triptychs A ‘NAM MARINE’S NOW AND THEN POEms AND PROSE BY ANDREW SYOR ILLUSTRATED BY HENRY AVIGNON

triptychs
A ‘NAM MARINE’S NOW AND THEN

POEms AND PROSE BY ANDREW SYOR
ILLUSTRATED BY HENRY AVIGNON

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FROM THE PUBLISHER
This book is arranged in 17 riffs on haiku, memoir and photosculpture set in panels of three, or 17 triptychs. By definition:

triptych [ˈtrɪptɪk]
n
1. (Fine Arts & Visual Arts / Art Terms) a set of three pictures or panels, usually hinged so that the two wing panels fold over the larger central one: often used as an altarpiece
2. a set of three hinged writing tablets
[from Greek triptukhos, from tri- + ptux plate; compare diptych]
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003

Restated, this book is arranged in 17 riffs on haiku, memoir and photography set in triptychs. The folding-in-upon panels are tablets of writing that enclose the image, the inner core. Together, each triptych is a communiqué formed of written and visual art. Together in triptych, these panels represent a Sum of Experience – that of the warrior, the veteran, the family member.
And, together, the triptychs in this book represent the evolution of American Literature and the Arts. The book from an American writer that matters most in the Western Canon, according to the great American literary critic Harold Bloom, is Walt Whitman’s original 1855 Leaves of Grass (The Western Canon, Riverhead Books, 1994, 247). Consider the history and reception of that book for a moment, then consider the history of the electronic books that are now replacing print books. Consider for a moment the legacy of rejection and ridicule each major artist of any country must endure, when introducing a new form or technique, until the reality of the work reveals itself in the collective conscious. Together in triptychs, these panels represent the continuum of the spirit of American Literature that began with Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman.
In Triptychs: A ’Nam Marine’s Now and Then, two creative men share their inmost hearts in an effort to quicken the awareness of humanity to the beat of a different drum. Like Outsider Art, this work is rough, honest, genuine. Not pretty, but deep-reaching. Soul food. Work that is a direct reflection of a philosophy of creation: If there is a word out there, just one word, or an image, a frame of film or a note of song, that might save a life or improve someone’s life, may that moment reach its audience. Sometimes the best the soul can offer is a broken twig or an empty shell, all that is left of a once living, breathing thing. May the twig always be enough.

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FROM TRIPTYCHS: A ’NAM MARINE’S NOW AND THEN

TRIPTYCH XI

From the Civilian Boonies

This grunt’s opinion
answer is simplicity
what is the question

The stressful modern
political mass culture
creates own problems

The physical and
intellectual bell curve
of human beings

A difficult task
attempting to modify
leading to order

Current media
to them all is vanity
obstruction yin yang

Redundant message
to the enlightened or not
reality is

Perchance a quest to
understand contradictions
time appropriate

Within one or all
listening to singing birds
you join with the calm

Sharing circumstance
an insect is an insect
a fox is a fox

The Same Difference

Our countless operations had provided results and restructuring was in progress. After being together from the forming of Battalion Landing Team 3/5 at Camp Pendleton, California, some of the remaining members of 3/5 were being transferred to other organizations in country. Replacements were arriving daily.
Somberly reflecting on the disbanding and replacing of men I had known as a band of brothers, I remembered that the Battalion CO, in his address to all the Marines before we left Long Beach for Vietnam, had said that we could expect, through knowing the history of the battalion back to WWI, a third of us would not be returning from Vietnam. That prophecy was proven.
On a somewhat lighter note, I remembered, in the unique wisdom of the Corps, we had been sent for cold weather training at the base of Mount Fuji, Japan, before heading to Vietnam, its climate one of the hottest in the world. Thinking about it now, I’m sure it was to give more than a thousand Marines, who were chomping at the bit to engage with the enemy, something to do until we were scheduled to enter the combat zone.
While my unit disbanded, I was transferred to 1st MP’s at the Danang airbase. Being that I had a government driver’s license and their CO was looking for a driver, I got the job.
My brother, who was with 1/1 (First Battalion, First Marines), had entered ’Nam approximately two months after me. He was informed by the Powers That Be that two immediate family members were in the combat zone and one of us had to leave. As this was a high priority for The Powers that looked after this sort of thing, they had been smothering him with paperwork and deadlines. After contacting me at Danang, he had arranged a day or so off to hitch a ride in on a convoy so we could discuss this matter in person.
I met the convoy and took him over to the Enlisted Men’s club (EM Club) for a few beers. We both knew if one of us left the combat zone, he would be returning to finish his tour when the others tour was completed, and not wanting to lose the combat edge we’d already honed, each of us signed a waiver to remain in Vietnam until the end of our current tours.
Finishing our beers, we went to the mess hall for a fine meal. After that, I fixed him up with a rack in the barracks for the night. The next morning he caught a convoy back to his Battalion in time for their next operation.
I proceeded to ascertain what sort of combat zone military police activity I could get involved in, and found out it was limitless....

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ABOUT THE WRITER

Andy Syor
Andy Syor served in the Republic of Vietnam from 01 March 1966 to 07 Apr 1967 with the United States Marine Corps. Andy resides in Canada. This is his first book of poetry and prose.

Writer's Note
Society has changed, and I recognize and occasionally tolerate that, but “I am, what I am,” myself, along with my combat peers. I thought the 1960s were black and white, noir, minimum gray, and I’m not looking to “mend fences” with the 87% majority of the ’60s or any other generation, as I relate to the 13% of the generations who were and are the Armed Forces that have provided the means for the majority to function.
I regard myself as a good natured, conservative, Alpha male, brought up in the 1950s, before political correctness, in a “You Jane, Me Tarzan” society that worked for us. I still consider my combat memories to be part of an “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may die” adventure, one that I wouldn't change for anything.
Enlisting in the USMC the day after my seventeenth birthday, I broke my hip in a car accident on the same day. Being a Marine on the books, I began my military career convalescing at Bethesda Naval Hospital, followed by light duty at HQMC Henderson Hall, before being sent to boot camp.
After Parris Island and Camp Geiger, it was leave, and then off to staging with Third Battalion/Fifth Marines at Camp Pendleton, a unit scheduled to ship out from Long Beach to Vietnam the day after my eighteenth birthday.
Returning from Vietnam, my next duty station was a Marine Barracks at a Naval Air Station in Maine. Having an agreement with my father to get a high school diploma while in the Marines, I took and passed the GED to fulfill that commitment.
As my hip started to bother me a bit while stationed in New England, I took an early medical/Honorable Discharge and ended my career at Portsmouth Naval Hospital before I was 21 years old.
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ABOUT THE ARTIST

Henry Avignon
Henry Avignon was born 1972 in Tampa, Florida U.S.A. In 1992, Henry earned an  Associates Degree in Photo Journalism from SUNY in Morrisville New York, followed by a Baccalaureate degree in Literature / Minor in Psychology from SUNY in Brockport New York. He is currently completing a Masters of Art, Creative Writing, Poetry at SUNY in Brockport New York. Henry is the father of two children.
The prints in this collection are from the series Man in the Anthropocene.

Artist's Note
My focus is accelerating the medium of photography to the forefront with painting and in the process growing our consideration of what is abstraction and how does manifest new systems of langue. The preliminary stage of enfervoring photogenic environments that could not otherwise be shown is tantamount to the birth of an entirely new medium. Here you have an artist basically arranging his gallery wall like a large photo album without philosophical import. Only the individual images that matter.
My work deals fundamentally with notions of “material desire.” This is exemplified by an urge to “document” signatures of energy in medias res when such modes of desire are multivalent. Also vital is presenting works that encourage a consideration of how we see the world, elaborating on deeper states of the subject’s thingness. Incorporating several major themes: Man in the Anthropocene (world), secret lives of color as signatures of energy, persistence of meaning (the value of trace evidence) and the importance of formative structuring (binary presentation, Grammaring Matrix).
In an effort to approach the exotic presences of energy on Nature’s terms, I moved from painting to photosculpting – The principle desire being to let go of a degree of subjective control in the work, to shift the paradigm of creativity from the masculine to a feminine nature: artist as conduit and incubator of externally oriented and catalyzed life energy rather than internally rooted projections of an individualized imaginary. To identify, interpret, translate and present artistic forces rather than create from the limiting material energy of just my own sources of poetic logic. Keeping with the photographic tradition that one need document a moment in time all images then represent captures of processes that are unfolding in time. All Images are straight shot renderings of built environments. Only the manipulation, by pushing and pulling, of light is employed. The presence of burnt white is an important part of the aesthetic pathology.

http://henryavignonart.viewbook.com/artist_statement

http://www.youtube.com/user/henryavignonart
Europe : Jean Serge Breton (Paris, France)  e-mail: new.deal.films@wanadoo.fr  BUSINESS MANAGER International: Pamela St Clair Naylon (Paris, France) e-mail: insight.senseofart@gmail.com

15 SEPTEMBER 2011
FROM MILSPEAK BOOKS