• BY KYLE KHANDIKIAN 
• 
  
• In her new book, Rumor, poet Silva Merjanian unpacks and explores the many layers of the human experience with poetry that one reviewer describes as

"shocking, tender and to the point."

Kyle Khandikian interviews Silva Zanoyan Merjanian 

Rumor is available now on Silva Merjanian’s official website, www.silvamerjanian.com

Modern Poetry and Style vis-à-vis Armenian poetry

As a guest of the ARPA Institute, poet Silva Zanoyan Merjanian discusses 'modern poetry and style vis-à-vis Armenian poetry' at Merdinian School, Sherman Oaks, CA 91403

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Saints in my Rain

Interview for Armenian newspaper, Azbarez

Poet Silva Zanoyan Merjanian's poems 'Beirut', 'Saints in my Rain' and 'Home' from her Cold River Press release, RUMOR, have been nominated for the 2014 Pushcart. 

Home

Doves of Beirut

Dismaland

When a poet creates a true image, he is bringing into consciousness a connection that has been forgotten, perhaps for centuries.

It is possible there is another sort of image, which the ancients knew about. It is less like a container and more like an arm. It reaches out of human consciousness to touch something else.

We do feel a gap between ourselves and nature. We can remain in the gap, and let the two worlds fall apart farther and remain separate. Or a human being can reach out with his left hand to the world of human intelligence and with the right hand to the natural world, and touch both at the same time…The power that makes us able to touch both is called ‘imagination’.

Robert Bly

ELLIS strarring Robert De Niro directed by JR written by Eric ...Must-see new short film directed by JR Artist and written by Eric Roth stars Robert De Niro as an immigrant on Ellis Island.
Posted by Tribeca on Monday, September 28, 2015

Our short film's been selected for screening at this year's Waterford Film Festival at Garter Lane Theatre.

It doesn’t take much to convince yourself that you’ve forgotten how to tell a story…the hand was the same, the writing was the same, there was the same choice of vocabulary, same syntax, same punctuation, and yet the tone had become false. For months I felt that the preceding pages were beyond my abilities, and now I no longer felt equal to my own work. It made me bitter. You’d rather lose yourself than find yourself, I thought. Then everything started up again.

 (words: Elena Ferrante)

Meter is both functional and enslaving, it sets up a sense of normalcy and flow, the illusion/reality of composite structure, a kind of balancing act, lock/step, to convey musicality of language, call and response, the notion of coming to restive conclusions with/in meter ostensibly fools us into a (desired) locked sequence of time (mental enclosures) and sleeps with meaning in perhaps surreptitious ways.. hidden within this project lies a dualism - love/masochism - the disruptive kinship of needing to repeat (oneself), repetition, we seek forms, and uniformity, but this also oppresses the poet-warrior who also resists conformity, the death of becoming.. so meter is then a necessary evil, overdetermined by the simplicity of language constructs.. outside of poetic device I dream of a world where nothing ever repeats, and yet I am not sure if love could exist in such a world, the ontos of Eros, victim and lover of eternal recurrence. 

(words : Seven Nova)

photo : Gary Gray

The purpose of rhythm, it has always seemed to me, is to prolong the moment of contemplation, the moment when we are both asleep and awake, which is the one moment of creation, by hushing us with an alluring monotony, while it holds us waking by variety, to keep us in that state of perhaps real trance, in which the mind liberated from the pressure of the will is unfolded in symbols. 

The Symbolism of Poetry - 1900

William Butler Yeats

ENCANTAÇÃO

O vidro da janela estava frio. E uma brisa penetrante chacoalhava aquela frágil estrutura. Do lado de fora, reuniam-se os corvos, grasnando e grasnando... a ponto de sorverem todo o ar ali ruidoso enquanto circunvi(zinhav)am a velha casa da fazenda; pousariam em seguida nos pinhos. Os galhos balançavam para trás e para frente. Ana contemplava a égua castanha abrigada sob as árvores. A quietude dela impelia a um calafrio estranho, impertinente, e Ana, cruzando os braços resoluta, foi sentar-se de novo perto do fogo. As brasas estalavam. Mansamente. E Ana as espetava, atiçando as chamas. De então que, tirando do bolso um rosário, a mulher cantarolava baixinho o seu encanto, enquanto ia caindo no sono.

Ellen se acomodou no tapete surrado. A porta da sala de brinquedo abria-se em fendas. Ao fundo, tique-taques. Ela tão só erguia os olhos e tentava reparar, através de uma meia abertura de porta, na avó que descansava o rosto naquela almofada de crochê. Agarrada a uma boneca, Ellen não tirava os olhos dos pesados olhos da avó sobre aquela almofada, descansando, pois que a avó ali, com mãos rezadeiras. As contas do rosário, em marrom e dourado, continuavam em seu colo. Diante daquela criatura maternal sibilando em vigília, Ellen sentiu, num súbito, palpitar amor sem-fim. As brasas chamuscavam. E brilhavam. Um jornal amassado sobre as nódoas de carvão na lareira, e ela sentia crescer um amor sem mácula, ao passo que ia apertando tanto mais a boneca, agarrando-se a ela, que... O dia reluzia, como se mágico, glorioso, absorvendo tudo, inclusive Ellen. Era como se cada linha do tapete, cada forma ali tecida em miríades de tonalidades compusesse algo mais imenso ainda que a eternidade daquele momento, e dela mesma. Olhou, enfim, novamente para o relógio, cujo vidro espelhava seu rosto, e então ela mesma se espelhava através do tempo.

(traduzido por Carol Piva)

Waterford Film Festival

Garter Lane Arts Centre

Waterford, Ireland

6th - 8th November 2015

Collaboration with Silva Zanoyan Merjanian

In memory of Rehan, Galip and Aylan Kurdi

the art of anticipation

so many things we do not openly discuss or even consider, the sense of anticipation in art, especially music, sense of drawing out wonder and emotion, and in life.. what is this insatiable romance with not resolving our aesthetic desire, this constant seeking of seductive qualities in nature and mind, so evasive, it's as if we will not settle for something, admit to a final cause, we prefer to remain unanswered, curious, unknowing. . 7 (courtesy of Seven Nova)

Anticipation by Lauren Goia