In seeming counter-intuition to the usual process of listening to poetry and allowing each reader to supply his or her own internal imagery, I’ve been experiementing with making photo poem montages set to music. I’ve been blessed to work closely with photographer Robyn Beattie for more than five years now.  At first, I simply posted her images to accompany blogposts, a process that then extended to a static collaboration for which we added her images to accompany the poem, “Ananda’s Line,” published by Connotation Press.

It seemed a natural progression to mine the talent at hand in the family and to add music to the  images and poetry, resulting in what we like to call micro-movies, or photo poem montages. Both “She Dressed in a Hurry,” and “Nefertiti on the Astral” feature my father, Stephen Pryputniewicz, on piano. In the works are montages for Amelia Earhart, Guinevere, and Marilyn.  We feature links to the completed montages below and will announce new montages as we complete them.

She Dressed in  Hurry (For Lady Diana)

She dressed in a hurry

or perhaps never wore a slip. The photo
the press loved: a girl in a skirt, distance

between her thighs backlit by the sun,
a circle of children in her care birthed

by other mothers. The obvious
didn’t escape him: she could bear heirs

and be advised on attire, as they headed for
the silks of coronation, the duress of his mistress…

To view photo poem montage, visit The Mom Egg. To read remainder of the poem, visit Salome Magazine.

Nefertiti on the Astral

I did what I came to do. Dead, I have the luxury
to know: the locus of power is not the body,

though how lovely: my daughter’s daughter’s
etc., daughter, sitting beside the Nile, sun falling

on the brown half moon of her nipple, the blue-
veined tributary of her breast flooded with milk

at the wet clamp of her newborn’s mouth.
I would choose it all again: those fevered bonds

of motherhood, the pharaoh’s celestial gaze
when he chose me, the roots of my hair copper,

eyelashes fringed with pollen from the shook
disks of sunflowers…

To view the photo montage and read remainder of the poem visit: Prairie Wolf Press.