Bookman’s Corner Chicago
I’ll never forget my first adult glimpse of Lake Champlain and New Hampshire’s White Mountains. The sight captivated me to the point of postponing my trip to Montreal, so as to explore the state of Vermont – a spacious museum of pristine nature and “New English” culture.
Being a Chicagoan curious about small-town America and personal (ethnic) identity, in Vermont I commenced what would become a living tour of far-North American history.
I visited people, places, and circumstances I had previously only heard and read about – particularly the impoverished “Yankees” of the Appalachian North. I witnessed domestic abuse on multiple occasions. I often tell people Vermont has the worst poverty I have ever seen – it brought me to tears.
In many Vermont towns, pickup trucks blasting country music are paramount – cultural characteristics I always attached to the south(west). This amazed me because the history books always portrayed Yankees and Confederates as culturally polar opposites.
I befriended an older Italian-American woman named Mary. A child of Italian immigrants, and in great physical condition; she took me to her family cabin, high in the mountains, and shared tales of tearing up the NYC dance clubs during the 50’s and 60’s.
She also shared her family’s struggle – that of able-bodied Abruzzi men arriving to America with New York-sized hopes and dreams, only to spend the rest of their lives digging ditches to feed their families. The lucky ones made way to Argentina and fared much better.
Punk Rock, Fast and Pray
HAYES STREET VERSE
for Gwich’in.
_________________
minority reality
reduction based
aside mountain croiX;
burn aside, road rail..
river mural
rush.
_________
A Slow Suicide
I.
the pakistani painter’s studio
a shrine to her lost self
the finer things
glossed resistance
depressed days
blunted nights
II.
the darkest corner
of
her dust-laden studio
whisper
brighter
daysze.
Zen-like life-Force >
the flow of ideas quickens beyond chronicle..
My last liberal cup
of coffee astral projected
from Hyde Park to Riverside
one late weekday morning..
No longer ‘agreeing’
with conservative ideas,
I now live and breathe them;
In other words,
no longer a liberal
transformed.
MENDOTA BLUFF
‘I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.’ -Hermann Hesse
In 2008, I was informally introduced to the business world in a Saint Paul, Minnesota café:
As a creative Artist with an extensive not-for-profit background, I was found to be an asset to a budding Social Entrepreneur with extensive financial management experience. This former international banking executive, though commercially astute, was clueless as to how to apply his expertise to a non-profit situation. I witnessed him make mistake after mistake as he desperately sought a way to use his skill set to “help kids”; however, this gentleman’s plight was much deeper…
Charlene Spretnak, a stellar literary artist in her own right, has recently unleashed her revisionist tour de force, The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art: Art History Reconsidered, 1800 to the present.
This, Charlene’s seventeen-year labour of love, leaves few stones unturned; as she provides us a narrative of modern art history via her personal spiritual prism.
I particularly enjoyed her treatment of acclaimed earth-body artist/a, Ana Mendieta (pp. 165-6); whose pioneering contributions, though highly profound, were greatly limited by a shortened life.
The Spiritual Dynamic is about modern art as much as it is about modern people. Nowhere is that more evident than in the afterword, where Charlene’s true passion is on full display:
“We moderns have long been slipping into a detached solipsism that shrinks us further into ourselves….but the great works of modern art have never surrendered to it.” (p. 204)
Great writers author great books because they feel burdened to do so, and Charlene Spretnak is no exception; for The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art is more than a mere exposé of our collective creative burden..it is an invitation for everyone to join in the lifting. Count me in.
Interview