Day Two ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day

The prompt for today, assigned by grandmaster poet Robert Lee Brewer in his blog is: "a visitor poem. The poem can be from the point of view of a visitor — or the people receiving the visitor. The visitor could be expected or unexpected. The visitor could be welcome or unwelcome. The visitor doesn’t even have to be human." I'm actually typing this blog in the lobby of the Country Inn and Suites in Ankeny, Iowa; my colleague Grant and I are on the road, scheduled to give a fiction and poetry reading in West Des Moines in the morning for the Des Moines Area Community College's "Celebration of the Literary Arts." I wrote parts of the following poem in the car on the way here, and I'd like to tinker with it some more but it's 11:40 p.m. and the poem's gotta go up. So here goes . . . The Visitor Feathered hair silver as Kenny Rogers', wings swept back over ears that peeked out a moment . . . wait, were they really pointed? Eyes hard as pebbles, shiny blue marbles flanking a nose like the honed edge of a cavalry saber. Knife slash of a mouth, lips slim as limestone strata straight across the face of an Indiana cliff. Chin sloping inward to the blunt point of a Flash Gordon rocketship. This grim visitor at my door like a pale Ming the Merciless sans facial hair, in a savagely tailored steel-gray suit. Shiny cowboy boots, each sleek as a navy destroyer. "I hear you've been looking for me, friend." A voice like antarctic wind, silent echoes of wolf howls on the flaky edge of hearing. "I'm Jack. Jack Frost. Been expecting me?" Handshake firm and sharp, bones like crystal spines of an ocean fish bucking the current. "I hear you've got yourself some complaints." Stroking pointy chin with skinny, skeletal fingers, taut skin translucent as old vellum. A mirthless smirk lifting the ends of the lips slightly baring fang tips glistening with spit. I feel as if I'm in an elevator in free fall, cold waves of adrenaline washing over my body. "Nah, April Fools! I'm just kidding ya, buddy. My name's Jackie — Jacqueline. Not Frost." A woman! A woman? Why didn't I see it before? Her lips break out into a genuine smile, the sun slipping out from behind a darkling storm cloud. "Yeah, I'm bringing ya a poem. You know? A poem?" She turned on her heel, winked over her shoulder, then took off briskly down the bright-lit street, bright silver sparkles drifting in her sprightly wake. —Draft by Vince Gotera     [do not copy or quote ... thanks] Catherine's poem for Day Two is much more graceful, dealing with a much more serious topic than my light-hearted story above. The Coming of Age I smooth a ponytail into place, fluorescent bulbs spotlight fine strands of silver snaking next to my face, warning you are near. Unprepared for your appearance, I blend oil and balm into creases along the length of my neck blood pulses beneath my fingertips quieting the sounds of your approach. This well-worn shirt, its blue cotton grazing my wrists, clinging to biceps shaped by lifting babies to my breasts, then firm with nourishment, youth, desire, another reminder of what you’ll take when you arrive an uninvited guest. —Draft by Catherine Pritchard Childress     [do not copy or quote ... thanks] Okay, that's Day Two. Just twenty-eight poems to go. Ain't this grand? Please leave a comment below for Catherine and me. Tell us what you're thinking after reading our drafts. Well, her poem and my draft. Take care, everyone. Ingat. POEM-A-DAY 2012 • Pick a day in April: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

National Poetry Month ... Poem-a-Day, People!

Hey, everyone, April is the cruelest month . . . National Poetry Month! This NPM, for once I'm going to write (at least) one poem during each day in April, taking up Writer's Digest Robert Lee Brewer's "PAD challenge" (PAD for "poem a day"). Every morning in April, Robert will issue a prompt in his Writer's Digest Poetic Asides blog . . . today, April 1, it's to write a "communication poem." So, Robert and everybody, here's mine. As you know, the weather and climate run up to this April has been not at all cruel and I'm going right to the man to find out what's up! Dear Mr. Frost, or may I call you Jack . . . Where’ve you been hanging these past few months? I only had to fire up the snow blower once. It coughed miserably, neglected and forlorn, before turning over and throwing some slush onto the brown lawn. Where was your wind, keen as new razor blades? Where were your white-out blizzards? Black ice? Your snow banks shouldering up to the eaves? Your crystal clear sleeves on twigs and branches? Were you maybe tending glaciers, making sure they didn’t calve icebergs into the shipping lanes. Or traffic-cop shepherding migratory birds, addled by strangely warm winds, the slipping magnetic field. That weird cold snap in the Azores in February, temps dropping down into the 60s, was that you? Catching rays on a sandy beach, trading white sand for white snow, your magenta Aloha shirt freezing to your frigid back and sternum. Listen up, Jack. Come your 4 billionth birthday, 23 December 2012, you better be back on the job. Ringing the moon with ice. Scissoring each and every snowflake into glittery lace. —Draft by Vince Gotera     [do not copy or quote ... thanks] I'm really jonesing to complete the PAD challenge this year. After all, this will be my last chance if we're reading the Mayan calendar right. Previous years I've let writer's block flummox me into only 3 or 4 poems in April. Not this time, friends. This year, Catherine Pritchard Childress, whose work you've seen before in the blog, is going to be my poem-a-day pen pal. She and I are going to make sure the other one gets the daily poem written. So, Catherine, one down and 29 to go, as you told me via facebook two hours ago. Got mine done just before midnight! Also, to keep myself humming I've registered as a participant in NaPoWriMo, where so far almost 500 bloggers and website-wielders have signed up to pledge poem-a-day online activities. Friends, would you comment below, please? Are you doing the PAD challenge? Join me and Catherine! And also Maureen Thorson, founder of NaPoWriMo, and all the good folks there. Go write a poem. Ingat. Added 2 April 2012:   Here's my poem-a-day buddy Catherine's day-one poem from yesterday. === ======== == ====== === ======= ==== === ========== ======= == ==== ========= ========= ====== === ===== ===== == === ==== === ====== ====== ==== === ====== === ===== == ====== == ====== == == == ====== ==== ===== === ======== == === ==== == ==== === ======== == === ===== ======== ==== == === ==== ==== ========== == ===== ===== ==== ======== === ==== ======= ====== ===== ======== === ==== ====== ====== ====== == === ===== ==== == === ====== ======= ===== === == ==== ===== == ===== ======= === ============== ====== ===== == ======= == ======= == ======= = ====== = ======= === ==== ===== ====== ====== ===== === == ======== ==== = === == === ===== === ==== ====== == === ======== ======= === ==== ======= === == ========                         Poem removed for publication purposes. Sorry. It may return at some point. Thanks. —Draft by Catherine Pritchard Childress     [do not copy or quote ... thanks] Wow, that's tremendous, Catherine. Friends, comment below, if you like; Catherine will be keeping an eye on the comments. You can also find her on twitter as @MamaMoxie. POEM-A-DAY 2012 • Pick a day in April: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Happy Birthmonth, Dr. Seuss! ... Of Books and Such, 6 March 2004

Earlier this month, March 2012, I started preparing the blog post you're reading now to celebrate Dr. Seuss's birthday, but then current events, shall we say, heated up at my school, the University of Northern Iowa — ssst, more on that later — and I got preoccupied and didn't finish it. So now I'm posting this within Dr. Seuss's birth month rather than day. Close enough. Theodor Seuss Geisel, most famously known as Dr. Seuss — with whom many of us spent our happiest hours as small children, I'm certain — was born on 2 March 1904. For the sake of this errant and tardy blog post as well as the allure of being on time (at least in a fictional sense, sorta), why don't we call this March Dr. Seuss Month? Especially since the cartoon starring Danny DeVito as Dr. Seuss's mustachioed, cranky yet loveable, environmentalist, tree-hugging (in a good way) Lorax is still in theaters. Somewhere. Surely. I'm going to take this Dr. Seuss Month opportunity to reprise — resurrect? — my "Of Books and Such" book-review column from the Cedar Falls Times in 2004. After all, books don't go stale, do they? Whenever you and I read a book, no matter when it first saw the light of day, it's new for us, it's born in our minds. Even if we've read it before, we renew it, right? So . . . here is my Dr. Seuss Month offering of a "Of Books and Such" column from Dr. Seuss's centennial year. Cue gnarly, serpentine Seuss-ish trumpets: tah–tah–DAAH! OF BOOKS AND SUCH by Vince Gotera, Cedar Falls Times, 6 March 2004. Oh, The Places He Went! The Seuss, The Whole Seuss, and Nothing But the Seuss: A Visual Biography of Theodor Seuss Geisel by Charles D. Cohen, Random House, 2004, 390 pages, cloth $35.00. I bet, for most of you reading this column, Dr. Seuss has been more present in our lives than Dr. Spock — the baby doctor, not the pointy-eared Vulcan. We grew up "living" on Mulberry Street and wishing we had 500 hats. We were babysat by Yertle the Turtle, the amiable elephant Horton (who heard a Who), the Grinch (who tried to steal Christmas), and of course The Cat in the Hat — in print as well as on TV. We read The Lorax to our kids, teaching them about caring for the environment, and we gave Oh, The Places You'll Go! as graduation gifts. The name Dr. Seuss, for us, brings up weird, gangly animals with long legs and feathers in unlikely places; scraggly trees with tufts of odd-colored foliage; and impossible yet charming architecture and machines. This week (March 2, to be exact) marks the celebration of Dr. Seuss's 100th birthday: "The Seussentenial"! Check out <www.seussentennial.com> for more info. [No longer an active web address.] So, who was Dr. Seuss? You may know he was born Theodor Seuss Geisel, but beyond that, what? Besides the myths he put on paper, Dr. Seuss often made myth out of his own life; "He was an unusual man, particularly with respect to his memory and vision," Charles Cohen writes, "and his penchant for storytelling and practical jokes often led people astray from the facts." It turns out that Dr. Seuss, or more properly, Ted Geisel, is as interesting a person as many of his creations. Did you know, for example, that Geisel — let's call him Ted — was a well-known political cartoonist for years before his first children's book? That he used what we would now recognize as "Seussian" characters in nationally known ad campaigns for Flit insecticide and Standard Oil, again before what he at first called "brat-books"? That Ted published a book for adults called The Seven Lady Godivas featuring drawings of seven undressed sisters? (Though, as Carolyn See noted in Esquire, "In 1939 America was feeling too blue to be cheered up by pictures of silly ladies with no nipples and funny knees"). Did you know that during WWII, Ted served as Captain (and later Major) Theodor Geisel, working for Frank Capra (the famous director of It's a Wonderful Life) in a filmmaking unit in the Army, where he invented the cartoon character Private SNAFU, known to many vets from that war? Did you know that 1953, when I was not yet one year old, saw the release of Ted's big-budget Hollywood movie, The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T? This is the stuff (and more!) of which Cohen's enlightening and entertaining book is made. The Seuss, The Whole Seuss, and Nothing But the Seuss is lavishly illustrated with thousands of illustrations from Seuss's work (magazine covers, political cartoons, sculptures, marionettes, and of course art from his books), photos from Geisel's personal life, action figures of Seussian characters, representative work from artists that influenced Dr. Seuss, and so on — the majority from Cohen's large collection of Seuss materials. Cohen's research is meticulous and carefully documented; more importantly, he discusses Geisel's life and times, the development of Dr. Seuss's images and ideas as well as his social conscience, in a readable and enjoyable style. Readers of all ages will enjoy this book. My son Gabe, who is just on the verge of becoming a reader, savored the fun pictures. History buffs will appreciate how social and cultural events and trends affected Dr. Seuss's work. This book is indeed the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth on Dr. Seuss. P.S. There is also a fine biography of Dr. Seuss for younger readers (kindergarten through fourth grade): Dr. Seuss by Mae Woods. Those interested in Dr. Seuss's writing as literature (and Geisel is a fine poet, especially in his use of meter and innovative rhyme) should look at Dr. Seuss: American Icon by Philip Nel. Vince Gotera, when not at his day job teaching at the University of Northern Iowa, has read Dr. Seuss books to all of his five daughters and sons. Contact him at OfBooksAndSuch@yahoo.com. [No longer an active email address.] A bit of history about the book-review column title: When I was a youth, my father Martin Avila Gotera had a journalistic commentary and miscellany column called "Of This and Such" in The Philippine News, a newspaper based in San Francisco and published by Alex Esclamado. As a tribute to my dad and his literary aspirations, I titled my own column with similar phrasing. Okay, watch for future reprises of my "Of Books and Such" column in the blog. As I said above, books don't get stale, and if you go out and buy the books I reviewed back in 2004, you'll enjoy them just as much now as you would have when they were new. Please, also, won't you comment below? I'd really love to know what you think. Thanks. So . . . happy Dr. Seuss Month! Go put a stripey hat on your cat. Take good care, friends. Ingat.

Goodreads the First

Hi, everyone. I was on the book-reading social network site Goodreads yesterday writing a review of Andrew Davidson's debut novel The Gargoyle and I thought, "I should share my Goodreads reviews on the Blue Guitar blog." So voilá, here we go! I'm fairly new to Goodreads so I don't have many books or reviews there yet. Though I do have an author's page there. And I've got a Goodreads blog on that page too, with just a handful of posts. I hope you'll check my Goodreads author page and blog, both. Okay, friends, here are a few book reviews, straight off my Goodreads. Enjoy! The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson My rating: 5 of 5 stars A truly excellent book. In The Gargoyle, Andrew Davidson's style is continually surprising (in a good way) and distinctive. For example, the cynical narrator who has been severely burned in a strange car accident describes how in his treatment his body was wrapped with skin from cadavers: "My body was cleaned constantly but I rejected these sheets of necro-flesh anyway; I've never played well with others. . . . There I lay, wearing dead people as armor against death." As you may know if you read my non-Goodreads blog, I have a particular fascination with Dante's Inferno (click on "dante" in my blog at http://vincegotera.blogspot.com); well, Davidson uses Dante satisfyingly and marvelously, along with other ecclesiastic, legendary (e.g., Scheherazade), and pop culture references, not to mention national and ethnic cultures: Icelandic (Viking), Japanese, Italian. The Gargoyle's main characters — the unnamed burn victim and the enigmatic Marianne Engel (who claims to be a nun who loved him in the middle ages) — are fascinating and memorable. More than fascinating. Read this book . . . I recommend it. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman My rating: 5 of 5 stars A wonderful novel. I was continually surprised and then surprised even more as events and people unfolded. Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere is a page-turner, no question. I couldn't stop reading it, but I found myself from time to time pausing, closing my eyes. Because it's so intense I needed just to rest and also because I wanted to savor the experience, to forestall the ending that I knew was coming closer and closer. My highest recommendation. And this from a guy who reads for a living. Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown by Michael Shermer My rating: 4 of 5 stars A collection of entertaining and thought-provoking essays, Michael Shermer in Science Friction turns a skeptical eye towards all sorts of science-related topics, including the so-called "anthropology wars"; Gene Roddenberry and Harlan Ellison's Star Trek tiff; the vicissitudes of evolution in contemporary life; the scholarly reputation of Stephen Jay Gould; and the current skeptic movement, among many fascinating subjects. A great read . . . check it out. On my blog, I recently wrote a post about the phrase science friction . . . check that out too. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling My rating: 4 of 5 stars My fave among the Harry Potter books. It's J. K. Rowling after she'd gotten pretty good at the craft but before she started fattening up the books — in numbers of pages, I mean. Loved the hippogriff, Hermione's time-turner gizmo, the marauder's map, Lupin as professor and werewolf) . . . even the Dementors who can put such a chill in the air and up your spine. Fun book. Déjà Dead by Kathy Reichs My rating: 4 of 5 stars I picked up Déjà Dead because (1) I'm in a hold line at the library for Patricia Cornwell's newest, (2) I'm waiting for James W. Hall's next, and (3) I like the TV show "Bones" that's based on the hero of this novel, Temperance Brennan. Well, I wasn't disappointed. I liked this novel quite a lot . . . it's a page-turner. In fact, I devoured the last 70 pages with a booklight next to my sleeping wife at 3:00 a.m. Couldn't stop reading. Kathy Reichs's descriptions are rich and striking . . . they really embed you in the often fierce action. Her metaphors are witty and entertaining also — for example, she describes a corpse in the woods this way: "Flies buzzed and circled around it, like academics at a free buffet." Touché. Check this book out. Pattern Recognition by William Gibson My rating: 3 of 5 stars I think I expected William Gibson's Pattern Recognition to be as good as Neuromancer, but that's a mighty hard act to follow. This one was fine . . . I liked it. Interesting that the protagonists' names are homophones: "Case" in Neuromancer and "Cayce" in Pattern Recognition. Probably some Freudian something-or-other that someone else can sort out. Anyone . . . ? View all my Goodreads reviews Okay, that's all for now. I'll save some other Goodreads reviews for later. If you're on Goodreads too, friend me there! And please leave me comments below. I'd love to hear what you think about these books, if you've read them. Take care, everyone. Ingat.

Oops! Where Is the Dog? ... An Interview with Leslie A. Kebschull

Last month, I interviewed Annie E. Existence, a Louisiana artist. This month, I'd like to introduce you to a local artist: Leslie A. Kebschull. (By "local" I mean Cedar Falls, Iowa.) Leslie has a painting show at the downtown Cup of Joe coffeehouse through February 19, next Sunday. I know Leslie through church. I play bass in the praise band at St. John Lutheran here in town and she is married to the pastor, Dave Kebschull. Leslie has received awards for her art, for example, first and second prize as an amateur in the Denver, Iowa, art show; this past year, at that same art show she won third prize in the professional category for a painting titled "Victory"— that painting is in the show at the Cup, the last of the images below. Besides creating beautiful paintings, Leslie is also a dedicated haiku poet, a fine singer, and a wonderful photographer. About this she said, "I do enjoy photography also, but am just a "point and shoot" kind of gal. I don't have a lot of formal training, just a decent eye." I think Leslie's got one heck of a photographer's eye; check out her work at the online JPG photography magazine.     Leslie at the Cup of Joe art show. Her paintings are on the wall at left.   Remember, click on any of the images to see a larger, more detailed version. Now to the interview . . . Vince:  Could you share some personal background? Where you were born and raised, that kind of thing? Leslie:  I grew up in Iowa: born in Charles City and raised in Cedar Rapids. My husband Dave and I have three daughters: Lauren, Whittney, and Micah. We've lived in Missouri, West Virginia, several towns in Wisconsin, and Green Valley, Arizona. In Iowa, we've lived in Tama/Toledo, Dubuque, and now Cedar Falls. Because of all those moves I have worked in a variety of jobs, from cake decorator, to making fine, quality glasses in about an hour as a lab tech at LensCrafters, to managing memberships at a YMCA. Vince:  What are some of your earliest memories about art? Do you remember starting to make art? Leslie:  My earliest memories are pretty sketchy. I remember my mom painting scenery or still life and I would use her paints. I drew a lot, mostly women, and my paintings, as a kid, were more realistic. I had never really seen abstract art while I was growing up. My brother and I also had this drawing game we would play where one of us would just do a scribble and then the other would try to draw something from the scribble, which made us really have to use our imaginations.     blue plus blue plus blue  equals a glorious day          sky mathematics   Vince:  Do you have any formal training in art? Is your work always abstract, like the paintings in this show? Leslie:  I went back to school in 2006 to get a degree in Art Therapy and after almost 20 years of not creating any art I just didn’t think I could draw to save my life, but I found out I could. What inspired me to try painting abstract was a young man, named Adam, whose easel was near mine. I loved his work and so I decide to try my hand at it. As a teen I had always done more realistic pieces, so this was very new to me, and I loved it. Then Art History classes exposed me to other artists, such as: Robert Rauschenberg, Theodoros Stamos, Helen Frankenthaler, Hans Hoffmann, Franz Marc, and many others. Vince:  Are those artists your influences in painting? Leslie:  Most of the paintings in the show were inspired by Frankenthaler’s style, but at the same time, totally me. That is the one thing I have discovered with Abstract Art, it truly comes from the artist. Just like I would have loved to do the type of work Adam was creating next to me in school, I couldn’t, because it was his own spirit and experience coming through in his work. I find the inspiration from others, but my work is a reflection of me. I would not say it’s my emotions coming out so much as my inner spirit being revealed in my paintings. It is also fun to hear how others react to the paintings, what they see, feel, etc.        smell the flowers aromatic sensation      a heavenly scent   Vince:  In this exhibit, instead of giving each painting a title, you’ve given haiku. Tell us about that. Leslie:  I decided to use haikus rather than titles for my pieces, because they are also an expression of me. In the last two years I wrote a haiku almost daily. Usually I was observing something around me, such as a coffee house songstress, or the chimes blowing in the wind, or a spiritual revelation, or just a thought, and I wanted to share them with people. I have so many haikus and no one really sees them except the occasional Facebook reader. Also using haikus instead of titles gets the observer a little closer to the painting to really take it in. All the haikus posted under the paintings were written before I created the paintings. I just tried to find a haiku that would somehow fit the painting. Vince:  In the book that accompanies the exhibit, you say that yes, you do think in haiku. Which of the haiku you've listed there do you like best? Leslie:  Here are a couple of my favorites because they are two of the funnier ones. piles of laundry grow and clutters accumulate oops! where is the dog? cognitive comma, senior moment, brain blockage simply put: brain fart Vince:  Both of those are hilarious! I like how they're about everyday life. Leslie:  I love playing with words and think haikus are a fun way to express myself. I think my favorite haikus are the ones that express that playfulness. For a while there was an online group I was in where I had created a thread called “Haiku” and we would all respond to each other in that form. It was a fun way to communicate to each other.                       the gray misty year is a faded photograph                           of lost memories   Vince:  How did you choose the paintings that are included in this show? Is there a story connected with this exhibit? Leslie:  About three weeks before this show at I really did not have a body of work that went together and I was beginning to think I would have to use paintings that didn’t really show a body of work and had no congruity to it. Then something happened: one of my inspirations, Helen Frankenthaler, passed away and I began to look at her work again. On the day she passed away I painted four paintings and four more the day after she passed. In those two days I had ideas, colors, and composition coming at me and I couldn’t stop painting. It was only when I ran out of canvas and decided I had plenty of paintings for the show that I stopped. Besides I only have so much room in my basement to store all these paintings. Vince:  It's wonderful when that kind of creativity happens to us, isn't it? Okay, how about a final word? Leslie:  All in all I just love to create whether through words or paint. It's an extra perk if someone else enjoys my work, but ultimately I just like having fun being creative. ;-)                     I see around me god in the oddest places                                             unexpected joy   Everyone, please leave a comment below . . . I would love to hear what you think and so would Leslie. She'll be checking for comments here and also responding. If you came to this blog post because you saw an announcement of it on facebook, would you please leave a comment here instead of in facebook? Or maybe in both places if you'd like, but certainly here, please. If you live near Cedar Falls, go see Leslie's show — up through Sunday, February 19. The paintings are marvelous to see "live." And they're for sale, so if you like something a bunch, Leslie would love for you to own it and give it a nice home. Her own home is already where they live, but she'd like them to travel and see the world! Also, if you happen to see Leslie hanging around her paintings at the Cup, say hello . . . I'm sure she would love to talk about them with you. I hope you enjoyed the interview. Take care, friends. Ingat. Added later on 9 Feb 2012: I've made a change in the painting images. Changed the last one, I should say. These images of the paintings are from Leslie's facebook art portfolio. The bottom image above, when you see it in person, is very different from the facebook image. The painting on the wall appears more yellow while the computer photo is more like peach or salmon. So I tweaked it more toward lemon in Photoshop and then asked Leslie what she thought. She prefers the original photo because in the photoshopped version, while its color might be more true, "the brush strokes are no longer there and the picture looks more graphic rather than hand-painted," as Leslie wrote to me. So I've changed it back to the image from Leslie's facebook. Truth be told, I liked that image better than the photoshopped one, anyway.