"The meaning of melancholia? Merely the abysmal
suffering that does not succeed in signifying itself and, having lost meaning
loses life." Kristeva, Julia, Black Sun
Paul Vangelisti, "Collage as language: further
thoughts on 'Events'," in Katherine Hoffman, Collage:critical
views, Ann Arbor, UMI Research Press, 1989, "[collage] grew out of an
urge (however fictively or artificially realized) to base art in physical
reality, in the language contemporary reality was speaking to me [quotes Spicer
on desire for "the moon in my(Spicer's) poems to be a real moon. which
could suddenly be covered with a cloud...a moon utterly independent of
images]." Vangelisti then goes on to describe his own experiences working
with collage poetry and the effect this had on him - essentially he describes a
move from "a certain 'tragic' ethos or stance for which the desire to
write verse preordained me" to "the salvage in Portfolio is
precisely comic, an assemblage of social and personal contexts within which
poetic language may be renewed...in choosing to play with this phenomenon, I
find my poetry redefining itself..."
"The technique of collage-making might be seen as a
facsimile of primary process." Kristeva, Julia