Benediction to merging art forms

Contrary to my phone’s wayfinding, the turn to the Hungry Horse Dam Visitor Center from Kalispell is the second for the dam, not the first. 

My son and I aimed to attend a talk called “Photopoetry: Montana and Beyond,” but we ended up at the base of the 1953 dam that took 3 million cubic yards of concrete to construct. Looking up at the awesome structure gave me the shivers as I had just read Butch Larcombe’s “Montana Disasters” about the partial failure of the Fort Peck Dam in 1938. 

We didn’t have time to stay scared as we were in the wrong place, about 500 feet below where we needed to be to learn about photopoetry. 

I had never heard of it before, either.  

A dozen people gathered June 20 under tents outside as photographer Barbara Michelman and writer Charles Finn talked about their collaboration, “On a Benediction of Wind: Poems & Photographs from the American West.” 

Both were living in the Bitterroot in the early 2000s when a friend turned to them and said, “You two should do a book together.” 

Michelman, whose background includes film lighting in Hollywood, said the focus of photopoetry is “getting away from a photo on one page, a poem on the other.” Finn, now a Havre resident, elaborated: “The ‘photopoetry’ term was coined in 1936 by Constance Phillips, but ‘Facile’ really put photopoetry on the map.” In it, poet Paul Éluard and photographer Man Ray “were intent on playing with light and line.” 

Michelman said, “We keep using the word ‘photopoetry’ but there’s no set definition. It’s up to the reader to find meaning.”  

Finn pointed out that the verses “aren’t meant to be a caption. When you put the image and words together, the whole is more than the sum of the parts.” He said with a smile, “Artists — we’re kind of full of ourselves sometimes.” 

In their book an image of hay bales stacked under backlit clouds appears with the poem “A Partial List of Things I Would Like to Be” (e.g., “I would like to be a book / Being read, a hand held / A beer drunk, a baseball / On its way to a homerun”).  

Michelman said her images often include “a great deal of sky. Part of what I do is a big, big space, while poems create a small world.” The juxtaposition makes the magic. Finn, on the other hand, thinks of the “poem as a snapshot, pictures as lyrical. There’s some commonality in the art forms.” 

All our senses engaged as Finn recited his work and Michelman’s images beamed up on a screen. The breeze riffled our hair while a parade of trucks and toys, from ATVs to pontoon boats and bikes to SUPs, made its way across the dam. 

Audience members asked Michelman and Finn whether they started visually or verbally (answer: both) and made observations. Kalispell photographer Greg Mueth pronounced their work phenomenal. Another woman piped up, “It’s not often you get to talk poetry.”  

The dam talks continue July 18 with educator Hal Stearns on Montana towns. Take the high road. 

Margaret E. Davis, executive director of the Northwest Montana History Museum, can be reached at mdavis@dailyinterlake.com.