Echoes and eclairs...

When I was a girl and visited my grandparents in their third floor walk-up apartment at 1908 Newkirk Avenue, I had several great things to look forward to. Well, besides being made to feel I was the most original, wonderful, grandchild to ever eat an eclair or learn to read Dr. Seuss. But in addition to my doting grandparents, the adjacent apartments had welcoming neighbors, each living utterly different lives.

To the right, in apartment 3B, was a Brazilian (or was it Colombian?), family where I would visit, soon affect a Spanish accent and play with a girl about my age who had, I think, my name too! This girl arrived in Brooklyn periodically. I am left with the taste of their food, so unlike what white folk were eating in West Hartford in the 60s, with fragrant meats, rice and beans. Their apartment filled with family members, all talking at once. The colors were sharp—definitive reds, starched white lace racing around skirt hems, waving black hair, snappy pink dresses. I remember getting letters, with flamboyant postage stamps, from her for several years, and when I opened them I could smell the lemon furniture polish, perfume, and hot pepper that suffused their living room.

To the left, in apartment 3D, a refined elderly woman had a very well dressed child named Cordelia come visit. We would sit on the carpet attempting to fill our grandmothers with the joy of watching us play together. And while I admired Cordelia's carefully waving hair and pale blue wool coat, I don't actually remember talking or laughing very loudly. And yet I looked forward to seeing her. I did my best to hold the teacup very properly and eat the tea biscuits without getting too many crumbs on my favorite pilled orange sweater. The colors in this apartment were as if a faint blue gray fog had rolled out of the seascapes on the walls. They told me that they were related to the very Hudson who gave the river its name. I couldn't believe The Hudson had been a Mr. Hudson once. It was clear that no rivers had been named after members of my family, who being Jews, had needed to move often throughout history and took their names with them.

If I were to write and illustrate a picture book based on this memeory, I'd like to revisit the wonder of being an ambassador of cultural exchange in Flatbush. And how I'd patterned myself, like human silly putty, on the lives they projected. Given my penchant for fantasy and science fiction, perhaps the neighbors would live further away than South Hampton or South America? You never know.

Of course, the best part was the welcome in 3C, where the rituals of mutual delight still make smile. Here's to the mushroom barley soup, the scrabble games, and the well-told stories. It is wonderful to have grandparents who adore you, I don't need to remember any of the details exactly to know that one thing completely, with all my heart.

How to recover from too much new technology

After my mighty swearing learning curve with ePub, I had to recharge with the stuff that is fueled by imagination and requires nothing more complex than ink, pencil and paper.

I simply had to eat visuals. 

I absorbed some of my favorite illustrators of all time,William Blake, John Tenniel, Gustave Doré, Arthur Rackham, Frank C. Papé, Maurice Sendak, Pauline Baynes,  and more currently Posy Simmonds (who does terrific social satire in graphic novels that make adroit reuse of 19th century plots) and Shaun Tan.

I discovered Tan is working (as director, artist and author with a team) on an animated version of his picture book The Lost Thing. See this, and this. He too is adapting work into a new technology. He is turning the drawn by hand into its CGI incarnation. Paper to moving image. A picture book is a series of moments stilled on a page and it must be tricky making it merge into one moving picture. Plus when I read or look at illustrations, I can slow down as much as I want, the pacing is controlled by reader vs pacing by film maker. But it is even more than the transformation of full animation, the technology itself shapes the artistry. And with every aspect having to be created, the suggestively fuzzy must be harder to hold onto.

I can see the advent of technology in photoshop, illustrator, and indesign. Each new release of the software offers new "tricks" and graphics reflect their use. You can date design and artwork created on computers by how most people have used the available technology. Of course, having a strong vision will keep the tricks from taking over. Tan speaks so thoughtfully about the differences between the two mediums. How the possibilities of animation can easily overwhelm what is at heart a simple story.

I am sure Tan's adaptation will be terrific, and stay true to his vision, looking at the video and images in the article. But I am willing to guess it has had its technical frustrations and negotiations. Of course, spill your coffee on your drawing in progress to meet the technical oops of "by hand."

There is also this, a pencil sketch is subject to areas of smudge or faintness or all scribbled-in-ness that means it is not fully explicated in those areas. And this is good, the mind likes to fill in or ignore, just as we do when walking down the sidewalk. And about those walks, I come back refreshed from every one I take. It is as if the mind finds the increased oxygen, the rythm of walking, and the unfolding perspectives of urban and natural under the sun, the mist, or the night, all trigger something deep. Or at least burn off the calories from my chocolate habit.

To illustration! To walks! To the muse of the streets!

the perils of (e)publishing

Good thing you weren't around my work area the last few days.
I have been learning how to turn perfectly nice poetry books and publications into hideous ePub files.

Helpful white papers and how-to-guides have led me into a dark dark place.
I have been saying things like "goferkiketyblanging-son-of-a-varmish!!" The cat backs away from my vincinity and even the husband spins on his heels and exits the blue static.

"Why won't the grab-dang-fickle images show up?" I ask the computer as once again all artwork but one disappear when I convert.

"Where the fluke did the table column heads go? Where is my table?" I scream at the monitor. "Give me back my table cells you dastard!"

It reminds me of the mid-90s when I was working as the lone graphic designer in the IT department for MTVN/Showtime. I didn't know how to program, let alone how to do the simple boo-boo mark-up language of html. But as the Indian and Russian programmers kept telling me it was not possible to do the visual improvements I asked for, I started going on the web and finding examples of what I wanted. They shrugged (for some reason programmers don't see the value of graphic design when their code is working fine). So I then began to learn how to do it myself so I could say to the guys, "oh yes, you CAN! Because I (artsy-fartsy English major type) just did, look at THIS!" Of course, back then designing for the web was all about fakes and work-arounds because the browsers weren't set up for graphic design. I found the whole process frustrating and then after awhile, I knew how to do it. For about 5 minutes. The web kept expanding, the browsers improved and the plethora of new software to learn soon made me yearn to return to print design where the pace of technology was glacial.

So I worked at Oxford University Press for seven years mostly ignoring the web. Hah. It caught up with me.

And now I have to learn how to do it again. The electronic world is gobbling up the printed page and regurgitating it in pixels. And not so strangely, e-Pub is like the web was in the mid 90s. Books for Kindles or iPhones just can't do a lot by way of layout, there are work-arounds today, then it will get more functional amazingly fast and ePub books will get much better looking. Like a kid going from 13 to 16.

I may even have to buy an iPad if this becomes the place poetry books are co-published. And at some point, how many publishers will keep issuing paper editions? The horseless carriage becomes the car and the horse goes to the knackers.

I went to a lecture sponsored by the InDesign Users Group. The informative and perky Gabriel Powell spoke about eBooks and how to make them. Yes, I said to myself walking home with the confidence only fools can get from a well-organized demonstration, I just know I can do it... and here I sit in a mist of ire. How I wish Gabriel could do my work for me, he made it sound so easy,

Beijing Calling

My husband Jim is in Beijing getting work writing for musical theatre. I am getting mouth-watering reports of great food, culture, and calligraphy. How hard would it be to learn enough Mandarin to be able to travel to the correct destination in a cab, order the food I want to eat, and say culturally appropriate things to the people I meet?

For me, very very hard. I had many years of French, from middle school to college and I can't do much more than "parlay-vooooo" which just proves my brain is only good at writing poems in English and even then I wonder if my grasp of language is enough. But if I love reading poems in translation, how much better would it be to be able to read them as written?

I think I could learn to read it better than speak it. Years of graphic design and differentiating type faces have made me sensitive to the slightest curl or straight in a letter shape. I have painted watercolors for decades, I know how a brush moves, the slick and stick to paper, the thick flow to scumble finish as the pigment goes from bristle to pulp. I've taken a lot of calligraphy classes... I know this. I also like the idea that the written language is independent of the sounds--pitch can't change the meaning of a written word-- I could learn to read and paint some word shapes. I think I shall try. When Jim gets back with ink and brush and a book for little kids to learn their letters.

CBIG

I went to the Childrens' Book Illustrator Group meeting on Sunday wondering if it could be at all useful to my errant freelance fancy, as in, earn a buck. While Regina Griffin of Egmont did a most informative overview of her new (start up) American branch of a large European publishing company I looked around the packed living room of our host and saw the eager, hungry, talented, and skilled hoards of illustrators, I asked myself the key question.

What sets me apart?

I haven't actually illustrated many books or magazines for kids. I certainly am not a name in the business. My style is not cutting edge or going to change the way an entire generation thinks about the way we see the world (Sendak). But...

I combine skills in a way that does make me a bit unusual. I've studied calligraphy, cartography, poetry, life drawing, book design, cartooning, painting, adobe illustrator and photoshop, color theory, perspective, anatomy, and I know how to develop a narrative and tell a story in words as well as images. One of the ways all this combines is in creating decorative/illustrated maps. Maps always have a narrative implied.

So during the Q. & A. I asked if she had need of such maps. She does.  (I have done many--for fantasy books, kids' books, YA, historical, travel and whimsical.) I hope that she gets back to me, I left her my card and sent an invitation to view my website. Sometimes it helps to know what I can offer to a client, something I am uniquely qualified to do, that nobody else in the room is mentioning.

After that I leaned back and enjoyed the wonderful work my fellow members were presenting in the portfolio review. Here's to all of us.

Tasters' Choice

You know how some friends send things back to the kitchen, "I wanted my coffee in a proper mug with a handle, not a glass cup, please" and others would drink dish water from a dirty can without saying a word? The world divides into two camps, the resenders and the takers. So too in my house.

I woke up to a clear message that the cat (resender) had objected to both her wet and dry food by resending it onto the floor near my bed, by the human toilet, and finally in strongly worded contempt, the interior of my loafers. The dog (taker), on the other paw, had not only eaten hers, but had not objected to eating what the cat didn't want. Which isn't so bad but the high calorie cat food gives the dog a colonic cleanse which resulted in the dog turning solids into liquids in areas where my foot landed first stumbling from sleep to day.

Ah, the joys of pets.

The Tim Burton MoMA Show: brain afire

Yesterday I went to the Museum of Modern Art with my friend Jeannie. Thanks to her membership, I got in for $5.00. Thanks to her company, I had a wonderful time. It was a good thing we went at the relatively unfashionable time of one-ish on a Thursday. It was pretty full, from school trips to tourists, to fans from everywhere. I can't even imagine how packed it is on a Saturday.

I learned I am only two years older than Mr. Burton. Made it fun to walk through and check off the influences. In his early years: Disney, Dr. Seuss, Grimm's fairy tales, Mad Magazine, horror movies and Houdini! Then Don Marquis' Archy and Mehitabel, George Herriman's Krazy Kat, Gahan Wilson, Charles Addams, Van Gogh, Al Hirschfeld, Ralph Steadman, and on and on. But really, anything I was devouring visually, he was too. The show had several walls and cases showing his development as a kid with some (not remarkable) talent into someone who would --with drive and obsession-- develop his themes and vision into a fully realized creative institution.

When I was a girl and teenager I could not keep my hands quiet. Along with a strong pull to my own daydreams in the classroom, I doodled. I drew on any piece of paper in front of me, on the desk, in my school books, on my skin. And if I couldn't draw, my hands couldn't stay still. I tapped my pencil, chewed my nails, rubbed the student inflicted initial scars on the desktop. At home I filled notebook after notebook with drawings in pencil, magic marker, watercolor, and gloppy poster paints. But here my path begins to diverge from Burton's. He never stopped. And in that time after high school he kept drawing. The themes are all there in the early work but they become distinctive, creepier, deeper, more wild as he goes through his 20s. His show made me wish that I had not let myself be diverted, that I had kept pursuing the drawing... but it is never that simple. I had good reasons to quiet down my hands and start paying attention in the classroom. The real story is not why people stop, but what makes them keep going. I don't think talent is the engine really. Artists like Burton have a compulsive need to keep doing the things they do and the will to make it viable to themselves and others. And then there is that mysterious extra ingredient that an artist can't control, call it talent or communication, that makes the effort compelling and marketable. I had art teachers tell me I had great gifts and would end up a successful or famous artist. I also had college professors who informed me my work was listless with precision and no vision. Who was right? Doesn't matter, if I had kept going I might have gotten somewhere as an artist, you can't get there by stopping. And Burton didn't stop.

The best thing was watching his themes devour the influences and grow into his unique vision. He is smart, funny, and able to tap the creepiest fears that rise up from nightmares and shame. I love his approach, a sky is not a color but a radiating energy of lines. Fears become fantastical recognizable monsters. I was laughing out loud through much of the show. Then in the final room, the movie props, wonderful proof that he has been able to make teams of other artists see what he sees.

I am now getting out a sketchpad. I remember how much FUN it was to doodle! Don't worry, I won't give up my poetry and graphic design, but the best thing about seeing a show like this is how it inspires. Like a virus, I've caught the Burton bug.

IMAGININGS poetry/prose contest

Here is the flyer for this contest,  write up to 500 (probably won't need more than 200) words to go with a slow motion video. 4 videos, 4 chances to win. Winners get $500.00 Poets welcome! Go to: http://vimeo.com/channels/69858. I entered. Deadline extended to January 31st. And since you ask, yes, I designed the flyer, careful to use web safe fonts...

Crafty moments

Getting good comments on my design work for both the Madeleine L'Engle and Jay Marshall biography projects. Yay.  Mostly reviewers don't comment much on design, so when they do, I am delighted:

"Although I expected a wealth of detail from the page count, I was unprepared for how bountifully the book is illustrated and how exquisitely it's laid out, not only with rare photos of Jay but with all sorts of posters, letters, and personal memorabilia."  --Steve Bryant

Since I spent months laying out this 69 chapter book and color correcting and repairing (mildew, rips) the 700 old photos and memorabilia, great to have the work noticed.

And in the evenings, been having fun making beaded gifts for family, friends, and my very own self.

My Avatar after party, not

Jim and I went to see the wonderful 3-D Avatar and I deeply wished I was blue, ten feet tall, and able to leap onto the back of pterodactyl-ish transportation. I recommend the film, who needs the plot to be more than it is? It was pure fun.

You would think after all that visual excitement I'd have dreams of the imaginary world, Pandora, and continue the adventure using my own high maintenance avatar unit--my sleeping brain. And I did, but not exactly. Instead of finding myself in the body of a superhuman with a neural telecommunication device growing in my hair and romping through a rain forest (amped on helium and steroids),  I was a balding middle aged, middle management MAN going to work and feeling as sluggish and gray as the office park I entered. I had to sit through meetings, sort out the departmental internecine squabbles, and think about my mortgage and depleted investments. Yes, it was startling to go to the men's room and experience the different plumbing, in both senses, but I felt terribly cheated. This is the true avatar experience, I thought as I rubbed a patch of beard stubble under my right jaw I'd missed in the rushed morning shave, this is how it feels to walk in another man's shoes, literally. And I didn't like the shoes. Dang-it, I shouted at the dream, let me be George Clooney or Viggo Mortensen at least. Although, who knows what's truly fun in an actors life (boring waiting around sets, for instance)...let me be president Obama...oh, wait, talk about a tough job...Never mind.

The cool thing was, I didn't walk or talk like a woman when I was a man. So whoever you are, in whatever world, thanks for letting me borrow your body for eight hours, I have just proved to myself I'd rather be me, thanks.

Those fabulous book parties

Speaking of which, except for my wardrobe, I have been part of some terrifically sophisticated Manhattanish book and arts celebrations. Consider me your book party avatar and be sure to imagine me in something quite stylish, and while you are at it, make me 3 shoe sizes smaller.

At the legendary midtown club:
First was the launch of Gardner McFall's poetry book Russian Tortoise (disclaimer, I designed the cover) as well as an opera she wrote (I remember the theme of flying) at the Century Association. Into this legendary club I showed up hauling a 2 by 3 foot mounted poster in a huge, now wet, black plastic bag. Gardner's husband had me create, on the sly, the poster with her cover altered to read "The Tortoise Has Landed" and I added the parachute from a Russian soyuz to show the tortoise is not crash landing. This party was upstairs in a well proportioned dove gray room room lined with interesting artworks owned by the club. An open bar and frequent tidbits made me happy. Opera singers with classy voices sang a short selection from Gardner's opera as the composer played the piano. I quickly discovered half the room was lawyers and the other half poets. This led to me writing a poem about the singular way we are alike, as both poets and lawyers know the crucial importance of a single word. I enjoyed talking to poets I know as well as some lawyers that were, no surprise, well read and lovely to chat with. Melinda Thomsen and Martin Mitchell sat at a table with me and my husband and the caterers soon realized we were voracious and always swooped by.

At the NOHO Bowery Poetry Club:
My next party was the annual Brevitas reading at the Bowery Poetry Club. As the title suggests, the Brevitas poets, all two dozen or so of them, only write short poems. However with a music interlude of half an hour, the guest poet Harvey Shapiro!, two open readings (disclaimer, I was in the first open reading) and some Brevitas readers that felt the need for explanations that sometimes took longer than the poems, the event that started with me fresh at 1:30 ended with me rather droopy by 5:30. The Bowery Poetry Club is so unlike the Century Association that I feel Dante would have to feature them in two different books. Here the colors were black and the textures scuffed. I was especially there for my friend, the talented Flash Rosenberg, who not only read her poems but drew the bright and witty cartoon cover for the anthology of Brevitas poems that the $7.00 cover charge entitled one to. (Disclaimer, I helped her place and trim the artwork for the cover.) Because I read in the open mic, and am a pal of Flash, I got invited to an after party in Bob Holman's art and book inspired penthouse. The floor was painted with poetry, even the hallways. What a brilliant thing to do. Poetry books filled the walls of this airy lovely space. Did I mention Bob runs The Bowery Poetry Club? Well then, he does. Since I was utterly charmed by most of the work I had heard that night I was hopeful the group would consider me when they need to reinfuse their membership. There were tidbits to eat, including chocolates, and wine and lovely conversations. I even bonded a bit with a large plump gingery cat that lived there.

At a fabulous artsy residence in the Village:
Our friend, and my collaborator, the talented Carly Sachs, had one of her delectable food poems included in The Poet's Cookbook: Recipes from Tuscany, an anthology of food poems in both English and Italian edited by Grace Cavalieri and translated by Sabine Pascarelli. To celebrate the publication of the book, both poets and recipes from the book were enjoyed in a brownstone that is inhabited by a painter with helpful children (selling books) and walls replete with tongue-in-cheek collections of art. A wall of dog hunting paintings, a wall of delightful whimsical drawings! But honestly, I was far too distracted by the FOOD! Oh my god, Tuscan cooking, prepared by Alison of Alison's Restaurants, via the Village, a marvel. Olive dips, mozzarella so fresh it practically moooed, and pignoli cookies. The reading was sponsored by The Bordighera Press and the Vermont Studio Center Writing Program so there was a mix of poets, patrons, painters, and program directors.

Again in the Village, another lovely home:
And finally, a party in celebration of the publication of Patricia Carlin's new book of poetry, Quantum Jitters from Marsh Hawk Press. This home spoke of taste, spaciousness, and comfort. In fact, it was the home of the former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, now the President of The New School, and his wife Sarah Paley who hosted this lovely event. As I was looking for the address, I noticed a man outside busily listening to a cell phone and asked him if I'd found the place with the book event. He kindly nodded me in and later I realized this was Mr. Kerrey. Inside I found many of my fellow members of Marsh Hawk Press, all looking spiffy, and soon other dear friends arrived. Jeanne Marie Beaumont (poet) and Bob Mendelsohn (video), Lynne Saville (photography), Philip Fried (poet/publisher) and more. I met a fascinating woman who studies game theory. I was suddenly struck by the thought that once, back the the 1970s, my mother taught at the New School. Had she too been to any events at the president's house? And here I was eating bitty bits and sipping excellent wine and also celebrating the life of poetry. Raise a glass again!


While the lawyers dressed impeccably at the club reading, the poets just as expected in the Bowery, the most interesting outfits winked in and out of view around the trays and platters in the Village affairs.

Remembering and Designing Madeleine L'Engle

I just created my first design published on Lulu, A Circle of Friends: Remembering Madeleine L'Engle. There is an expensive all color interior first edition and the far more affordable grayscale, (black and white) interior.

The remembering part I did as well, I have an essay in the book. I took a writing class from Madeleine in the early 90s at the Episcopalian convent on 113th Street. Despite the palpable hero worship surrounding her, she had a very directed, concise, encouraging, and witty/tart presence. The book is full of wonderful examples of her advice on writing and warm personal memories from close friends. I wasn't part of the inner circle, not being nearly as interested in the Christian aspects of her writing as in the narratives and characters she sent through familiar and imagined worlds.

Designing the book happened sort of by accident, the editor Katherine Kirkpatrick needed help with some things and before you know it, I'd sunk into the project and did it all. Lulu was rather difficult to navigate. You simply cannot speak to a human. I discovered a cover could not be one point too narrow! Not one point or the whole thing was off. Argh! But once I got that it was an utter perfectionist and could not comprehend human imperfection (which may in its own way be an explanation of why the infinite and finite seem to have so much trouble communicating) the job uploaded and declared itself published. In the old days, when I worked inhouse at publishing companies, after a book was published we generally met and hoisted a paper cup with an undistinguished vintage and made noises about effort and talent and thanked everyone. So let me raise a cup to all the people who wrote, edited, designed, and coaxed this book into existence. Especially Katherine Kirkpatrick who always believed it was a book that needed to happen.

Illustration: Say Ahhhhhhhhh for Alimentum

The Winter/Holiday Issue of Alimentum: The Literature of Food is in my hands and looks grand. All my spot art printed just dandy! The ink line (scanned) and pencil smudge (via photoshop) turned into a real live journal and I am walking around the apartment with that aren't I something glow. My spouse reminds me I need to vet a job proposal and think about what I want for dinner. As if such things could interrupt my cloud, my cloudia of euphoria. It is also fine to discover this issue is sold out wherever I go. The cover, which I didn't draw but did design--picking very cherry pie colors for the issue--looks yummy.

Also I did the small deconstruction of the slice of pie on the back, turning the cover's whole pie slice into a single cherry in 4 steps that hopefully won't annoy the artist Marilyn Murphy. When the next delivery of the magazines arrives at my local independent bookseller (Book Culture) I will buy them as holiday gifts. Because as nice as some of my small illustrations are, the real charm is the content, Alimentum is simply a good read. See, the dancing fruitcakes are happy!

Laying out the House

Despite having a professional service come in and haul away absolutely everything that didn't sell at the tag sale or get shipped by the movers, my stepmother feels the need to go in and do a final sweeping and mopping of the large, now empty house on Long Island that was their home for so many decades.

I was going to tell her this isn't necessary. The man buying the house isn't going to need it cleaned to perfection. And then I realized this is what we do to the shell of things that were important to us. Bodies are bathed and cleaned for burial, as if earth or flame needs them clean. Even the tiny deaths of change bring out the need to honor a place by leaving it well tended.

She needs to mop. I need to mope.

-----

And I am happy to report that I'm up to 5,211 words in my novel. Right on target. This time the writing is more directed by plot. As I walk to the places I go to do my writing, I talk to Jim about the mechanics of getting my character from one situation to another, racheting up the stakes, what to do with some of the peripheral characters, and above all, ask important questions such as what sorts of martial arts would a werewolf girl take?

During the day I find myself thinking of my book as if it were something I'd taken out of the library and wanted find it so I know what happens next. I can almost see the cover under the glossy library jacket. Then I ask myself what a cheesy writer would do and beg myself to do better than that, throw in a wild card. And dialogue, and tell them what it looks like, and make it feel real.

Last year I based my novel on a fairy tale, setting it in 1911. The historical demands combined with my inability to trust hasty research really inhibited me. This time, no such problem. I know all the settings, the time is now.  As I navigate the skills needed to construct a novel, I am thankful I eliminated some of the clutter. Maybe after I finish this book, I'll feel confidant enough to go and finish the other one. But for now, I hear the dogs howling. Time to write.

Illustrating Alimentum

I finished. At the 11th and 3/4 hour.
I have now drawn dancing fruitcakes, well rolled burritos, pots of coffee, a hamburger, some saucy tomatoes, and plenty of pie. In other words, I got to do the spot illustrations for the Winter 2010 issue of Alimentum: the Literature of Food. Thank you Paulette and Peter, the editors/publisher, thank you.

I am particularly pleased with a pastry box (wrapped with striped string) on which I half hid the name of Ebingers, which is a now defunct yet legendary bakery I remember from the corner shop on Newkirk Plaza near my Grandmother's apartment. Think Brooklyn, mid 60s. Oh those ladies fingers, oh those breads. The scent of the place was enough to make my belly fuse with my heart.

Today was also an education in internet terminology. As in "trolling." I had my first anonymous negative attacker. In a series of increasingly hostile comments, the person forensically revealed their hurts and ills. I have deleted them and now have discovered there is a way to review comments before they are posted.

I am in the midst of illustrating a book of food-frenzy poems and am finding fruits and veggies have a lot of personality if you just ask them nicely to anthropomorphize.

Welcome to Louisville

After a 15 hour car trek we are here and wondering what besides the actors theatre and sluggers museum one would wish to see?

Reading with live jazz, pure fun

It was a thrill to have my poems responded to with live jazz improvisation. Brian Groder on trumpet, Lisle Ellis on acoustic bass, I was backed up by some of the best in the business. (In fact Ellis is on his way to play with Tony Davis, from me to Davis, too cool). They really listen, respond, in smart creative sound. I loved what they did to my raunchy poem about making love to a balloon. Ellis made these great squeaky ballonish sounds on the bass, it was all I could do to keep reading and not burst out laughing. That was fun, will have to do it again.
Thanks also to my fellow readers, Chris Cunningham and Sue Melot.

Old poses in new light

Statue by Claudia Carlson, 1971
My influences...

My parents are undertaking the selling of their house and to do this properly they are clearing out the attic, garage, and other corners of clutter. Family has descended to help them sort and haul and shred... I'm photographing and scanning old photos and the now musty drawings and paintings of the ancestors. My family was full of artists, both Sunday painters and professionals. The uncles, grandparents and my father's efforts are an astounding assortment of doodles, sketches, studies, draftsmanship and total whimsy. It is no wonder us kids were so encouraged to create.

My sister Christina spent a week pulling things from the attic and arranging them in the garage. She wore a face mask to protect her lungs from the attic dust and mildew from the now demolished shed. And out of the dust, she unearthed a statue I had made when I was 15.

"Look," she said, "here is the original and the knock-off." And yes, my statue that I haven't seen in 35 years, was sitting on a board just outside the garage. It was a jolt, a double-take. I'd forgotten so much about it. The dress had been black, she'd worn a crown, I'd left her flesh dead white...

A long time ago I fell in love with clay and my art teachers indulged me by letting me work during free periods or after school. I'd rolled and squooshed and carved this wonderfully malleable stuff and I was possessed by the need to turn it into a snarky yet elegant expression of my pissed-off attitude. I was a shy sarcastic skinny kid who looked 12 at 15. The next year I made a big fat American nuclear family--I wanted to savage the suburban life. I made cartoons in three dimensions. And if I hadn't been so stubborn and insecure, the sculpting would have netted me a scholarship into art school...I was offered one...but maybe in my heart I knew I was going to be an English/art history major and a conservatory wasn't what I needed.

But back to the evil queen. I remember her being much bigger. This was only 10 inches tall. And at 15 I considered it far better in quality than I can see now... But also, I'd forgotten how much attitude I'd put into it. I'd created a mix of Jadis (winter witch queen from Narnia), Coco Channel, and Sargent's Madame X. Her head was abstracted, snake-like, and the hands were my own, big with long fingers.
And next to it, stood a smaller blond version my other sister had made, setting off a huge intellectual property screaming match. Just one of many.

"You know, it's pretty good," I said, turning it in my hands.
"Yes, really, it is," replied Christina, putting my old work in a box for me to take away with some other, less successful efforts (including an odd pink elephant that looks like it has constipation).

All these years later, the terrible rage I'd felt at someone copying my idea, poof, gone... why couldn't I just have been flattered at 15? Ah sisters, it takes us so long to grow up.

What went wrong with The Bacchae

Don't get me wrong, there is much to enjoy in the free performance of THE BACCHAE in the Central Park amphitheatre. You can sit out the 90 minutes admiring the skills and talents of cast and crew, the grave music of modern master Philip Glass, and an amazing set by John Conklin featuring a moat, steaming volcanic fissure and a tier of stadium seats that veers down into a point of rubble (a visual representation of Gibbons?).

But I guess I have to blame the direction on the mish-mosh effect of this production. The visuals span the eons. The vengeful god Dionysus is shown as a rock-star, complete with American Idol microphone waltz moments, the doomed wrong-headed king Pentheus wears a 90s Wall Street suit, the chorus of women dazzle in Balinese/harem flame-orange with extra cloth padding their hips (by Kaye Voyce), the set is mid-century modern, the music is 70s redux, and the body of Pentheus--including his head--is full Fangoria explicit.

Euripides' troubling play, in which a god's infinite need for revenge makes dangerous beasts of the human victims, was strangely cerebral under JoAnne Akalaitis's direction. There is no homage to the fun moments of being enthralled to the god of wine and orgies. And as this tips into deadly excess, we have women driven mad with lust rampaging in the hills as they tear apart bodies of animals with their bare hands and teeth. Hot stuff. Not in this production. When Agave realizes she has slaughtered her own son, a moment that should be Greek tragedy Richter scale 10, it is strangely flat, as if she were saying, damn I broke my nails on this skull.

Most of all, what was lacking was a clear response on the director's part to this odd and difficult clash of gods and mortals. Were we to enjoy the burlesque homoerotic moments when the king falls prey to Dionysus suggestion he dress as a woman and spy on the women's sacred rites? Were we to enjoy the austere set and music against which the acting should resound? I didn't know which Bacchae I was most inclined to follow. And the chorus, lovely as they were to watch, were stuck in synchronized swim. I wanted them to use their numbers to express more conflict. After all, where was the danced representation of wildness and civilization, faith and heresy, infinite and finite, self-determination and fate?

Several times, alone and in groups, raccoons scuttled over the fallen "stones" at the corner of the stage. Once could easily imagine them tearing small victims apart. They got the strongest response of any actors on that stage. Or offstage, I heard them busy themselves in the trash cans near the stage entrance... it was a long 90 minutes.

I sat with a group of 18- and 19-year-olds. Perhaps it is a fault of their generation, even as the last bow was taken they were loudly criticising the show from their seats. This isn't TV, you aren't separated by a screen and on your living room couch... so many skilled and talented people worked hard on this show and were in earshot. I honor them for that. I was a little ashamed to be with my noisy detractors. But they had a point. When I saw the terrific production of Twelfth Night, at the Delacorte earlier this Summer, the applause filled the air.

Billy, Billy, Billy

I just borrowed Billy Collins latest poetry book, Ballistics, from the library. Over half the cover is devoted to a photo of a bullet slicing through a queen of hearts. Blam, you might think, this is poetry that cuts to the heart, poems that fire you up and punch holes in your assumptions.

Having read half the book, I have yet to find poetry that startles, pierces, or tears me. I have always enjoyed the way Mr. Collins writes: his essay-like turns in argument, whimsy, humor, and his graceful observations. He can be funny in a toast-master fashion or find the small profundities in the zen moments of everyday activities. And some of that delight is here. But there is a triviality to the handling of subject matter that makes these feel like the exercises of a skilled yet unengaged master. Death in his hands is a dentists appointment that has been scheduled for you, old age a daily round of boredoms, and lust is a thin target of verse.

Yes, there are a few winners in this deck. And I will find a few more if I keep reading... But I have to ask why the poet hasn't challenged himself to do more with his skills. This is the least engaging collection of his work I have read. When I think of poets like Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, or Donald Justice who could take a stroll and look at things, and write both the surfaces and the depths, I want to direct Mr. Collins to go deeper and stop stalling with card tricks.

Produce and Production or two brains at play

Back to illustrating...

Funny how I need to come at a project. Call it a weak ego, but I needed to start with my best skill and then work my way down to my weakest. So faced with Carly's wonderful pro-lust-pro-vegitarian poems, what did I do first?

1. Research! Tons of web images as well as a trip to the local produce aisles with my camera.

2. I designed the book, set the type, picked a trim size, and contemplated 60s diner-style retro fonts and finally chose a fun display face for the cover and poem titles.

3. Did rough pencil thumbnail drawings for 2 poems. Got better ideas, did roughs for the deeper, wilder, unexpected concepts.

4. Redrew the roughs to size in my typical "art students league life drawing sketch" style.

5. Redo the drawings in a breezy seemingly effortless mod pen and ink style.

I am now stuck between items 4 and 5. It is clear to me that it takes many attempts and failures and much practice to appear loose and spontaneous. Just kill me now.

So I turned to my Madeleine L'Engle project and wrote a 1,500 word essay. Take that pesky illustrations. I can essay my way out of a paper bag.

How do I illustrate a batch of poems?

I'm working with the talented and above all fun poet Carly Sachs. She has created a persona that mouths off in verse. "Ramona" is a militant vegetarian city-based earth goddess.

My mission, if I can possibly imagine it, is to give both the produce aisles and Ramona life as pen and ink illustrations that expand and compliment the poems. Hmmm.

Carly suggested I look at 50s and 60s style food advertising art. What a great resource! The exaggerated zippy lines, jazzy patterns, and over the top aprons, hairdos, and poses, perfect!... except that the faces on these drawings are interchangeable housewife dolls. Not so the character of Ramona. She is a 2009 woman and exudes character.

So here is to Ramona (sound of iced tea sloshing in ice cubes) and my crazy desire to learn to illustrate...

The houses were smaller

Well, I have just returned from my Grandma Hal's funeral in Indiana. I met cousins and friends I hadn't seen in at least 30 years. With that Rip Van Winkle effect, people instantly look like their parents and their children are what you thought they'd look like. My god the generations roll along faster there, women my age were grandmothers and great-grandmothers.

People were so kind, we were put up in cousin's homes, we heard stories, were treated to meals, including memorable sweet corn, the first of the season, and felt just how much Grandma's life had been tucked into theirs.

After the burial we drove on to Rochester, the town where we spent summers living in Grandma's two houses. The whole way there, Nedra (my stepmother) and her sister Sonya kept saying the houses didn't look good, one of them apparently had been a meth lab, that we should just look at old photos, spare ourselves, etc. But all us "kids" were adamant, we needed to see the streets, yards, gardens, alleys, and houses--no matter how they looked now.

And then we drove down the shady street and there it was. Not the hideous wrecks we expected, vinyl siding had gone up on both places. New management? They looked fine. Motorcycles parked out back, neatly mown, and tidy. Everything was smaller. So much smaller. But there was the gravel driveway where I accidentally dropped my end of carrying my sister Christina and a piece of the gravel had nailed her scalp. There was the L shaped porch we had lined up on to take turns cranking the home-made ice cream, ice and salt spilling into the lawn. The alley where cousin Robby, with all his ADHD energy, had peddled maniacally on his tricycle. And then I realized what was missing. The gardens behind both houses were ordinary and lacked transformative magic. My grandmother had grown a parking-lot-hiding jungle along a fence, had a grape arbor over the path to the back door, and her clusters of lilies and blooms had made the eye travel the yard the way a great painter arranges the composition of a group portrait. Even the bushes of honeysuckle, where I'd extract a drop of sweetness before the hummingbirds beat me to it, was gone.

A woman drove by, saw all us folks with rented cars just standing there, and gave us the finger. I wonder what ticked her off more, us standing in the street or staring into houses we had no business looking into?

So much change over the decades, houses knocked down to make way for the expanded church, stores with changed purpose, and being a recession, quite a few shops were empty, but the old stone courthouse with its blurry faced stone lions was just as I'd remembered it.

And then it was time to go, as we drove past the cemetery Nedra waved and said, "good bye Mom" just as she had every night on the phone.

The Health of Our Soldiers

The government recently proposed improving the health of members of the military by banning tobacco, citing the predictable rise in cancers and cardiovascular diseases after years of use. But I posit, if the government really wants to improve the health of soldiers, they should stop having wars. Why worry about long-term smoking risks when smoking guns give instant health effects?

The Luxury of Grandmothers

At my age it is a very fine thing to have a grandmother. Plenty of my friends no longer have parents. And most of my generation lost their grandparents decades ago, or worse, never got to meet them at all.

My Grandma Hal (Florence Dawald Miller) was acquired by the sound decision my father made to marry my stepmother when I was a baby. But, today, at the age of 95, my last grandmother has become past tense.

We spent many summers in Grandma's homes in the small utterly flat town of Rochester, Indiana. She had one rather large house with a wrap around porch and backyard filled with bright flowers and sting happy bees. Across the street she rented out several apartments and we stayed in one of these on our visits. Here too were planted swaths of flowers, their colors duplicated in the patterns she painted on her saucers and vases at her ceramics store, a few blocks away downtown.

She made us all replicas of Victorian porcelain dolls, sewing their kid leather arms and legs, painting in their features and making outfits of such small precision you could understand why she was once an exacting instructor at the Singer Sewing Machine store. I treasured my doll and named her "Indiana" in honor of her state of manufacture, as I too had been born a Hoosier, a distinction none of my half-brothers and -sisters can share. She taught me to crotchet. I also got to make piggy banks and daschund ring holders in her ceramics store. And she made all of us gifts that came from her hands, blankets, our names in lace, crotchet Xmas tree ornaments of starched white cotton snowflakes, and more.

But just in case you are thinking Florence was the epitome of grandmotherly cotton candy, let me say she was a woman with sharp comments, hasty judgements, smug gossip, quick wit, and the ability to stretch a short tale into a mini-series of needless detail. Saturday Night Live could have done a skit on her recounting a typical road trip with her friend June. You heard what diners they ate at. What pie they chose, that the waitress had folk from Michigantown who were now living in Peru. Which reminded her of a trip to Indianapolis and the time she and June rode their mopeds around town... And this would only be the first pit stop. The point of interest was dutifully recorded in her odd photojournalism, for some reason she never could frame a shot and more often than not it was crooked and the heads of her fellow travellers cut off.

And unlike storybook grandmas, Florence was a bad cook. She favored the boil into goo school. She once got us to eat boiled potatoes only by claiming she was serving whale blubber. And when she was dieting, which was often, she made nasty concoctions using ersatz ingredients. Non-sugar sugar, non-mayo mayo, and so on.

She loved local history. When my father interviewed her for his family history she was in her element. She had so much to recount and what she didn't remember her research (years in the local historical society and DAR) supplied back to the first family members who settled the flats of the Midwest.

When I was about thirteen and she suddenly widowed, we spent a rough summer together in San Diego. She yelled at me for not making my bed, for using too much toilet tissue, for giving lip, for making faces, for reading too much, for not being nice enough to my little sisters, for not being like my little sisters. She made me put soap in my mouth once and I stopped swearing in earshot after that... And being Grandma, she got relief from my sullenness by gossiping about me. And being 13, I wasn't able to see she was grieving. Grandpa Hal had been the love of her life.

And as much as we fought, we didn't disown each other. I defended my right to claim her as a grandmother to my mother's side of the family, where great aunts would tell me "stop calling her your grandma, she isn't BLOOD you know dear, your real grandmother is your ONLY grandmother and you are hurting her by claiming this woman is." And I fiercely disagreed. It isn't about blood.

Luckily, we got older. I came to appreciate her artistry and skill in making quilts, crotchet, knitting, and anything else she crafted. She wanted to be useful, and she was. She had the courage to take on old age and call the terms. Even in her wheelchair she was leaf blowing the driveway. Her delight in my daughters was wonderful. I know they enjoyed doing puzzles with her. When my mother-in-law came for a visit carrying her own extensively researched oral histories and genealogies, Florence read the entire thing, through a magnifying glass, and enjoyed discussing the work of recording history with Jeanne.

When she moved into an old age home I made sure to send her occasional boxes of diabetic chocolate truffles from Mondel's Chocolates. If those treats were good enough for Katherine Hepburn, they were surely good enough for my Grandma Hal, who shared my sweet tooth.

Thank you Florence Dawald Miller for being my grandmother these many years.