your end-of-summer annogram

The trees are already turning red in New England—and like those leaves, Labor Day signals the end of summer. We spent the last week in Vermont, eating maple walnut ice cream and taking long drives through small towns. This annogram veers first into a travelogue, then snaps back to it literary origins—with a list of fabulous events that make the fall so energizing.

Funky fun Bellows Falls
While The New York Times recently profiled Bellows Falls, Vermont as a quirky community of emerging artists and entrepreneurs—we’ve already known about this classic New England industrial town for a long time. Replete with brick clock tower, train station and canal, Bellows Falls is a charming slice of Vermont, undiscovered by out-of-staters who usually head for Bennington, Manchester and sights along Route 7. Fav places in town:

First, some of the oldest petroglyphs, i.e., cave drawings, can be found carved into rocks on the Bellows Falls side of the Connecticut River. Some intrepid soul painted their lines yellow years ago, so they look a little like early smiley faces. People come from all over the world to view these authentic carvings. Okay, enough anthropology—let’s get to the food!

Picture traditional Chinese food in a huge Victorian house overlooking the Connecticut River, and you’ve imagined Joy Wah. Here, with red pagodas and tassels hanging over your head, the staff delivers fabulous food—such as cold noodles with sesame sauce, curried sub gum chow mein, tangerine shrimp and scallops in black bean sauce. It’s hard to say what’s better, the food, the service or the view.

Another great meal stop is “the wurst place in Bellows Falls,” a.k.a. Fat Franks. Jim, owner of Fat Franks, takes pride in offering three sizes of hot dogs, chili dogs, superb beans and a delectable veggie burger that’s actually made out of vegetables and not textured soy protein. Fat Franks has an upstairs dining area, or opt for take-out if you’d like to picnic somewhere.

If you’re a New Yorker hungry for authentic Italian cuisine, plan on Boccelli’s on the Canal. Chef/owner Sharon grew up in Boston’s North End and learned cooking secrets from her Italian grandmother and mother. While the atmosphere is casual, the food is extraordinarily high-end—fresh pasta, vegetables and huge slices of artisan bread roasted with olive oil.

For a quiet moment looking over Bellow Falls’ canal, head to the Hraefnwood (pronounced “Ravenwood”) Café (23 Canal St., 802-299-7429). Decorated with teal satin drapes and a fabulous art-deco mural hand-painted by café owner Kirsten Jette, Hraefnwood is atmospheric and serene. Kirsten and husband Eric studied with master tea- and coffee-makers to learn how to make extraordinary chai lattes and cappuccinos—and they also offer quality fare such as hot paninis or homemade baked goods.

Somehow ice cream tastes better in New England—and Dari Joy is no exception! The 32 flavors and huge portions at this former hamburger drive-in in Bellows Falls are a great way to top off any meal. People come over the bridge from New Hampshire to indulge here. If you enjoyed this tour through Bellows Falls, let me know and I can write next time about more Vermont treasures.


Sapphires at Hraefnwood
And what a pleasure it was to read at the Hraefnwood Café! Angela Batchelor, Sarah Bracey White, Terry Dugan, Linda Simone and I enjoyed meeting Kirsten and Eric, Hraefnwood proprietors and hosts of their popular music and poetry series. The evening felt less like a performance more like a party hosted by the Jettes. For a full description and photos of the evening, visit the new Sapphire blog.

Brenda Connor-Bey to be honored
Congratulations to Greenburgh Poet Laureate Brenda Connor-Bey, who will be honored at the Hudson Valley Writers Center at the center’s 20th anniversary gala on September 20. Brenda is a much loved writing and award-winning teacher, playwright and poet. Donald Stever, co-founder of the center, and writer Ben Cheever, equally respected, will be honored too. For tickets to the gala or to purchase space in the program, go to the HVWC site. (link)

The Literary Traveler
Ever wish you could have literary insight into the country you’re visiting? Now you can, with the Whereabouts Press Travelers Literary Companion series. The Mexico anthology, edited by literary translator CM Mayo, contains excerpts of several major Mexican works, including some by Rosario Castellanos, Carlos Fuentes and Fernando del Paso. Newer versions represent China, Japan, Ireland and Vietnam.

Free readings at Riverspace in Nyack
Poet Julie Agoos, winner of Yale Younger Poets Prize, has been called "quietly lyrical to the point of radiance" by The Washington Post. Julie will be reading with Molly Peacock (right) on September 14 at 4pm at Riverspace, a new community art center offering innovative programming in theatre, music, film, dance and poetry, at 119 Main Street in Nyack. On October 26, at 4pm, Riverspace will also welcome poets Teresa Carter, author of Elegy for the Floater, and Joan Cusack Handler, author of The Red Canoe.

'Round the Net
First, welcome to our new US Poet Laureate, Kay Ryan and thanks to friends for the following links:

- Sarah Bracey White for her wonder-filled fable, "The Wanderlust" in the Women and Voodoo issue of Women Writers

- Stacey Lynn Brown for her cautionary tale of a poetry book contract that went sour

- Linda Simone for this You Tube video on an ideal world for finding an agent and publisher

- The New York Times on the “perilous journey of a book from one language into another”

- The British Translators Association's list of 50 outstanding translations

- Jill Bolte Taylor on what she learned from a stroke about brain functioning

- Kim Wells and Nicole Vacca for this site that aids domestic violence victims with a click

- Mary Ladd for Bow Wow Trivia which helps to feed dogs

Elizabeth Alexander at Manhattanville
Poet Elizabeth Alexander will read at Manhattanville on October 7, 7pm. She is the author of four books of poems, The Venus Hottentot, Body of Life, Antebellum Dream Book, and American Sublime, a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. A scholar of African-American literature and culture, she also published a collection of essays, The Black Interior. She is a recipient of numerous awards including the 2007 Jackson Prize for Poetry awarded by Poets & Writers.

And cool master classes
Master classes allow non-matriculated adults to get the best from successful writers. Novelist Martha Cooley will teach “What Fiction Writers Can Learn From Poets,” on October 18, from 10am -4pm, at Manhattanville. The $125 fee includes lunch. On September 20, learn the art of “Sports Journalism: From Print to Internet to Electronic Media,” taught from Barry Wilner, who has authored 24 books. The cost is $50. For more information, or to register, call (914) 323-5300.

Poetry readings in New York City
An early Happy Birthday to New York’s own impresario of poetry, Jackie Sheeler! Jackie continues to increase—and host—poetry venues in the Big Apple. On Friday, September 12 at 6pm, hear Vicki Hudspith and Maggie Dubris at Cornelia Street Café; Saturday, September 13 at 6:30pm, Jackie will MC and perform at Larissa Shmailo’s CD release party at the Knitting Factory; Sunday, September 14 at 6pm, poet Cheryl Boyce Taylor will read at Jackie’s latest poetry venue, the Tribal Spears Gallery; and Thursday, September 18, Jackie will read with George Wallace at the Bowery Poetry Club.

Book reviews
In The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (W.W. Norton, 2008), Marie Howe does what she does best: Uncover profound spiritual truths in everyday life—salted with a dose of humor. In “Reading Ovid,” she writes

The thing about those Greeks and Romans is that
at least mythologically,

they could get mad. If the man broke your heart, if he
fucked your sister speechless

then the real true hell broke loose:
“You know that stew you just ate for dinner, honey?—

It was your son.”
that’s Ovid for you.

Ms. Howe uses her acute ear for found dialogue and her own spiritual questioning to tackle subjects such as marriage and child-raising—with poems frequently anchored in the Gospel. This unusual mixture of work somehow feels seamless in her hands, and delightful in ours.

“I’ll be right back,” Tao Lin says heart-breakingly at the end of many poems in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (Melville House, 2008). Each one, often crafted as an e-mail message, examines the emotional underbelly of the Internet—isolation from others, and in the speaker’s case, disassociation from himself. The speaker is a sometime shoplifter, missing an imagined or real girlfriend across broadband space. When the poet changes characters into hamsters, the metamorphosis reinforces what the Internet can turn us into—nervous, self-interested, scavenging. I could not put this book down, and found it the first poetry to accurately portray the psychic price of our much acclaimed Internet era. The narrator says that if you look into his mind, you find “a powerful sadness.” That is the feeling that lingered after I read this original and disturbing work.

Brenda Is in The Room and Other Poems (Colorado State, 2007) by Craig Morton Teicher won the Colorado Prize for Poetry. I almost didn’t read this book given its title and floor plan of rooms as a metaphor for marriage—you could hear me groaning, “Oh gawd!” But the title poem is engaging, so I persevered. I enjoyed the cosmic rant of “I Am A Poet,” fairy tale “One to Another: A Creation Myth” and sensuous tribute to his fiancée, “I Am a Woman’s Lover”:

Whatever animal I was before, now
I am twice that animal. She is more
a man than I will ever be. The space
between us is an uncrossable ocean.
And each time we find a way across,
we only arrive in another country
where another language is spoken.
The wild horses in our field fix me
in their narrow gaze, preparing to charge,
bending low so my beloved can mount.

As we head toward fall, I recall the words of Sylvia Plath, who pondered a mid-life career she was never to have—but can inspire the rest of us to fulfill:

I feel a helplessness when I think of my writing being nothing, coming to nothing: for I have no other job—not teaching, nor publishing. And a guilt grows in me to have all my time my own.... I walked in the vegetable garden, beans hanging on the bushes, squash, yellow and orange, fattening in the dapple of leaves, corn, grapes purpling on the vine, parsley, rhubarb. And wondered where the solid, confident purposeful days of my youth vanished. How shall I come into the right, rich full-fruited world of middle-age. Unless I work. And get rid of the accusing, never-satisfied gods who surround me like a crown of thorns. Forget myself, myself. Become a vehicle of the world, a tongue, a voice.

Wishing you a rich full-fruited harvest,
Ann

anncefola.com

your july 4th annogram

Ann in Alhambra Poetry Calendar 2008
Thanks to Shafiq Naz, editor of Alhambra Publishing’s Poetry Calendar, for selecting “Sugaring” for the 2008 English edition, and to Hélène Sanguinetti, who suggested my work. I am thrilled to be in a volume distinguished “by some of the best American, British, Canadian, Australian, and Irish poets from the 14th to the 21st century.”



Sapphires at Hraefnwood Café
The Sapphires, an award-winning group of women writers, feature novelist Angela
Batchelor, poet Terry Dugan, poet Linda Simone, creative non-fiction writer Sarah Bracey White—and me. We’ve performed everywhere from Manhattanville College to the United Nations, and on Saturday, July 26, we’ll be at the Hraefnwood Café in Bellows Falls, Vermont, at 7 p.m. Hope to see Vermont friends there!


Frost vandals receive ‘poetic justice’
Speaking of Vermont, you may recall in my last annogram learning that teens trashed the Robert Frost farm on the Middlebury College campus. Their punishment is to sit through two classes on the poet taught by Frost biographer and Middlebury professor, Jay Parini. I am sure the ever-crusty Frost would appreciate that discipline—although he would probably ask them to memorize several poems too.

Toadlily poet wins Pushcart Prize
Congratulations to Heidi Hart, whose poem, “Door Psalm,” from Edge by Edge (Toadlily Press, 2007) will appear in the 2009 Pushcart Prize XXXIII: Best of the Small Presses. To read and/or hear the poem, click on this link.

Camber Press Chapbook Contest
The Fourth Annual Camber Press Poetry Chapbook Award contest is underway through August 15, 2008. The judge is Steve Orlen, with the first prize $1000 and publication of the winning entry. For more submission details, click on this link.

Salute to C.D. Wright
C.D. Wright is one of a handful of women poets who are transforming the uses of language—much like Anne Carson and Hélène Sanguinetti, the French poet I am honored to translate. I’ll review two of her books here, and one by Frank Stanford, an influential figure in her life and co-founder with Ms. Wright of Lost Roads Publishers.


You could call Ms. Wright’s latest book, Rising, Falling, Hovering (Copper Canyon Press, 2008) her “Howl.” In this book-length protest, the poet incants the number of Iraq-war dead, and vents that she cannot bear :to say their [expletive] monosyllabic surnames” of “the current occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania” for “dread of it calling up their bland [expletive] faces […].”

If this book were merely a rant, we would soon tire of it. Ms. Wright’s genius is in combining further political themes such as immigration and Katrina, and anchoring such global concerns in motherly anxiety over what will happen to her teen son. She moves effortlessly from the political to the personal with honesty and humor:

He mentions getting jumped in Zihuatenejo and cornered the year before in Oaxaca

the Christmas before in Chicago and mugged once in Brooklyn

and she is What What What Can’t you just stay inside and read
(turning pages)

until you’re thirty or something

(“Rising, Falling, Hovering, cont.”)

Ms. Wright avoids being labeled a confessional poet by using the third voice, notes poet Meredith Trede. This effective device, along with Spanish phrases sprinkled throughout, creates an accessible poem that embraces the world. Suzanne Hoover, an extraordinary poetry professor at Sarah Lawrence, once defined poetry as looking down through several disparate images and seeing something entirely different as a result. This book is a wonderful example of such imaginative layering.

The Lost Road Project, A Walk-In Book of Arkansas, by C.D. Wright with photographs by Deborah Luster, is an Arkansas treasure. My grandmother lived there, so I had occasion to drive with her to the cloud-wreathed, heaven-like Ozarks, eat things like cobblestone bread and Creole pralines, and meet quirky neighbors like Ruby and Reek who entered her home as casually as if they lived there.

Ms. Wright had to have been inspired by my all-time favorite, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, the chronicle of three 1930s sharecropper families by Pulitzer Prize- winning poet James Agee and photographer Walker Evans.

Similarly, Ms. Wright has juxtaposed Ms. Luster’s dramatic black-and-white photos against, among other things, a mean cornbread recipe, a blues riff by Sonny Boy Williamson, respective prose and poetry by Arkansas natives Shirley Abbott and Maya Angelou, reflections by historian C. Van Woodward, and a Frank Stanford poem. Ms. Wright’s introduction is a lyrical and comprehensive state history and Ms. Luster’s photographs—like Walker Evans’s work—seem like haunting glimpses into a world few of us would otherwise know.


Moving on to Frank Stanford’s selected The Light the Dead See (University of Arkansas Press, 1991), I wonder whether he is inspired, insane or both. Stanford paints images from the Mississippi levees of his youth the way Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) creates exaggerated pictures of the American west. Reoccurring characters have names like “Born in the Camp with Six Toes” and “Baby Gauge.” In the epic “The Snake Doctors,” locals beat the speaker’s pet pig while the man is in church:

I ran after the hog
He was heading for the river
I jumped on his back
I rode the hog
I hugged his neck
I stabbed him seven times
I wanted the knife to go into me
He kept running
I ran the knife across his throat
And the blood came out like a bird.

Lines like these gallop forward, choppy and alarming, with gospel-like overtones. Knowing that Stanford ended his life at 30, I read his work like a detective—wondering about his intense drive. There is a regional purity in this book, however, rendered in an abstract-expressionist style, that is as original and rewarding as it is disturbing.

’Round the Net
Thanks to:

· Angela Batchelor for insights into her active life as a professor, writer and diarist.

· Novelist Petra Lewis for this NYT article on creativity.

· Detroit News Personal Finance Columnist Brian J. O’Connor for three hilarious essays that have won another national humor prize.

· Translator B. J. Epstein for her fascinating blog, Brave New Words, all the way from Wales.


Discovering the night sky
It is said that Robert Frost invited Emily Dickinson to the Amherst College Observatory to view the night sky. “Amherst College in the poet's day was one of the leading institutions for the study of astronomy,” notes the college’s web site. “Built in 1905 as a technologically advanced astronomy center, the observatory and [original refracting] telescope have been recently restored.”


Can you imagine the conversation between Frost and Dickinson? Anyone who has been asked to look at the stars knows it is a wondrous invitation—especially if given by someone who knows his night sky.


That’s what Bob Davidson, co-founder of Westchester Amateur Astronomers, and a natural “non-scientist scientist” did for many of us—here and at Stellafane, the annual summer gathering of amateur telescope-makers, in Vermont. Bob showed the stars to everyone from NASA scientists to school kids at star parties and other public events throughout the tri-state area. We lost him last month, but not his passion for M objects and galaxies that we will continue to carry and share with others.

Wishing you an inspiring summer night's view of Cygnus, the swan....

Ann

your april annogram

Happy National Poetry Month! And what a wonderful one it has been: Mary Ladd’s excellent review of my translation, Hence this cradle, appeared in Book/Mark, and Liz Fortini’s review in Language and Culture (http://www.languageandculture.net/review-sanguinetti.html). A selection from Hence appeared with the original on http://terresdefemmes.blogs.com/mon_weblog. I am grateful to Hélène Sanguinetti, for submitting our work; and to Susan Anthony for mentioning my poetry book, Sugaring,in the Fall/Winter New England Writers newsletter.

Master poetry translation workshop
Translator and art historian Beth Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D., invited me to give a master poetry translation workshop in her French translation class at Manhattanville College. It was great to see undergrads discover the challenges and rewards of translating poetry. We discussed Eliot Weinberger’s 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, and then translated Rimbaud’s "Sensation."

Pen World Voices Festival of International Literature

Translation runs riot this week in New York City as 82 events feature writers such as Umberto Eco, Ian McEwan, Mario Vargas Llosa, Joyce Carol Oates, Michael Ondaatje, Annie Proulx and more for six days of exciting literary exchange. Tickets from $10-$30/$8-$25 for PEN members.
http://mail2.smarttix.com/t/83962/148882/767/0/

Poetry reading at Manhattanville

Manhattanville and Hudson Valley Writers Center are sponsoring a free poetry reading Wednesday, May 21, 2008, at 7 p.m. at the college’s Reid Castle. Featured poets will be John Hoppenthaler (Anticipate the Coming Reservoir and Lives of Water), Suzanne Cleary (Trick Pear and Keeping Time) and David Tucker (Late for Work).
www.manhattanville.edu


Poor Robert Frost

Frost may regret the title of his book (at right): Kids on a bender damaged his home on the Middlebury College campus earlier this year. Good timing that the college has a web exhibit, "Robert Frost at Bread Loaf," to quell the poet’s surely piqued spirit! Thanks to Linda Simone for pointing out this rare online collection.
http://midddigital.middlebury.edu/local_files/robert_frost/

Rediscovering Alan Shulman on NPR

Composer, cellist and arranger Alan Shulman (1915-2002) was a member of the NBC Symphony under Arturo Toscanini, cellist of the Stuyvesant String Quartet, arranged for Metropolitan Opera diva Risë Stevens, and mentored master arranger Nelson Riddle. Jazz pianist Judy Carmichael interviewed his son, Jay Shulman, about his father’s music for her National Public Radio Jazz Inspired radio program this month. Hear the interview on Judy's website:
www.judycarmichael.com

Silent movies accompanied by pianist Donald Sosin
If you love silents, you’ll be glad to know they are still in the area—accompanied by pianist Donald Sosin. At the Brooklyn Academy of Music Cinematek, Tuesday, April 29, at 7 p.m., you can see "Keisatsukan" ("Policeman"). At the Brooklyn Bridge Park, at the 125th anniversary of the Brooklyn Bridge, you can see "Panorama" on Friday and Saturday, May 23-24, at 8:30 p.m., followed by the feature "Enchanted" Friday and "It Happened in Brooklyn" Saturday.

More silent treasures
On May 10, at 7 p.m. at the Seifert Theater at the Salisbury School, Salisbury, Connecticut, Donald Sosin will perform to "Manhatta", the first American avant-garde 1920 film by Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand; "I Was Born But…", the 1932 comedy by director Yasujiro Ozu; and three shorts (1905-1908) by Georges Méliès from the new five-DVD set (see: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/movies/homevideo/18dvds.html). Free; reserve by emailing dsosin@comcast.net or calling 860-435-4687.

Is print dead?
Translator and editor CM Mayo (www.cmmayo.com) highly recommends Jeff Gomez's Print is Dead. "It's a provocative title," she writes, "and, ironically, first published in print—but very knowledgeable and well written." See
http://www.printisdeadblog.com/

Free translations lead to book sales
Thanks to translator Ruth A. Gentes Krawczyk (www.krawczyktranslations.com) for this fascinating piece of marketing insight:
Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho has grown his readership with free translations. Fortune says, "Intrigued by his growing sales in Russia, Coelho used the Bittorrent site—a favorite for illicit distribution of media—to seek out and download online translations of his books as well as audio versions.

By 2006 he was hosting an entire sub-site he called The Pirate Coelho, with links to books in many languages."His newsletter is said to have 200,000 subscribers and Coelho indicates he gets about 1,000 e-mails from fans every day. "I don't understand why publishers don't understand that this new medium is not killing books," Coelho says. "I'm doing it mostly because the joy of a writer is to be read. But at the end of the day, you will sell more books."


Your annograms, six times a year
You can expect your annograms delivered to your e-mail box every other month. The monthly edition seems to be morphing to this time table. If you’re lonely for an annogram, you can always read the illustrated version on my blog, annogram.blogspot.com.

May you find new ways to celebrate poetry—not only in April, but year-round!
Ann
www.anncefola.com
www.annogram.blogspot.com

After a three-month hiatus, your annogram is back! Hope you taste spring in the air like I do. We have a lot of catching up to do:

Ann at Hudson Valley Writers Center

Many thanks to the Hudson Valley Writers Center for inviting me to read December 14. Despite a cold and icy night, the renovated train station in Philipsburg Manor that HVWC calls home had a full house. I was honored to share billing with Greg Delanty, an award-winning poet originally from Ireland who calls Vermont home. I read from my chapbook, Sugaring, and translation, Hence this cradle, and participated in an audience Q&A.

http://writerscenter.org/

The Musculature of Small Birds

My poem, “Aspiration,” appears in The Musculature of Small Birds (shadowbox press, 2007). The chapbook's clever cover is deep blue textured paper, with a manila pocket that holds a library borrower’s card with handwritten title and editor’s name. Buy a copy and 30 percent of your $7 will go to the International Rescue Committee, which aids refugees and displaced people in 25 countries.

http://shadowboxpress.blogspot.com/.

Clapton and Winwood at the Garden

Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood joined forces last week for three sold-out shows. The duo covered memorable songs from Blind Faith, Traffic and Derek and the Dominos, including “Little Wing,” “Can’t Find My Way Home,” and “Dear Mr. Fantasy.” At first tentative, these giants later faced one another and traded blues leads as if in their own studio. Winwood, whose soulful vocals sound like he has a bubble in his throat, performed a powerful “Georgia on My Mind” on organ. Clapton’s solo was an equally impressive version of Robert Johnson’s “Ramblin’ On My Mind.”

http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2008/02/26/clapton-and-winwood-break-out-blind-faith-hendrix-at-first-supergig/

Associated Writing Programs Conference

More than 7,000 writers attended the AWP Conference in New York City in February. I met editors who have published my work, such as Dwayne Hayes of Absinthe, Johannes Göransson of Action Yes, and Stefania Heim and Jennifer Kronovet of Circumference. Other highlights included David Lehman reading his translations of Henri Michaux and CD Wright reciting from Benjamin Alire Saenz’s Dreaming the End of War. Poet Laureate Charles Simic (pictured left), discussing writers’ notebooks, broke up the audience as he intoned “trusting memory is a bad idea.” In another workshop, Beth Ann Fennelly viewed the prose poem as a way “to trap the reader.” Nick Flynn, exploring historical topics, saw such poem-making as an opportunity “to transform obsessive energy into meditative energy.” These nuggets and more abounded during an inspiring—and exhausting—three days.

http://www.awpwriter.org/conference/2008ConfArchive/2008awpco

Seurat Drawings at MoMA

In January, I caught the Seurat exhibit before it closed. Georges Seurat (1859-1891) would wander around the Zone, a working-class neighborhood between Paris and its suburbs, in pre-dawn and twilight hours. In this unreal light, Seurat’s sketches anticipate his later pointillism with slanted lines raining silhouette figures; other times, textured paper creates the subtle patterns. Women are often a few vanishing lines in the background—and faces, never visible, unless flat and doll-like in his circus posters. The drawings evidence emotion, whereas his vibrant color canvases seem to lack feeling. In these daily sketches, you discover a young man who applied his art scientifically as much as passionately.
http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2007/seurat/

Sculpture by Martin Puryear

Kudos to MoMA for pairing Puryear (1941- ) with Seurat. After Seurat’s intimate pictures which drew onlookers into tight detail, Puryear’s rolling, round and interwoven wood shapes were a welcome relief. Puryear, craftsman as much as artist, creates unusual tube and globe-like sculptures whose surfaces are oiled like furniture. MoMA wisely left room for people to walk around each one, such as “Deadeye” (2002), which invited exploration by children and adults. Puryear’s work touches on significant themes, such as the riveting “C.F.A.O.” (2007), which speaks to the colonization of Africa and uses a wheelbarrow found in Alexander Calder’s (1898-1976) studio. I really loved this exhibit for Puryear’s ability to evoke the playful, spiritual and political at once.

http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2007/martinpuryear/flash.html

Commercial interruption

If you are looking for a noteworthy gift for a writer, consider a hardwood pen from Vermont. I have bought several for friends and kept a lilac wood pen for myself—which, unbelievably, smells like the tree’s blossoms. Contact Jim Cunningham at http://www.moosemaple.com/.

Another gift idea is Billets Doux from Dancing Girl Press. Billets Doux is French for “love letters.” This limited edition collection in an attractive box features 15 love letters, each written and designed by a poet, for $22.

http://dancinggirlpress.blogspot.com/

And, if you're always hungry like me, and happen to live in Westchester: Red Barn Pizza, 158 Central Avenue in Hartsdale (914-328-3927), features whole wheat and multigrain pizza crusts. For the holistically inclined, finding this place is like locating the Holy Grail. I recommend both whole-grain crusts.

'Round the Net

People send me fabulous links I’d like to share. Thanks to:

• Margaret Fox for this ingenious clip of performance artist Ennio Marchetti: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAFI1i5FIBc
  
  
• Mary Ladd for this addicting vocabulary exercise that donates rice to the hungry: http://www.freerice.com/
  
  
• Ruth Krawczyk for this Guardian article on how translations get into print: http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,,2214117,00.html
  
  
• Petra Lewis for this Times piece celebrating the semi-colon:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/nyregion/18semicolon.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin
  
  
• Brian O’Connor for his hilarious “It’s a Wonderful Life” sub-prime send-up:http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071224/OPINION03/712240305/1308/BIZ
  
  
• Patty Rosenblatt for her son’s fascinating piece on mini-comics: http://www.secretacres.com/ce1.html
  
  
• Eric Rudolph for celebrating black and white photography: http://www.bwphotopro.com/
  
  
• Linda Simone for Bob Holman’s blog about poetry and copyright on the web: http://poetry.about.com/b/2007/12/09/poems-and-copyright-on-the-web.htm
  
  
• Ed Schneeflock for his beautiful color photographs: http://www.schneeflock.com/

Remembering Alice
My mother-in-law, and biggest poetry fan, Alice Cefola, 93, recently passed away. When I won an award from Pulitzer-prize winner John Ashbery, she would get confused and tell people I won the Pulitzer. I’ll never forget Alice’s attentive listening—like she was holding her breath—when Brenda Connor Bey and Linda Simone read their poetry at her nursing home. The Town of Greenburgh’s Poetry Caravan, organized by Sarah Bracey White, made such readings possible—and deeply nourished my extraordinarily appreciative mother-in-law.

Here's to poetry, which endures.

Ann

anncefola.com

your thanksgiving annogram

Thanksgiving greetings
I am grateful for every one of you who faithfully reads your annograms. My gratitude extends to Scott Howard, who has published my work in his new online journal, Reconfigurations. These two poems emerged after translating the daring French poet Hélène Sanguinetti.
http://www.reconfigurations.blogspot.com/

For a more traditional poem about one of my favorite pastimes, see my updated web site with new blog link:
http://www.anncefola.com/

Ann at Hudson Valley Writers Center
Make your calendars for Friday, December 14 at 7:30 if you’d like to hear selections from my new book Sugaring and translation Hence this cradle. I will be reading at the Hudson Valley Writers Center, 300 Riverside Drive in Sleepy Hollow (914-332-5953), and would love to see you there.
http://www.writerscenter.org/SHPsecondfriday.html

NEA Big Read: Zora Neale Hurston
What a pleasure to be on the October 28 panel at the Greenburgh Town Hall! The event, part of the NEA’s Big Read, focused on Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Panelists included writers Angela Batchelor, Terry Dugan and Linda Simone. Sarah Bracey White, director of Greenburgh Arts and Culture, read her Huston-inspired fable, “Wanderlust,” and then moderated a lively discussion. Half the audience had read the book and shared fascinating feedback for a rewarding literary “town hall” experience.
http://neabigread.org/books/theireyes/

Stop the presses for Mavis
One of the most striking CDs I have heard in ages is Mavis Staples’ We’ll Never Turn Back (Anti, 2007). Mavis returns to vintage 60s civil rights and timeless gospel songs to evoke social protest appropriate—and sorely needed—for today. Produced by Ry Cooder, the CD includes background vocals by Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Once you hear the haunting first cut, “Down in Mississippi,” you’ll be hooked. I also loved “99 and ½” and “I’ll Be Rested.”
http://www.anti.com/catalog/view/77/Well_Never_Turn_Back

Holiday biscotti
Congratulations to Linda Simone, whose poetry appears in the Pushcart-nominated Alternatives to Surrender (Plainview Press, 2007). You can enjoy Linda’s “delicious” essay on her grandmother’s biscotti that appears in Foods of Affection at:
http://www.italianamericana.com/

The genuine article
Congratulations also to Laura Morelli, who has a new column, The Genuine Article: In Pursuit of Authentic Crafts, on the National Geographic web site. If you love beautiful things, Laura is your guide to best choices the world over.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler/extras/shoppingguide/morelli0710.html

Four poets, one book
If you’re starting your holiday shopping, consider buying Edge by Edge (Toadlily Press, 2007), a unique “quartet” of poets’ chapbooks, as a gift for poetry lovers.
http://www.toadlilypress.com/

Book reviews
Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying (Vintage, 1991). Thanks to fiction writer Cathy Chung for giving me this book and challenging me to revisit Faulkner. I had read him in high school, thanks to my professor-like Humanities teacher, Carl Ladensack. Going back to Faulkner, I am amazed at his dense and poetic language—successfully ascribed to rural and uneducated characters—that sounds almost Biblical. While I missed many plot subtleties and it pained me to see characters so devoid of human tenderness, I could grasp greatness at work.
http://www.amazon.com/As-Lay-Dying-William
Faulkner/dp/067973225X/ref=pd_sim_b_img_2

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God (Harper, 2006). When this book first appeared in the 1930s, it was panned by the literary leaders of the Harlem Renaissance for lack of social protest. As agreed in our Greenburgh Town Hall discussion, the story transcends race: It is one woman’s journey to live life on her own terms. To get to that place, she married three men, each one abusive in their own right, whom she eventually left, cursed or killed. Did Hurston believe it was possible to find wholeness with an intimate partner? This book evokes fascinating questions around gender, relationships and race.
http://www.amazon.com/Their-Eyes-Were-Watching-God/dp/0061120065/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196109033&sr=1-1

Proulx, E. Annie. The Shipping News (Touchstone, 1994). This book won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for good reason: It is a very American tale—although it takes place in Newfoundland—of a character recovering his soul. Quoyle, after a bad start in love, and two toddlers in tow, follows his aunt to the old family homestead to start anew. Annie Proulx creates believable and complex characters in almost poetic language. The plot has humorous turns that—like a good line in poetry—surprise and yet seem entirely appropriate. It’s great when a well-crafted and enjoyable read receives its due.
http://www.amazon.com/Shipping-News-E-Annie-Proulx/dp/B000B86FJQ/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1

Digital books
Has anyone out there bought the Amazon Kindle? It’s the wireless device which allows readers to download up to 200 books from Amazon’s 90,000 digital volumes. While nothing can replace a good paper book, I like the idea of being able to look up a word with a built-in dictionary.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/home/home.html

That’s all for now. Wishing you good reading and writing!

Ann

http://www.anncefola.com/

your fall annogram

Hello everyone, I am back from the great southwest! Glad to be home where so many wonderful readings, exhibits and events are taking place. Read on and I will fill you in on my writing residency in Santa Fe.

Positive reviews
Thanks to Julie Enzser for her review of Sugaring (Dancing Girl Press, 2007) in Gallatea Resurrects, and to Lucas Klein for his review of Hence this cradle (Seismicity Editions, 2007) in the current hard-copy version of Rain Taxi.
http://galatearesurrection7.blogspot.com/2007/08/sugaring-by-ann-cefola.html

The Big Read
The NEA’s Big Read program is sponsoring Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston (1891-1960). The idea: Everyone in Westchester picks up the book this month, reads and discusses it. Pretty cool, huh? To help the conversation, two events will take place:

• Westchesters Arts Council workshop and lecture
Saturday, October 20, 2007, at the Westchester Arts Council, 31 Mamaroneck Ave., White Plains, Thomasenia Myers will lecture on the literary, historic and social significance of Their Eyes Were Watching God from 1:00-2:30 pm, and then, from 2:45 – 5:00 pm, Brenda Connor-Bey will lead a writing workshop exploring the poetic realism present in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Lecture is free; workshop $25 (HVWC members $20).

• Multicultural writers’ panel at Greenburgh Town Hall
Sunday, October 28, from 2-4 pm, journalist and novelist Angela Batchelor, poet and novelist Terry Dugan, poet and fiction writer Linda Simone, essayist and novelist Sarah Bracey White and I will discuss Their Eyes Were Watching God. Free; call 682-1574 for more information.

Hadad honored by HVWC
Long-time and beloved workshop instructor and journalist Herb Hadad will be honored at the 2007 Autumn Celebration at the Sleepy Hollow Country Club, Scarborough, NY, by the Hudson Valley Writers Center (HVWC). The November 7th affair, which starts at 7 pm, will also pay tribute to Janet Langsam, Westchester Arts Council executive director. Many of us, including yours truly, began our writing lives under Herb’s generous guidance. Congratulations on an honor richly deserved!
www.writerscenter.org

Writers on War and Peace
Slapering Hol Press will sponsor a reading, Writers on War & Peace, on Friday, November 9th, at 7:30 pm at the Hudson Valley Writers' Center. Award-winning poet Terry Dugan will read with Reggie Marra, Mimi Moriarty, Pui Ying Wong, Amelia Winkler, Nancy Connors, and Irene O'Garden.
www.writerscenter.org

Book review
Edge by Edge, Poems by Gladys Justin Carr, Heidi Hart, Emma Bolder and Vivian Teter (Toadlily Press, 2007). Congratulations to Toadlily on generating another beautiful volume—their inventive quartet of chapbooks. The cover, an eye-catching photograph of smeared crayons, opens to a variety of work readers can pick over like a delicious box of chocolates. I love Emma Bolden’s How to Recognize a Lady, which picks on Amy Vanderbilt etiquette and twists its benign suggestions in the edgy title poem:

She is whipped to walk a straight line. She never eats unless
Hungry, never eats until full. She knows the front desk is no place
To comb her hair. In public, she keeps finger, pencils from her mouth.

Bolden feels as pissed off as Plath and I love that! Get the book and choose your favorites.
www.toadlilypress.com

Shigeki Yoshida photographs
Shigeki's Yoshida’s strikingly beautiful black-and-white photos are on display in an elegant townhouse off Central Park West, home of gallery-owner Susan Eley. His work enjoys an entire, light-filled gallery downstairs. At the October 4 opening, a classic upper West Side crowd squeezed around one another to view artwork and sip chilled wine. I spotted Ron Livingston, star of the movie "Office Space" and who played a writer in "Sex and the City."

Shigeki is exhibiting a dozen photos, each with haunting use of shadow, light and form. Silver gelatin, he explained, deepens the black yet makes detail startling clear. Inanimate objects gain a brooding liveliness, and human figures seem to float. Close up, the eye is drawn to the subject matter's detail, while farther away, one notices the play of shadow and light. It's this layering that makes each photo truly engaging. Shigeki says taking photos is his spiritual practice, and this exhibit demonstrates his mastery. I highly recommend seeing this jewel of an exhibit.

Art and money
I was fascinated by a recent interview by Bill Moyers with John Bogle, founder of Vanguard Funds and index fund inventor. Bogle summed up the country’s current financial status—and, in talking about value, mentions art and literature:

Just think about the country for a minute: We were a 80-90 percent agricultural economy when we came into existence and by 1850, half agricultural. Now we've moved from an agricultural economy to a manufacutring economy to a service eeconomy andnd now to a financial service economy.

The financial services economy is what troubles me: The financial services economy is diverting resources from the investors to the capitalists, the entrepreneurs, to Wall Street, to the investment bankers, the Hedge fund managers, to mutual fund mgrs and that is that is a negative to our societal values where agricultural and manufacturing and services [added value].

I am perfectly willing to give a high value, for example, to art and poetry and literature. They add value to our society. It may not be easy to measure [them] in a society that measures too much of what that is not important and not enough of what is important. As the sign in Einstein's offices said, "There are some things that count that can't be counted and some things that can be counted that don't count.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09282007/profile.html

A Santa Fe photo journal
Finally, you can read a photo journal of my time in Santa Fe at my blog entry below.

Til next time,
Ann

AnnCefola.com

your annogram - southwest edition

Thanks to a Poetry Translation Residency from the Witter Bynner Poetry Foundation and the Santa Fe Art Institute, I spent a few spectacular weeks in September in New Mexico:


Located on the College of Santa Fe campus, the Institute is designed by Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta. Centered around a courtyard, the offices, galleries, studios, resident rooms and living areas are light-filled and airy. Residents’ rooms open on a private patio, and I was fortunate to face a rock garden full of lavender and blue grama. Most days, I would sit outside early in the morning as the sun rose and write.

Artists in community
What was extraordinary about the residency was the high caliber and creativity of the artists—as committed to their craft as they were generous to each other:


Zelda Alpern, fiction writer and recipient of an Individual Woman’s Artist Grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, whose work has appeared in Chain.

Cathy Chung, fiction writer and 2007 MacDowell resident, whose work will soon appear in The Journal.

Rachel Cohen, dancer and artistic director of Racoco Productions—a movement theater whose production “If the Shoe Fits,” won raves reviews from The New York Times’ John Rockwell.


Jillian Conrad, sculptor, who had just completed one show in Hartford, “Name”, and will give the visiting artist lecture at Rhodes College in Memphis this month.

Patty Rosenblatt, ceramist, whose prints, sculptures and installations grace places such as the Jimmy Fund Clinic at the Dana Farber Cancer Center. Patty and Rachel are collaborating on innovative work involving dance and clay.

Marguerite Kahrl, visual artist, whose industrial hemp installation is getting rave reviews at the “Weather Report: Art and Climate Change” Exhibit at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art.

Julie Anne Pieri, visual artist, whose performance-based videos have been screened at the New Orleans and New York International Independent Film & Video Festivals.

Michael Sandoval, cinematographer and novelist, whose work “Ariana” appeared in the Berlin Film Festival, teaches film directing at the New York Film Academy.

Shigeki Yoshida, photographer, whose mesmerizing silver gelatin prints are exhibited this month at Susan Eley Gallery, 46 West 90th Street, in New York.

First impressions

When I flew into Albuquerque, I watched the midwest’s green circles and tan squares give way to mountains whose dotted greenery looked like Chinese dragons against the desert. Landing at Sunport International, a pink adobe building surrounded by mountains, I could practically hear the “wah-wah WAH” and rattlesnake opening of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”


Artist Lorraine Serra said that New Mexico is “like being on another planet.” During the ride to Santa Fe, I believed her: I saw inactive volcanoes and wild horses. I watched a thunderstorm, hundreds of miles wide, pound mountains while the rest of the vast sky remained a vacuum blue. Relentless sun exposed mustard, pink and clay colored sand. Native American animal images and pueblo names adorned pink and turquoise highway overpasses.

My van driver insisted I attend the Zozobro burning the following night, and called his mother to ask when the Sunday candlelight procession would begin. His accent, a monotone clipped with something neither Spanish nor Native American, was a combination of two cultures I would often hear. Like him, everyone I met in Santa Fe would be welcoming: I would have guides on this new planet.

Zozobro
Santa Fe’s 300-year-old Fiesta, which celebrates Santa Fe’s Spanish re-occupation, begins with the burning of Zozobro, a 65-foot paper marionette at dusk.
For weeks the local newspaper collects Santa Feans’ bad karma in form of parking tickets and divorce papers—to be burned in Zozobro, aka Old Man Gloom.

Julie Pieri, Michael Sandoval, Shigeki Yoshida and I caught a bus to the Plaza to join hundreds making their way to Fort Marcy Park.
Valerie Cordova, a Santa Fean whose ancestry goes back 400 years, fell in with us, pointing out her family’s coat of arms on the Governor’s Palace. “Two dogs,” she said, “facing opposite directions.” She taught us to shout, “¡Que viva la fiesta!” to elicit “¡Que viva!” from the crowd.
When Valerie bought us day-glow necklaces, we pronounced her the unofficial Fiesta Queen—although we later met and bowed to Teresa Rodriquez, the real title holder.

Rock bands played as Zozobro groaned over the audio, opened and closed his mouth, and pointed gruesome fingers at the crowd. As night fell, an elaborate choreography unfurled around the puppet’s base with children dressed as angels and dancers tauntingly bearing torches.
Fireworks exploded on lines inching towards Zozobro. Finally, Old Man Gloom’s eyes and mouth ignited, fireworks exploding out of his head, until he collapsed into a burning heap. Many believe that this ritual cleanses participants of gloom, as one man assured his granddaughter, “Now we’ll have a good year.”



¡Que viva!
Over the weekend, the Fiesta continued in the Plaza with mariachi bands, vendors selling enchiladas, and craftspeople displaying weavings and jewelry. Sunday night, Marguerite Kahrl, Rachel Cohen, Julie, Michael, Shigeki and I attended the candlelight procession that commemorates the martyrdom of eight Franciscan priests.

Julie and Michael first attended the mass at the Cathedral of St. Francis. While we waited for them, we met a woman whose father had built most of Los Alamos during WWII. Her parents were concerned about spies and her safety, so they taught her—then five years old—to say that she lived in “Santa Fe” and later “Arizona.” She seemed like a living piece of history, and we listened, fascinated.


With a church group singing Spanish softly behind, and mariachis ahead, we wound our way up cobblestone streets to the Cross of the Martyrs. Two Spanish musicians lounged in a restaurant window, one holding a guitar and another an accordion. Many women wore traditional long dresses and shawls. If I had dropped there, I would’ve thought I was in another country.

The hilltop offered a bird’s eye view of the city, where breezes blew out flames and strangers dipped candles toward each other’s to re-light them. A priest celebrated Santa Fe’s unity and a chorus sang hymns. When it was over, in contrast to the solemn procession, everyone sped downhill—one banner bearer tripping over a curb and mariachis practically running down the street toward the Plaza.

Father Sky, Mother Earth

Another treat was attending an evening of Native American storytelling at the College of Santa Fe. I was privileged to hear Hoskie Benally, a Diné (Navajo) who told a moving story warning children about the impact of alcohol. Hoskie, who became blind at 22, overcame alcoholism and depression to find his true path as a spiritual leader. In New Mexico, it's easy to see why indigenous peoples deify the landscape--it is so vibrant and alive.
Even the prairie dogs and jackrabbits seem livelier. As Carl Jung once said to a Native New Mexican about his beliefs, "Everyone knows it to be so." Awed by the great and changing landscape, I became a believer too.

The Plaza

Santa Fe's centuries-old plaza is lined with stores full of striking jewelery, clothing, rugs and crafts.
Just beyond it, vendors display wares outdoors--near the Loretto Chapel. The Chapel looked familiar and then I found out it was based on La Sainte Chapelle in Paris.
Inside, a winding staircase to the choir loft is said to have been built by a mysterious carpenter who appeared, built it without any nails, and disappeared. The sisters there at the time believed him to be Saint Joseph.



Reluctant weaver
Chimayo is a village famous for its centuries-old tradition of weavers. Heading north for a day, novelist Zelda Alpern and I stopped at Trujillo Weavers, where the third-generation owner demonstrated weaving on his grandfather’s loom. “Where in New York are you from,” he asked me. “This rug,” he said, “is going to New York.” His family taught him to weave when he was a boy. “I didn’t want to learn,” he said, smiling. The shop, full of wool rugs and throws, featured the Chimayo pattern, a diamond bordered by two stripes.

Healing clay
We entered the Sanctuario de Chimayo, known for its curative dirt and primitive paintings more Native than Spanish colonial.
An elderly woman, helped by her daughter, approached the altar on her knees, as did a teary young mother carrying a disabled toddler. Left of the altar was a door to a narrow hut full of crutches, letters, needlepoint and paintings bearing witness to Chimayo’s red earth. “His cancer has not gone away,” wrote one, “but the dirt has given him peace.”

A low entryway led to a square room, a hole at center with fresh dirt and a spade. Each day, the priest goes to the hillside, digs out soil and refills the hole each day. I knelt to shovel some earth, silvery with minerals, into a plastic bag. An old woman, extending a tiny box, asked me to fill hers too.


As urged earlier by Julie, Zelda and I took the high road to Taos—where the desert landscape turned surprisingly green and mountainous. “I could live here,” Zelda, a Vermonter, said approvingly. At a scenic lookout, we were startled by a long-crested jay.
In Taos, we enjoyed a garden lunch at Orlando’s New Mexican Café. Fortified, we ventured across a dramatic desert stretch to seek out D.H. Lawrence.



D.H. Lawrence Ranch
I had read Sons and Lovers in high school, and more recently, an essay by Lawrence on New Mexico shared by poet Mary Ladd. Lawrence, who had come to Taos in his last years, adored the “uncivilized” environment:

New Mexico was the greatest experience from the outside world that I have ever had. It certainly changed me forever… The moment I saw the brilliant, proud morning shine high up over the deserts of Santa Fe, something stood still in my soul…


A long dusty drive led to the Lawrence Ranch, owned by the University of New Mexico, where a sign pointed to a concrete walk. After a five-minute walk zigzagging uphill, we found the grave of Frieda, Lawrence’s wife, in front of the crypt. In a deft Nancy Drew move, Zelda unlocked the narrow door which creaked open a few inches.


We gasped: Inside was the altar where Frieda is said to have mixed Lawrence’s ashes. Mabel Dodge Sterne had threatened to take them, so Frieda is rumored to have said, “Let her try now!” as she poured them into the altar’s wet concrete. A framed certificate revealed Lawrence’s body had been shipped from Europe—as if we too might question the ashes’ whereabouts. A book also revealed signatures from visitors worldwide and we added ours too.


Art in Santa Fe
No one told me how beautiful Museum Hill is in Santa Fe: The spectacular location features three museums, respectively devoted to international folk, Spanish colonial and Indian arts.
I visited the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, an intriguing journey in the Plains Indians’ art, culture and spirituality.

Canyon Road was another discovery—a winding residential road with dozens of galleries. I enjoyed the “Once There Was, Once There Wasn't: Fairy Tales Retold” exhibit at Eight Modern, which featured drawings from Jim Dine’s Pinocchio series and harrowing images of the Furies by Fay Ku, and works by David Hockney, Peregrine Honig, Elizabeth "Grandma" Layton, Adela Leibowitz, David Levinthal, Paula Rego, Kiki Smith, and Richard Tuttle.

Patty Rosenthal, Jillian Conrad and I also took in the opening of Judy Tuwaletstiwa’s “Traces” at Linda Durham Contemporary Art on Paseo de Peralta where I spied actor Judge Reinhold (Beverly Hills Cop, Stripes, Fast Times at Ridgemont High).

We attended a performance outside of one gallery to celebrate the opening of a pottery exhibit. It featured a young Asian woman performing a tea ceremony within a chalk circle, while another woman read a poetic narrative, and the potter himself, draped under a sheet, crawled slowly toward the gallery. Patty or Jillian, do you recall the artist’s or gallery’s name? Anyway, it was well-crafted poetry and a thought-provoking experience. Amidst our tour, two young Hasidic men blew a shofar to welcome in the year 5768. Surrounded by all that art, and the sun hitting Canyon Road’s adobe-colored walls, it felt like the year ahead would be wonderful.


Art as action
The Santa Fe Art Institute (SFAI) views art as the most powerful force for change on the planet today. And SFAI is doing its part: In response to 9/11, Executive Director Diane Karp initiated Emergency Relief Residencies. To date, more than 130 artists from Lower Manhattan and the New Orleans area have been given time and space at SFAI to recover their lives and work from the effects of 9/ll and Katrina.

Armajani’s “Fallujah”
In this spirit, SFAI hosted “Fallujah,” an installation by architect and sculptor Siah Armajani—artwork declined by US museums for its controversial subject matter. The piece, a huge glass rectangle, tilts perilously backward, revealing crushed mattresses and a child’s rocking horse. The work is witness against war and, in particular, the bombing of Fallujah.

Rewarding talks
“Fallujah: Revealing War,” an SFAI-sponsored panel discussion, also featured journalists Dahr Jamail and Jeremy Scahill, and artist Siah Armajani. The next evening, SFAI residents also enjoyed the artist’s private slide-lecture of his work—including well-known space such as Battery Park in Lower Manhattan. Armajani, who often integrates poetry into his work, called upon good friend John Ashbery for help with the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge (Minneapolis, 1988). To top this off, Diane Karp took the sculptor and residents to dinner so we could get to know him.


Southwestern skies
My amateur-astronomer husband, Michael, joined me in the last week of the residency. His first night there, we drove to the top of the Santa Fe Ski Basin, almost 10,000 feet above sea level, to see the Milky Way arcing from one horizon to another. On the way up, we saw a male elk and a coyote. Another night, we enjoyed a tour of the night sky at a private ranch given by a local astronomer. On a daylight adventure, we drove to Los Alamos and savored the highway scenery.


Buena comida
People not only associate Santa Fe with art, but food. And there’s good reason: I discovered delicacies such as watermelon drink and Mexican wedding cookies—fat butter cookies with chopped nuts rolled in confectioners’ sugar. At Ecco near the Plaza, I tasted strawberry habañero—strawberry gelato with a chile kick. Everything was prepared with fresh vegetables from local farms or agricultural states in Mexico—so avocado in a salad at the Buddhist Cloud Cliff Bakery truly was a religious experience, as were steak-sized cinnamon rolls at Counter Culture. Michael and I, on a tip from a local, went to Los Potrillos for mind-altering chile relenos and home-made tortillas, an experience that will forever ruin our primitive concept of Mexican food back home.

Gratitude
I appreciate everyone’s good wishes, suggestions and prayers that made this trip so memorable. Thanks also to SFAI Director Diane Karp, and her dog, Bea,
who both made SFAI seem like home; to the Barretts for hosting a lovely cocktail party that made us feel a valued part of the Santa Fe arts community. For their kindness and hard work,
I salute SFAI Residency Director Gabe Gomez, Administrative Director Michele LaFlamme-Childs, Assistant Residency Director Peter Willig, and staff members Jennie, Joanna and Ammo.


Bottom line
And to answer the burning question: Did you write? Yes, I did. Poetry, I discovered, takes more time and needs to sit on the psyche’s back-burner. But being in Santa Fe added to my vocabulary of imagery, and in my work I expect to see its ancient cultures, beautiful colors and savory aromas erupt.

¡Que viva la fiesta!

Ann