What do you think?
Rate this book
Becoming Visible
- GenresPoetry
83 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1981
About the author
Philip Lamantia
36 books33 followersPhilip Lamantia was an American poet and lecturer. Lamantia's visionary poems were ecstatic, terror-filled, and erotic which explored the subconscious world of dreams and linked it to the experience of daily life.
The poet was born in San Francisco to Sicilian immigrants and raised in that city's Excelsior neighborhood. His poetry was first published in the magazine View in 1943, when he was fifteen and in the final issue of the Surrealist magazine VVV the following year. In 1944 he dropped out of Balboa High School to pursue poetry in New York City. He returned to the Bay Area in 1945 and his first book, Erotic Poems, was published a year later.
Lamantia was one of the post World War II poets now sometimes referred to as the San Francisco Renaissance, and later became involved with the San Francisco Beat Generation poets and The Surrealist Movement in the United States. He was on the bill at San Francisco's Six Gallery on October 7, 1955, when poet Allen Ginsberg read his poem Howl for the first time. At this event Lamantia chose to read the poems of John Hoffman, a friend who had recently died. Hoffman's poetry collection Journey to the End (which includes the poems that Lamantia read at the Six Gallery) was published by City Lights in 2008, bound together with Lamantia's own Tau, a poem-cycle also dating from the mid-fifties. Tau remained unpublished during Lamantia's lifetime.
Nancy Peters, his second wife and literary editor, quoted about him, "He found in the narcotic night world a kind of modern counterpart to the gothic castle -- a zone of peril to be symbolically or existentially crossed."
The poet spent time with native peoples in the United States and Mexico in the 1950s, participating in the peyote-eating rituals of the Washo Indians of Nevada. In later life, he embraced Catholicism, the religion of his childhood, and wrote many poems on Catholic themes.
The poet was born in San Francisco to Sicilian immigrants and raised in that city's Excelsior neighborhood. His poetry was first published in the magazine View in 1943, when he was fifteen and in the final issue of the Surrealist magazine VVV the following year. In 1944 he dropped out of Balboa High School to pursue poetry in New York City. He returned to the Bay Area in 1945 and his first book, Erotic Poems, was published a year later.
Lamantia was one of the post World War II poets now sometimes referred to as the San Francisco Renaissance, and later became involved with the San Francisco Beat Generation poets and The Surrealist Movement in the United States. He was on the bill at San Francisco's Six Gallery on October 7, 1955, when poet Allen Ginsberg read his poem Howl for the first time. At this event Lamantia chose to read the poems of John Hoffman, a friend who had recently died. Hoffman's poetry collection Journey to the End (which includes the poems that Lamantia read at the Six Gallery) was published by City Lights in 2008, bound together with Lamantia's own Tau, a poem-cycle also dating from the mid-fifties. Tau remained unpublished during Lamantia's lifetime.
Nancy Peters, his second wife and literary editor, quoted about him, "He found in the narcotic night world a kind of modern counterpart to the gothic castle -- a zone of peril to be symbolically or existentially crossed."
The poet spent time with native peoples in the United States and Mexico in the 1950s, participating in the peyote-eating rituals of the Washo Indians of Nevada. In later life, he embraced Catholicism, the religion of his childhood, and wrote many poems on Catholic themes.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 29, 2022
A whorl of happy eyes and devilish faces
struck out of antique sensuous paintings
twinkle from the knees and calves
moving slower than dream women
the hands are gesturing with violet blood
come from floating feathers
their sea anemone fingernails opening tropical fruits
(mango skins over snow)
and quickly rising to summer I meet you
walking in sateen boots over jewels of ice we spread for you
*
With the fox to see by
subterranean rivers advance
from under an asphalt sky
Auroras you exhale
the scorpion poem between our bellies
the mint's pebble trickles down the three-thousand-year-old flute
washed up on a lemon-leaf bed
the way your look born of mollusc tears
mirrors the fins of memory in a dolphin's eye.
*
Ah that taste of liquid spoon
magnified from the forest's apple
and where your odors lie unfurling
comets' toes fire into orioles
(on their steps leave no traces)
twining my marrow's light
from your turning head of nervous lips
The stars dress up their furrows
a torch of musk awakening my spark of fruit
* * *
The path newly swathed swims from the horizon
like a clover caught with a pearl rose
bannister cupped in wind
railroad from the Milky Way
my vampire of words this body of light
I surpass the blossoms
cantering over the hole
branched by soothing flames
* * *
The skylight drowns
as you walk into my voice
carrying a box of flames
entirely secretive
you tap open by the charmed hairpin
of the mysteries of sleep
* * *
Why ride around with the chains of the tortured
bleeding from your cars?
Grapes are livid with corpses
the regal dead are passing out knockout candy
The seas are a hailstorm of flint and oranges
Over the land the floating eggshell
Under the rocks the tobaccos are squealing
If I know the way down the seashell's luxuriant city
why does your feline marrow reverse the human alphabet?
struck out of antique sensuous paintings
twinkle from the knees and calves
moving slower than dream women
the hands are gesturing with violet blood
come from floating feathers
their sea anemone fingernails opening tropical fruits
(mango skins over snow)
and quickly rising to summer I meet you
walking in sateen boots over jewels of ice we spread for you
*
With the fox to see by
subterranean rivers advance
from under an asphalt sky
Auroras you exhale
the scorpion poem between our bellies
the mint's pebble trickles down the three-thousand-year-old flute
washed up on a lemon-leaf bed
the way your look born of mollusc tears
mirrors the fins of memory in a dolphin's eye.
*
Ah that taste of liquid spoon
magnified from the forest's apple
and where your odors lie unfurling
comets' toes fire into orioles
(on their steps leave no traces)
twining my marrow's light
from your turning head of nervous lips
The stars dress up their furrows
a torch of musk awakening my spark of fruit
- Becoming Visible, pg. 29-30
* * *
The path newly swathed swims from the horizon
like a clover caught with a pearl rose
bannister cupped in wind
railroad from the Milky Way
my vampire of words this body of light
I surpass the blossoms
cantering over the hole
branched by soothing flames
- Mask of Geometry, pg. 42
* * *
The skylight drowns
as you walk into my voice
carrying a box of flames
entirely secretive
you tap open by the charmed hairpin
of the mysteries of sleep
- To Begin Then Not Now, pg. 65
* * *
Why ride around with the chains of the tortured
bleeding from your cars?
Grapes are livid with corpses
the regal dead are passing out knockout candy
The seas are a hailstorm of flint and oranges
Over the land the floating eggshell
Under the rocks the tobaccos are squealing
If I know the way down the seashell's luxuriant city
why does your feline marrow reverse the human alphabet?
- The Days Fall Asleep with Riddles, pg. 74
May 26, 2025
Awkwardly wearing a word-suit that fits it very badly. The words want to stay together but they are magnets of the same polarity, jumping, clunking into each other, clumped together and instantly flying apart. At the end, there is no reality left, but the sense that it wanted to be there.
It wanted to be prophetic, but is very much of its time.
It wanted to be timeless, but is a static image with no vector.
It wanted to be visible, but the things leave in frustration, and what's left are just words and symbols, obstructing essences.
It wanted to be disembodied, but is ineffectually concealing its body.
Some stronger poems towards the end of the collection. ‘The Days Fall Asleep with Riddles’ seems central, and embodied like the rest of the collection wanted to be. Very American — I guess that specificity can be considered a plus.
It wanted to be prophetic, but is very much of its time.
It wanted to be timeless, but is a static image with no vector.
It wanted to be visible, but the things leave in frustration, and what's left are just words and symbols, obstructing essences.
It wanted to be disembodied, but is ineffectually concealing its body.
Some stronger poems towards the end of the collection. ‘The Days Fall Asleep with Riddles’ seems central, and embodied like the rest of the collection wanted to be. Very American — I guess that specificity can be considered a plus.
February 10, 2016
This book is evidence that visions and/or hallucinatory images are partly transferable, but perhaps poetry is not the most efficient format to do this.
This book was like walking through a Salvador Dali exhibit on acid. Pretty heavy.
While Touch of the Marvelous had a few outstanding poems in its collection, Becoming Visible was a litte underwhelming to me. However, there was the occasional line which really stood out and was very vivid and colorful but in most of these poems I was lost. I had NO idea what Lamantia was trying to say, express or convey in most of these poems except perhaps simply the full kaleidoscopic spectrum of his madness. This poetry is either very heavily drug-fueled or Lamantia badly needed to see a shrink. I did hear that he went through a few mental breakdowns, once when his partner Nancy left him so maybe this was the end-result. The most interesting section to me, funnily enough, was the notes section at the back where Lamantia explains a little bit about some of the references in the poems, mostly references to Native American tribes and their peyote rituals etc.
This is worth checking out if you are into surrealism but if you are new to Lamantia's work, don't start here. Start instead with Tau (in my opinion his best collection) or Touch of the Marvelous.
This book was like walking through a Salvador Dali exhibit on acid. Pretty heavy.
While Touch of the Marvelous had a few outstanding poems in its collection, Becoming Visible was a litte underwhelming to me. However, there was the occasional line which really stood out and was very vivid and colorful but in most of these poems I was lost. I had NO idea what Lamantia was trying to say, express or convey in most of these poems except perhaps simply the full kaleidoscopic spectrum of his madness. This poetry is either very heavily drug-fueled or Lamantia badly needed to see a shrink. I did hear that he went through a few mental breakdowns, once when his partner Nancy left him so maybe this was the end-result. The most interesting section to me, funnily enough, was the notes section at the back where Lamantia explains a little bit about some of the references in the poems, mostly references to Native American tribes and their peyote rituals etc.
This is worth checking out if you are into surrealism but if you are new to Lamantia's work, don't start here. Start instead with Tau (in my opinion his best collection) or Touch of the Marvelous.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews