Divinatory Poetics Deck
by J. Michael Martinez
The images composing my forthcoming divinatory poetics deck have been made in the spirit of honoring and dialoguing with the artists that have been most formative to my aesthetics. Each card is of a poet, writer, or thinker whose work has deeply inflected themselves in my comprehension of creativity is generated and felt. Each image acts, for me, as a method to inspire and comprehend the metaphysical energies organizing our lives, that is, as divinatory; as one might read the tarot, so too, one may approach these images. Once the set of images are complete, each card will come with ways to interpret its imagery if used in divination; importantly, to support creative work, each card will be accompanied by a creative writing/art prompt inspired by the artist or thinker depicted. The two images here are of Federico Garcia Lorca and Rosmarie Waldrop. Garcia’s card is energized by his concept of Duende; Waldrop’s image is energized by the complexity of her essay of the same name, wherein she recalls and rereads the brilliant Edmond Jabes. For as Waldrop quotes Jabes, “Only in fragments can we read the immeasurable totality’” (18).
