from Picasso to Basquiat to Darger.
- GenresPoetry
224 pages, Paperback
Published January 18, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 9, 2020
This review is an excerpt from my blog: http://alariepoet.com/index.php/2020/...
Lorette Luzajic, is both an artist and writer. She’s also the editor/founder of The Ekphrastic Review: perfect credentials for the Queen of Ekphrastic Poetry.
Pretty Time Machine, the title of the book, the cover art, and the last poem, is a bargain. Few poetry books reach 201 pages unless they are collected poems. As the cover says, they are ekphrastic prose poems, meaning they have justified margins like a novel. But don’t get bogged down trying to define what makes a prose poem, this collection defies categories. It’s unlike any poetry book I’ve read.
Luzajic gives the title, date, and artist of each inspiration piece at the beginning of the poems. It would have been a cost and copyright nightmare to print them, but she has compiled a link to the art for those who want to see it: http://www.mixedupmedia.ca/pretty-tim...
What makes these ekphrastic poems different is that it’s easy to forget she started with art prompts. There’s something for everyone here, even readers who don’t think they like poetry. Most of the time, I felt I was reading memoir. The book seems to be about Luzajic’s life, like the art tapped some personal memory. However, we can never assume that the speaker in a poem is the poet or that she didn’t use hyperbole or bend the truth to get to greater truths.
In addition to being a time machine, this collection is a transporter. Many of my favorite poems are about her travel all over the globe, Europe, Mexico, South America, the U.S. It’s also a food memoir (love of food and wine – another thing we have in common). Many of the excursions are out into nature as well as visiting the usual cathedrals, museums, home of Frida Kahlo, etc.
Hikers will enjoy poems like “Misery Bay,” which says, “…Here in Manitoulin, in the wild valley between quartz hills and blueberry moss, we are Canadian to our marrow. Our soundtrack, lonely loons.”
Occasionally, I did remember there was a painting behind the poem. “Black and Blue” begins, “The beach turned an impossible pink and silver mirror, resisting for just a few more minutes the shadows swallowing the day.” Did you also guess that was Monet? He’s my favorite painter. (Be assured I did check out all the art, because even though it was obvious that Luzajic had taken leaps away from it, I wanted to see where it started.)
When I was trying to list all the things this book includes from grief, more cliff hangers than any one life deserves, psychoanalysis, searching for a decent cup of coffee, and Bob Dylan, I realized the poems mirror Luzajic’s multimedia collages. They form an artistic juxtaposition of unexpected memories and symbols. Surprise! Surprise again! She keeps our attention on the page.
Poets generally give a lot of thought to what poem leads off a book, but I thought it was especially brilliant for Luzajic to make “Opening Nocturne” a foreword. I could imagine what Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Chelsea by James Whistler would look like, the misty, dreamy quality of an evening walk by the water, a perfect setting for memories to rise out of the fog:
"I’m afraid of this book. I was afraid to write it, but I didn’t
have a say. It was writing itself. The keyboard, the black ink
pen with the bunny on top, moved of their own volition. I
was afraid of revelation, afraid of prayer, but the pages
became their own kinds of spells and signs."
Lorette Luzajic, is both an artist and writer. She’s also the editor/founder of The Ekphrastic Review: perfect credentials for the Queen of Ekphrastic Poetry.
Pretty Time Machine, the title of the book, the cover art, and the last poem, is a bargain. Few poetry books reach 201 pages unless they are collected poems. As the cover says, they are ekphrastic prose poems, meaning they have justified margins like a novel. But don’t get bogged down trying to define what makes a prose poem, this collection defies categories. It’s unlike any poetry book I’ve read.
Luzajic gives the title, date, and artist of each inspiration piece at the beginning of the poems. It would have been a cost and copyright nightmare to print them, but she has compiled a link to the art for those who want to see it: http://www.mixedupmedia.ca/pretty-tim...
What makes these ekphrastic poems different is that it’s easy to forget she started with art prompts. There’s something for everyone here, even readers who don’t think they like poetry. Most of the time, I felt I was reading memoir. The book seems to be about Luzajic’s life, like the art tapped some personal memory. However, we can never assume that the speaker in a poem is the poet or that she didn’t use hyperbole or bend the truth to get to greater truths.
In addition to being a time machine, this collection is a transporter. Many of my favorite poems are about her travel all over the globe, Europe, Mexico, South America, the U.S. It’s also a food memoir (love of food and wine – another thing we have in common). Many of the excursions are out into nature as well as visiting the usual cathedrals, museums, home of Frida Kahlo, etc.
Hikers will enjoy poems like “Misery Bay,” which says, “…Here in Manitoulin, in the wild valley between quartz hills and blueberry moss, we are Canadian to our marrow. Our soundtrack, lonely loons.”
Occasionally, I did remember there was a painting behind the poem. “Black and Blue” begins, “The beach turned an impossible pink and silver mirror, resisting for just a few more minutes the shadows swallowing the day.” Did you also guess that was Monet? He’s my favorite painter. (Be assured I did check out all the art, because even though it was obvious that Luzajic had taken leaps away from it, I wanted to see where it started.)
When I was trying to list all the things this book includes from grief, more cliff hangers than any one life deserves, psychoanalysis, searching for a decent cup of coffee, and Bob Dylan, I realized the poems mirror Luzajic’s multimedia collages. They form an artistic juxtaposition of unexpected memories and symbols. Surprise! Surprise again! She keeps our attention on the page.
Poets generally give a lot of thought to what poem leads off a book, but I thought it was especially brilliant for Luzajic to make “Opening Nocturne” a foreword. I could imagine what Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Chelsea by James Whistler would look like, the misty, dreamy quality of an evening walk by the water, a perfect setting for memories to rise out of the fog:
"I’m afraid of this book. I was afraid to write it, but I didn’t
have a say. It was writing itself. The keyboard, the black ink
pen with the bunny on top, moved of their own volition. I
was afraid of revelation, afraid of prayer, but the pages
became their own kinds of spells and signs."
March 6, 2020
"Assorted little things. Precious objects. I have them too. Everyone does." (from "The Curiosity Cabinet", inspired by Joseph Cornell
As with all books of poetry, I read Luzajic's collection slowly, considering only a few of the ekphrastic prose-poems at a time. In addition, I looked up and digested the artwork and artists that inspired them.
This was a two-sided treat--both the words and images worked as all art does, to take us deeper into ourselves and make connections between us and the rest of the world. I was introduced to new art and artists as I considered how my reactions compared to the author's, sometimes similar, sometimes revealing something I hadn't seen at all.
Luzajic is editor of The Ekphrastic Review, an online journal that publishes a wide variety of art and the words it inspires. It holds a bi-weekly challenge featuring a work of art and publishing a number of the responses two weeks later. I often enter and have had poems chosen to be published in the responses a number of times. I recognized many of the artworks used for inspiration in the book from their appearance in the challenges, which gave an additional dimension to Luzajic's words as I remembered both my own interpretation and those of the other published writers. I especially recalled seeing her response to Henry Darger on the site, and was drawn in again to its observations. Luzajic is excellent as a synthesizer of the questions an artist raises when the art and the life are played off each other. Where is the line between? Do they complement or contradict? Others in this category that resonated included Johnny Cash, Frida Kahlo, Basquiat, and Joseph Cornell.
Luzajic is herself an artist, and the book is as much about artists and the impulse to make art as it it about the mirror that the artist holds up to the world. There are moments of distilled time contained in both the images and words. What does it mean to be human, to create a life in relation to others? How does each life reflect back what it takes in?
Death is a dominant subject, and Luazjic in particular works to reconcile her feelings about the passing of her father, clearly an important sounding board and support during her ups and downs. She talks to him, through him, for him. He remains, present, larger than his mortal life.
But death is everywhere, inescapable, always mingling and merging with life. The urge to both competes in the people and places that haunt these meditations. In response to Rauschenberg's "Erased de Kooning Drawing", Luzajic observes "We'd moved to put death behind us, but the past is always with you." Can we ever really erase what was once drawn, what was there before? Those ghostly lines never actually disappear. The blood is still on our hands no matter how much washing we do.
As with all books of poetry, I read Luzajic's collection slowly, considering only a few of the ekphrastic prose-poems at a time. In addition, I looked up and digested the artwork and artists that inspired them.
This was a two-sided treat--both the words and images worked as all art does, to take us deeper into ourselves and make connections between us and the rest of the world. I was introduced to new art and artists as I considered how my reactions compared to the author's, sometimes similar, sometimes revealing something I hadn't seen at all.
Luzajic is editor of The Ekphrastic Review, an online journal that publishes a wide variety of art and the words it inspires. It holds a bi-weekly challenge featuring a work of art and publishing a number of the responses two weeks later. I often enter and have had poems chosen to be published in the responses a number of times. I recognized many of the artworks used for inspiration in the book from their appearance in the challenges, which gave an additional dimension to Luzajic's words as I remembered both my own interpretation and those of the other published writers. I especially recalled seeing her response to Henry Darger on the site, and was drawn in again to its observations. Luzajic is excellent as a synthesizer of the questions an artist raises when the art and the life are played off each other. Where is the line between? Do they complement or contradict? Others in this category that resonated included Johnny Cash, Frida Kahlo, Basquiat, and Joseph Cornell.
Luzajic is herself an artist, and the book is as much about artists and the impulse to make art as it it about the mirror that the artist holds up to the world. There are moments of distilled time contained in both the images and words. What does it mean to be human, to create a life in relation to others? How does each life reflect back what it takes in?
Death is a dominant subject, and Luazjic in particular works to reconcile her feelings about the passing of her father, clearly an important sounding board and support during her ups and downs. She talks to him, through him, for him. He remains, present, larger than his mortal life.
But death is everywhere, inescapable, always mingling and merging with life. The urge to both competes in the people and places that haunt these meditations. In response to Rauschenberg's "Erased de Kooning Drawing", Luzajic observes "We'd moved to put death behind us, but the past is always with you." Can we ever really erase what was once drawn, what was there before? Those ghostly lines never actually disappear. The blood is still on our hands no matter how much washing we do.
August 5, 2020
Lorette C. Luzajic's book of ekphrastic prose poems, Pretty
Time Machine, is both broad and deep in its presentations of her prose poetry and a chosen gallery of amazingly diverse works of art. One way to read Pretty Time Machine is to engage with the work of art before, during, or after reading her words -- or all three, as I did at times. Her book enlarged my views of art that I knew while introducing me to dozens of works of art and artists I did not know: what a generous book this is! Pretty Time Machine hangs an enormous art exhibit for the viewer and then enrichens it with Luzajic's wondrously diverse ekphrastic responses to each work. From the words of a trained and unique artists and art critic to the grief of a wife having lost her husband, worlds are created and given. How fortunate we are to have this abundance, this richness. How vast her book becomes
when her astonishing range of artworks joins our responses to her words. And Luzajic's Pretty Time Machine works in both directions, from her poems to the artworks and from the artworks back to her words, as all successful ekphrastic writing should. And, perhaps most importantly, with its great range, it reminds us that all of us have ekphrastic movements when we observe artworks, whether we take note of them and write them down or not. This is a book for all of us: one need not look at the artworks to love the writing, but I highly recommend looking at the artworks -- and I must suggest this book for every writer's bookshelf, as well as every artist's, viewer's, and reader's. A book to be treasured and revisited reading straight through and also to be read in parts and pieces, perhaps building new collages from her work as fabulous collagist Luzajic might suggest and do herself.
Time Machine, is both broad and deep in its presentations of her prose poetry and a chosen gallery of amazingly diverse works of art. One way to read Pretty Time Machine is to engage with the work of art before, during, or after reading her words -- or all three, as I did at times. Her book enlarged my views of art that I knew while introducing me to dozens of works of art and artists I did not know: what a generous book this is! Pretty Time Machine hangs an enormous art exhibit for the viewer and then enrichens it with Luzajic's wondrously diverse ekphrastic responses to each work. From the words of a trained and unique artists and art critic to the grief of a wife having lost her husband, worlds are created and given. How fortunate we are to have this abundance, this richness. How vast her book becomes
when her astonishing range of artworks joins our responses to her words. And Luzajic's Pretty Time Machine works in both directions, from her poems to the artworks and from the artworks back to her words, as all successful ekphrastic writing should. And, perhaps most importantly, with its great range, it reminds us that all of us have ekphrastic movements when we observe artworks, whether we take note of them and write them down or not. This is a book for all of us: one need not look at the artworks to love the writing, but I highly recommend looking at the artworks -- and I must suggest this book for every writer's bookshelf, as well as every artist's, viewer's, and reader's. A book to be treasured and revisited reading straight through and also to be read in parts and pieces, perhaps building new collages from her work as fabulous collagist Luzajic might suggest and do herself.
March 14, 2020
Pretty Time Machine
Lorette Luzajic
A review by Lizzie Ballagher, poet, UK
In Pretty Time Machine we meet a polymath versed equally in the languages of art and poetry. In this collection of ekphrastic poetry, Luzajic’s vocabulary in both media is quite dazzling. Her vision is uncompromising, sharply focused, unflinching. Sometimes those qualities make for less than comfortable reading, as for example when she squares up to the demons of child murder, pornography, addiction, broken friendship, death…often in imagery as stark and lurid as that employed by the visual artists whose work she celebrates.
And yet…and yet…the reader is as transfixed, as beguiled as someone standing before a canvas by Picasso or Monet, a sculpture by Rodin. With the poet, we come to the margins of human existence and grasp at a share of what life on the edges brings to our eyes, ears, skin, nose, palate. Glimpsing life’s extremities, we also come to appreciate afresh life’s potential for tenderness, gentleness, compassion, ‘ordinary’ humanity:
‘The dead sleep on, shrouded by sand and silences, fences.’
Under her skilled hand, moments of darkness are illuminated by shafts of light, hope, festivity, joy. The writing rings with the poet’s quirky observations: ‘chubby china cherubs…a cacophony of teacups’, also with a silver thread of spiritual sensitivity that weaves in and out of the often keen sense of grief and loss:
‘You covered me in flowers. Buried me before my time. Brought me Billie Holiday records, Bessie, Ella, Esther, tipped my face to the sun. I can't stop trying to find you, can't stop writing these poems.’
‘I couldn’t find my way back to belief in time for the Eucharist
in the garden that followed, but I wanted to take part in it anyway, to consume that bread of life and drown out all the death inside of me.
‘I couldn’t shake the words nailed above the entrance when I
emerged back into daylight from the empty earth:
He is not here, He is risen.’
Although her vision is equally for wide canvases and for the minutiae of physical and emotional landscapes, Lorette’s poetry is at its best when it is starkly economical:
‘You said you would follow me anywhere, but you have not followed
me here, where the stovepipe is cold and the table is pushed flush against
the only exit. How could you, when the cliffs rose dark and brooding over the choppy waves? One of us turned from the siren of oblivion, and one of us jumped.’
—or when its is infused with humour as bitter, dark, and delicious as chocolate made mainly of cocoa solids:
‘Everybody writes about Icarus, an irresistible archetype for
poets. Cafes have clattered for centuries in jazz and absinthe
or venti lattes, with voices earnestly exchanging angst…How we
all went on and on about our blasted sainted dead.’
Thank you, Lorette, for giving me, a subscriber and occasional contributor to Ekphrastic Review for two years, now, the privilege of reading and reviewing this mature, visionary work.
Lorette Luzajic
A review by Lizzie Ballagher, poet, UK
In Pretty Time Machine we meet a polymath versed equally in the languages of art and poetry. In this collection of ekphrastic poetry, Luzajic’s vocabulary in both media is quite dazzling. Her vision is uncompromising, sharply focused, unflinching. Sometimes those qualities make for less than comfortable reading, as for example when she squares up to the demons of child murder, pornography, addiction, broken friendship, death…often in imagery as stark and lurid as that employed by the visual artists whose work she celebrates.
And yet…and yet…the reader is as transfixed, as beguiled as someone standing before a canvas by Picasso or Monet, a sculpture by Rodin. With the poet, we come to the margins of human existence and grasp at a share of what life on the edges brings to our eyes, ears, skin, nose, palate. Glimpsing life’s extremities, we also come to appreciate afresh life’s potential for tenderness, gentleness, compassion, ‘ordinary’ humanity:
‘The dead sleep on, shrouded by sand and silences, fences.’
Under her skilled hand, moments of darkness are illuminated by shafts of light, hope, festivity, joy. The writing rings with the poet’s quirky observations: ‘chubby china cherubs…a cacophony of teacups’, also with a silver thread of spiritual sensitivity that weaves in and out of the often keen sense of grief and loss:
‘You covered me in flowers. Buried me before my time. Brought me Billie Holiday records, Bessie, Ella, Esther, tipped my face to the sun. I can't stop trying to find you, can't stop writing these poems.’
‘I couldn’t find my way back to belief in time for the Eucharist
in the garden that followed, but I wanted to take part in it anyway, to consume that bread of life and drown out all the death inside of me.
‘I couldn’t shake the words nailed above the entrance when I
emerged back into daylight from the empty earth:
He is not here, He is risen.’
Although her vision is equally for wide canvases and for the minutiae of physical and emotional landscapes, Lorette’s poetry is at its best when it is starkly economical:
‘You said you would follow me anywhere, but you have not followed
me here, where the stovepipe is cold and the table is pushed flush against
the only exit. How could you, when the cliffs rose dark and brooding over the choppy waves? One of us turned from the siren of oblivion, and one of us jumped.’
—or when its is infused with humour as bitter, dark, and delicious as chocolate made mainly of cocoa solids:
‘Everybody writes about Icarus, an irresistible archetype for
poets. Cafes have clattered for centuries in jazz and absinthe
or venti lattes, with voices earnestly exchanging angst…How we
all went on and on about our blasted sainted dead.’
Thank you, Lorette, for giving me, a subscriber and occasional contributor to Ekphrastic Review for two years, now, the privilege of reading and reviewing this mature, visionary work.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews