Perhaps the imagination is on the verge of recovering its rights.
— Andre Breton
What divides the light from the darkness?
The warmth of the egg
Q&A Session with Sharon Cunniff, Mary Ellen Binkele, and Michelle Tennison (2011)
What is the meaning of Grace?
I heard you sing in your sleep
Question Harry Hudson, Answer Michelle Tennison (2005)
What thoughts are weightless?
I step out of my mother’s dream
Question John Levy, Answer Michelle Tennison (2017)
What is poetry?
Yours or mine?
Question Michelle Tennison, Answer Eve Luckring (2017)
What lives in sincerity?
apples:
one to eat
one to stone
you with
What is remembering?
Wanting to trust the shape a wave makes
What is stirring in my gut?
(When) connecting the dots makes a circle
Questions Eve Luckring, Answers Michelle Tennison (2017)
I have long been a fan of — and been inspired by — the work of Los Angeles artist and poet Eve Luckring. One of the gifts of haiku is that it allows us to recognize a kindred spirit, even across a continent. This is how I felt about Eve even before we connected recently through playing the Question and Answer Game. I felt I could trust her with some difficult questions, and I was right. I hope I was able to answer a few for her as well.
Is God happy?
The salt in seaweed
How will the world end?
A bat released from a bubbling spring
Questions Michelle Tennison, Answers Eve Luckring (2017)
What reveals disguise?
When all the walls disappear
What do you call into your heart upon awakening?
Like rain on sugar
What is forgiveness?
A silence that rests inside fire
Questions Eve Luckring, Answers Michelle Tennison (2017)
Thank you, Eve, for being you. It was wonderful, I would even say Marvelous, “meeting” you this way.
There are years that ask questions and years that answer.
–Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Sometimes the game itself transcends logic and seems to tap into another realm, suggesting a transpersonal consciousness at work. The following results from playing the game with Zen practitioner and haiku poet Christopher Herold give a glimpse into the more beautiful side of Surrealism, something Andre Breton called The Marvelous.
I asked Christopher 11 pointed questions, and he answered them, unseen:
What is the past?
The taste of spring water at 12,000 feet
Where is the map?
A brick path’s geometry of moss
What is the mind of God?
The emptiness inside a mirrored ball
What is truth?
This worn out pair of shoes
How do you know you’ve really made it?
The scent of a pine forest on a hot afternoon
What is the one dream?
Bagpipes skirling through a foggy dawn
What is kindness?
The receding tide depositing driftwood on the shore
Where is the nearest exit?
Linear time compressing as death approaches
What will happen when two snowflakes are exactly alike?
Children’s laughter
How can I avoid suffering?
Discovering and letting go of our attachments.
What is deep thinking?
Nothing . . . in particular
Questions Michelle Tennison, Answers Christopher Herold (2017)
Photograph by Michelle Tennison
Surrealist tract, 1925
What if a question does not have an answer?
One more step
Q&A Session with Timothy Binkele, Anna Binkele (age 14), Seth Binkele (age 11), Cole Binkele (age 5), Ella Binkele (age 3), Mary Ellen Binkele, and Michelle Tennison (2015)
What is deja vu?
A blind person’s description of a sea anemone
Question Michelle Tennison, Answer Paul Miller (2014)
How can you recognize your own despair?
A phoenix rising
Question Michelle Tennison, Answer Eve Luckring (2017)
Seriously, why am I here?
anonymity:
the day lily
in its splendor
Question Michelle Tennison, Answer Sabine Miller (2015)
Where do we fly to when we fly in our dreams?
More of something,
silence, more
of this
Question Michelle Tennison, Answer Sabine Miller (2015)
I admit that two-and-two-makes-four is an excellent thing, but if all things are to be praised, I should say that two-and-two makes five is also a delightful thing.
–Feodor Dostoevsky
What is the secret life of numbers?
A black spot just outside your field of vision
Question Michelle Tennison, Answer Mark Harris (2016)
How long is a moment?
Remember me
Question Mary Ellen Binkele, Answer Michelle Tennison (2016)
The strangely beautiful juxtapositions engendered by The Question and Answer Game can, when successful, highlight the revolutionary gifts of Surrealism. The rational mind is sidestepped. Mental habit is challenged. Our social conditioning is no longer in control. Even our personal story and world view can be called into question in order to make sense of a radically new correlation of ideas. We aren’t really sure how it is possible, but somehow this thing confronting us just feels true in a new way.
What is the moment of conception?
Lost to her breath given willingly
Question Michelle Tennison, Answer Chris Hudson (2010)
What am I doing in the other dimensions?
The perfume of strangers
Question Michelle Tennison, Answer Sabine Miller (2015)
How will I know you in the afterlife?
The heart outside my body
Q&A Session with Mary Ellen Binkele and Michelle Tennison (2014)
Surrealism is not a new means of expression, nor a simpler one, nor even a metaphysic of poetry. It is a means of total liberation of the mind and of everything resembling it.
—Andre Breton, Surrealist tract, 1925
Is there a way out?
(searching for) a lost oar
Question Mark Harris, Answer Michelle Tennison (2016)
When am I no longer me?
The light fades to this point, the snakes come out
Question Harry Hudson, Answer Michelle Tennison (2004)
A Lit Jellyfish 
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