Book artists?

As an art major and a lover of books, I always enjoyed when artist friends did projects that involved bookmaking.  I am so enthralled with the fact that the product is not as important as the process in this situation.  When I went to dance class, the end performance was never the "point."  What fed me was the process of creating and designing the work bit by bit.  And if you're an artist, you'll understand when I say that I danced because I had things I "had to get out."  I could only sleep at night after I had danced out all of my stress, feelings, anger, joy, etc.  I never thought of literature in that way, but I guess I should have.

Nevertheless, here's a link to a fundraising project involving 10 book artists, Pyramid Atlantic Arts Center, and CityDance Ensemble.  It shows a preview of the forthcoming documentary.

Laura Kasischke, poet as novelist

Hi fellow lovers of that fading art of literature...recently I've read two novels by Laura Kasischke, who came to the artists' colony (Ragdale) I directed many years ago.  Back then, she was (and still is) a somewhat Gothic poet.  Now she has seven novels in print, and as a person overly trained in story (the kind of bad movie companion who knows how the plot is going to unfold five minutes into the action), I find her novels delightfully weird and surprising.

Laura thinks in images, like a poet.  Her world is the world of the family and the suburbs, her protagonists somewhat wistful, yearning, middle aged women who either find some new passion or are discovered by someone else's passion.  Page after page pops with unusual images -- blood on snow, deer hair protruding from crumpled fenders, a collapsed casserole...I'm not exactly sure how she makes it all work, but I'm left pondering moments, meditating on ideas that manifest themselves in strange creepy ways, how one's house is both a sanctuary and a prison.  Weird, evocative, and, of course, Midwestern.  Read  "In A Perfect World," or "Be Mine."

Relating to The Road: Loving and Letting Go

I've been reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road.  It's written a lot like a screenplay, due to McCarthy's great knack for creating such detailed descriptions of the nothingness the characters encounter.  Actual character dialogue is sparse, but makes the relationship seem all the more intense between the boy and the man.


I recently came to a paragraph that really moved me, and I found myself reading it over and over, asking myself the same questions the character asked.  The situation is this: their lives are in danger, being threatened by 'the others.'  The man (the father) has a pistol with one shot left.  He is pondering what will happen when THE decision has to be made.  Should he save his son the misery of the torture these dangerous stalkers will certainly use on the boy?  The paragraph follows:


They lay listening.  Can you do it?  When the time comes?  When the time comes there will be no time.  Now is the time.  Curse God and die.  What if it doesn't fire?  It has to fire.  What if it doesn't fire?  Could you crush that beloved skull with a rock?  Is there such a being within you of which you know nothing?  Can there be?  Hold him in your arms.  Just so.  The soul is quick.  Pull him toward you.  Kiss him.  Quickly. 


This made me wonder about THE decision.  Loving someone so much that you have to make that choice of hurting them to save them.  This choice can be as small as that saying "if you love them, set them free" all the way to the extreme situation in this book.


Unfortunately, I've had to encounter the extreme situation several times.  When a loved one has no chance of surviving an extremely debilitating injury, the decision has to be made about letting the person 'live' in a state of misery or 'saving' the person by letting them go.


I hadn't thought about that extreme type of decision in a long time.  If you've never had to make that choice, this character's dilemma probably won't be as heart-wrenching.  However, it almost brought me to my knees.  For a post-apocalyptic book, it hit me much closer to home than I thought.  The setting didn't matter in that paragraph.  It was the father's love for his son and his questioning of his own courage in making the decision.




Is there such a being within you of which you know nothing?  Can there be?

What do your Amazon recommendations say about you?

So, these were my recommendations today.  What does it mean about me that I agree with them?  And what does it mean if they're all about qualitative research. . .  I used to have fun book recommendations on here, like David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, and Jhumpa Lahiri.  

	Amazon.com has new recommendations for you based on items you purchased or told us you own. Life, Letters, and Poetry (Oxford World's Classics) Writing Up Qualitative Research Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success The SAGE Dictionary of Qualitative Inquiry Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation (JOSSEY-BASS HIGHER & ADULT EDUCATION SERIES) Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition Case Study Methodology in Business Research

At times I'm a jumble of rumbles. . .

Player Piano

My stick fingers click with a snicker

And, chuckling, they knuckle the keys;

Light footed, my steel feelers flicker

And pluck from these keys melodies.

My paper can caper; abandon

Is broadcast by dint of my din,

And no man or band has a hand in

The tones I turn on from within.

At times I'm a jumble of rumbles,

At others I'm light like the moon,

But never my numb plunker fumbles,

Misstrums me, or tries a new tune.

-John Updike- New Yorker

I think I'll start saying those words to myself every morning when I wake up.

At times I'm a jumble of rumbles, At others I'm light like the moon,

At times I'm a jumble of rumbles, At others I'm light like the moon.

This blog may be a "jumble of rumbles," per say. . . 

but who's to say cacophony is bad? 

Maybe we can string our thoughts together.