Robert Bohm’s India: Whatever’s right in front of you

What the Bird Tattoo Hides: Selections from the Vijaynagar Notebooks (1974-2012)

by Robert Bohm

    Artfully crafted and off the chain, Robert Bohm’s What the Bird Tattoo Hides (West End Press, 2014) is an exemplary achievement in poetry. Blending poetry with short histories and vignettes, Bohm explores his 45 years of partial residence in the village of Vijaynagar, India, his wife Suman’s family home.

  Robert Bohm will be featured alongside Kito Shani and Franetta McMillian in the Dreamstreets Downtown Poetry Reading at the Chris White Gallery, 8th & Shipley Streets, October 18, 2014 at 3 p.m.

   Bohm strives to avoid “succumbing to the traditional western search for the ‘real’ India,” as “[t]here is no ‘real’ India,” he asserts. “Just India. Whatever’s right in front of you” (“Whatever’s right in front of you” 79).  What Bohm puts in front of us are villagers, family members, rivers, temples, rainstorms, bus rides, suicide wells, miserable work, indigenous dancers, bougainvillea, vomit, birth, struggle, murder, outrages of caste, and parallels with the Viet Nam war, American racism, and the 21^st-century banking collapse. Throughout, Bohm struggles against the gap between the white man’s gaze and true solidarity.

    That struggle took its most significant turn in 1967 when Robert Bohm met Suman Kirloskar while she was working at the U.S. Army 225^th Station Hospital in Munich, Germany where he was stationed. From the outset, she disabused him of any notions that Indians were all Hindu philosophy. She was caustic, earthy, and just impetuous enough to marry Bohm six months later and then introduce him to Vijaynagar. She was his greatest interpreter and critic in India and was his chief political collaborator when I first met the two of them in Delaware back in the 80s. They were a formidable team, quick to fault local activists for liberal and white-skin myopia. Suman went to work for GM where she was elected to high union office as a reformer. In addition to his political work, Bob often shared his sometimes abrasive and trenchant poetry at 2^nd Saturday Poets readings and in Dreamstreets magazine. I followed his poetry somewhat desultorily, I must confess. Now I know that all the while, Bohm has been doing what I admire most in art.

   Not that what’s in front of him backgrounds everything in favor of politics. In “Generations,” for example, Bohm uses evocative and even erotic images to recount how the Bhil indigenous women, whose forbearers had left forest dwelling,

                                    danced rowdily at night

in their colony

on Belgaum’s outskirts

While a long-unseen uncle tended

cremation fires up north in Varanasi and the moon

its face flush with lust

groaned while spying on the earth’s naked belly. (45)

   In other poems such evocative images draw Bohm to declarations of solidarity. “Mandovi River, Panaji” posits images whose subtext is memories of empire. The river subtly conveys these memories to Bohm:

Laving its banks, the river, penetrating soil, seeps

mind-like toward roots almost, but not quite,

too slender to find.

The water’s rhythm takes me to where they are. (14)

What the river passes by are the Basilica of Bom Jesus, where St. Xaviar’s dust is resting (an artifact of Portuguese rule), a “barge loaded with ore from Marpusa”s iron mines,” “plantation laborers [who] trudge to work at dawn,” and the memory of a woman whose eyelids the Portuguese cut off to force her to watch them dismember her son. Says Bohm, accepting the challenge of solidarity, “She’s the queen of sight. / I’m her legacy” (13).

     Bohm is quite aware of the violence inherent in a struggle against violence, but, in “Concentric moments,” he seems to wonder how far he can go:

From random flailings to more focused acts, I rise, transcending redemption.

Or do I?

Did I really volunteer to go beyond the outmoded maps? (73)

    We become attached to many of the personalities over the five decades reflected in this poignant volume and, like Bohm, feel closer to their struggles. The fourth section, “Comings & Goings,” contains several tributes to the passing of a few. “Meeda Mama Dead” is a lovely memorial to a Dalit (untouchable) basket weaver, his home, his family, and to his first wife, who leapt into a well:

he wove her disappearance

into each basket he made so when

you lugged fruits or vegetables in it

you always carried an additional weight:

her body sinking in water. (129)

A bauxite rock Bohm has taken from the area suggests that dead weight and what we accumulate in life:

                        As with the rock

We all are

the matter we are made of, this

aging flesh, this body

of evidence: pitted surfaces, traces

of old chemical reactions, one

crust built upon another, nothing, no matter

how much we might try, completely

left behind. (130)

    The title poem, “What the bird tattoo hides,” refers to tattoos worn at the eye’s outer edge by Bhil women (remember the dancers and the aroused moon?). Here the eroticism is made more ambivalent and the cheeky flirtatiousness a companion to taking justice into one’s own hands and to solidarity. The aging Bhil beauty Godkari

            slices open

a stolen jackfruit, seeking

truth’s taste.

The blade she uses is just rusted enough

to cut to the chase.

Although she doesn’t know you, she’ll give you a piece.

She always shares what she takes. (148)

    These poems reflect well-tuned antennae and expert craft. But they do more. They shatter the fetishism of the physical world as innate spirit that so many New Agers and tourists of India espouse; instead, they articulate the human social relations that give that world its spirit. In “Mumbai om shanti who the fuck wants to pray anyway” Bohm pulls the legs out from under the airy-eyed: “Carrying the history / of philosophy / in a burlap bag hanging / from his neck / a legless man / maneuvers along / the sidewalk on / a wooden tray / with wheels.” He continues offering a few more disagreeable delicacies and concludes with “This isn’t / a scene / seen best from / 2 sides / or even / from all sides but rather / one seen best / without any type / of eyes at all, being / as they are / always / in the way.” Eat Pray Love this ain’t.

    “Mother River,” the farewell poem, is a wonderful prayer that sums up Bohm’s quest to breach privilege and live in solidarity (Narmada=one of India’s five holy rivers; mai=mother):

Narmada Mai

teach us to undam water so we can learn how

to free the heart and drive out

those who make our bodies labor miserably

let your high tides guide us, give us what

rising waters have: the power to breach walls, then cities. (158)

Such a quest reminds me of Martin Buber’s injunction to see the “other” as a “thou,” not as an object of use, colored by privilege, but as a co-equal “I.”  But Bohm goes further. Once we see who and what’s really in front of us, we must act.

Two of Delaware's Best Living Artists

Now that Delaware's best living artist Edward Loper has passed away, there are many still with us who deserve that mantle. The criteria for best living artist is, of course, the quality of one's work. The other would be the sheer volume of it. Did Picasso outlive Dali, or was it the other way around?

Here, I would like to submit two candidates who are among Delaware's best artists. I chose them because they have one thing in common. They are both expatriates. One is an expatriate from another country, and the other is an expatriate in another country.

Painting by Roldan West

Sax Player by Roldan West

Roldan West lives and works in Wilmington, but he was born in Nicaragua. The other, Jonathan Bragdon was born in Wilmington. He now lives with his family in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. As a teenager, Roldan West  joined the Sandanista Revolution leading him to play a major part in their literacy program on behalf of Nicaraguan peasants. With the artist Sergio Michellini he crafted murals in Managua. He visited Mexico to learn from the murals of Sequeiros, Orozco and Diego Rivera.  He studied with Mexican artists Arnold Belkin and Geraldo Cantu. Roldan traveled extensively through Europe, Asia, and Africa learning the craft of graffiti art by use of spray cans. An excellent example of Roldan West at work can be found a www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tKVxNbJBcY

Jonathan Bragdon left Wilmington in 1961 and moved to Switzerland and the home of an uncle who lived there. One of his earliest inspirations came after visiting the Louvre. Jonathan later attended the Ecole Superierure des Art Decoritifs, studied under the artist Biagio Frisa and received encouragement from the artist Jasper Johns. His earliest shows in the United States in the late 1960s sold very well. His success selling in European galleries have also done very well. More about Jonathan's artwork may be found at: www.bragdon.nl

The author with Jonathan Bragdon on the left from 1959. Behind 

us is an original painting by Delaware artist William D. White. 

Back Garden, Dresden by Jonathan Bragdon

                       Kruidberg, Santpoort Noord by Jonathan Bragdon

Being able to achieve success in the sale of one's artwork surely contributes to the value of one's art. Doing that over a long period during an artist's career will assure the reputation of an artist after having passed from the scene. Such is true with many past Wilmington artists, beginning with Howard Pyle, through any number of the Brandywine School artists, through those who began their work during the WPA like Edward Loper, Edward Grant, Bayard Berndt and William D. White, as well as others including Gayle Hoskins and Jefferson David Chalfant. The list is large and the Delaware Art Museum has played a central role in preserving this legacy.

Today, the city of Wilmington has developed a downtown art district hosting a number of galleries and art schools. This assures us a plethora of gifted and living fine artists for a long time to come. Whether they been working here for a long time, like E. Jean Lanyon and Edward Loper Jr, or are fresh out of art school and intending to make the vicinity their home, both Jonathan Bragdon and Roldan West are in good company.

Mullen Remembers M*****d

In There’s a House in the Land, Shaun Mullen chronicles how a tribe of Vietnam vets and associated pals and gals made an old farm north of Newark, Delaware into an island of freedom. Like his earlier work, The Bottom of the Fox, Mullen’s House provides insights on the American Seventies. This time, however, he treats those of his contemporaries inhabiting the piedmont west of Philadelpha, PA to a wild and wonderful reminiscence. 

Thousands remember—and more wish they did—the Flag Day parties, with their roasting pigs, the house band Snakegrinder, the socializing of bikers with profs, the abundant garden among disused trucks and cars, the tanker-loads of Genesee Cream Ale, and the mountains of marijuana, much grown there. 

The Seventies were the shore the Sixties washed up on. Those who climbed out of the surf were left to rebuild the American Dream, shredded by Vietnam, JFK, MLK, THC, LSD. Who knows how many such islands of self-reliance and rugged individualism there were in America, but few had in residence an amanuensis as talented as Shaun Mullen.  Mullen shows that while American rules were shattered, American values persevered.

Mullen chooses a sort of roman-à-clef approach, changing almost all the names except his own, that of the band Snakegrinder, and the dog Meatball. I, receiving an advance copy for my tangential familiarity, will not fink, only that New Park is Newark, Delaware, and the New Park Tavern, portrayed in its piss-smelling splendor, is the old Deer Park Hotel. There, it is apocryphally reported, Edgar Allan Poe drunkenly cursed all who stopped in that village of philistines that they might never leave. Still, many will recognize lead singer “Edward,” who died on the railroad tracks while attempting to flag down a train, subsequently appearing in a dream to tell “Rafe,” the Weather Underground fugitive, to grab his kazoo and start singing center stage. Many bought belts from Doctor Duck’s leather shop, but few, beside myself, ever tasted a sub on a whole-wheat roll from his short-lived deli.

In episodes and thematic chapters, Mullen details the geology of “Kiln Farm,” the flora and fauna, the architecture, the dogs, the goats and other livestock, the roles the denizens filled and the crafts they practiced, the ambiguous status of women, the tragic crash that killed “Pattie” and her daughter “Caitlin,” and Mullen’s road trips to Aspen and the Florida Keys.

Eventually, the tribe moved on. They “didn’t so much grow up,” Mullen explains, “as succumb to the mechanistic gravity of the real world that compresses all but the roundest of pegs.” The vicissitudes of erstwhile freedom were neither good nor bad, but they accompanied some wonderful progress in education, ecology, and human unity. Hey, the shit-house Bible at the farm was the Whole Earth Catalogue, that “Access to Tools” for anarchists and late twentieth century pioneers.
There’s a House in the Land may shock or titillate, but Shaun Mullen captures the spirit of a time and place. Those who were there will chuckle and maybe weep.

Mullen will sign copies of There's A House In The Land beginning at 1 p.m. on Sunday, September 28 at the Blue Crab Grill in Suburban Plaza off Elkton Road in Newark. Snakegrinder and the Shredded Fieldmice, a popular Newark band in the early 1970s, will reunite for the occasion. The title of Mullen's book is from a lyric in a Snakegrinder song. (Postscript Sept. 8: Due to the high demand, a second show has been added at 8 p.m.)
Shaun Mullen blogs at Kiko’s House and The ModerateVoice.

Announcing the Broken Turtle Booklist

Broken Turtle Books is proud to announce the online Broken Turtle Booklist, a catalogue of Delaware regional authors, local publishers, and literary communities operating in Delaware. The Booklist includes audio and video recordings of Delaware authors, as well as their major works. It provides easy links to Amazon, Paypal, or publishers for folks who want to buy.

Each month we will feature a selected work by a Delaware author. In our inaugural offering, we are featuring A Visit With Uncle Richard, a compilation of the popular series written by Spectator columnist and Editor Pat Gibbs. Uncle Richard is familiar to listeners of Even Steven’s Boptime, where Gibbs as Uncle Richard holds forth cantankerously and provocatively on issues of the day. Boptime’s DJ is our own Steven Leech, of course.

There are lots of great writers in our hidden corner just off I-95. The Broken Turtle Booklist hopes to raise our profile and contribute to your success.

Broken Turtle Books, if you don’t already know,  is a group of writer-editor-publishers who have been part of the Delaware literary scene for four decades. Most of us have been associated with Dreamstreets Press, which published Dreamstreets Magazine, produced radio programs on WVUD 91.3 FM (University of Delaware), and a television clip on WHYY TV (Wilmington/Philadelphia) and founded the 2nd Saturday Poetry Readings at various venues in Wilmington, Delaware. We also blog occasionally on matters literary, artsy, historical, and political at the Broken Turtle Blog.

For a while we were Broken Turtle Books LLC, intending to publish our own and historical works through a small company that we controlled. However, as most writers and publishers know, alternative vanity presses, small run printers, and publish-on-demand opportunities have proliferated in cyberspace, making our business model obsolete. Yet our mission remains the same: to promote diversity and cutting-edge literature in a state known for its insularity and paucity of opportunities “downwind from chateau country.”

Our list is a work in progress. We have a number of authors in our in-box ready to be added. For the most part, we are limited to poetry and fiction by Delaware authors who have their work available as a collection, print or electronic.

Check out the site and see what we have added so far. If you believe you have been overlooked, would like to recommend a Delaware author, or just have suggestions for the website, follow the instructions at the “About the Booklist” page.

Spread the word, peruse the site, and buy local books!