RE-DRAWING OPERA

Love moi peeps. To wit, I already have a publisher who's expressed interest in my found (literally found) poem, "OPERA FOR WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS". Well yay. No wonder I blather and blog. But this post is really not about Moi. Cough. It's about how, if this poem is published, I've got the cover art for it! And it's because this drawing is brilliant and not because it was made by Junior-Picasson aka Moi son Michael! Check it for yourself:



That critter is something Michael imagined on his own -- he's got touches of Takashi Murakami, yah?

Most recently, Michael inserted the critter into another thank you drawing, and his first collage--this to his Tio Freddy in New York who'd sponsored Michael for a fundraising "Run for Funds" for his local school:



Gads--I'm so glad I'm not one of those insufferable parents continuously bragging about their untalented children...for my Michael is so very talented!

Speaking of Freddy, I inserted myself...I mean, my book, into the snailmail that sent off Michael's drawing for framing in his loft apartment. I sent him THE THORN ROSARY with the inscription

Memorize every word...

After all, it's only 336 pages...

Now, am off to type up 216 couplets--may my eyesight survive.

HOUSECLEANING -- A PATH TO POETRY

I LOVE ART and of course appreciate living with art. To keep track of the progression of artists whose works enliven our living space, I keep art files. Basically, anything related to the artists' works -- from exhibition announcements to correspondences (love hearing from artists) to media -- gets filed.

That is, they're supposed to be filed. Instead, for the past five years, I've tossed these bits of info onto a windowsill in the library, intending to file them. Well, this week, the files are updated, courtesy of Michael. I needed to give him a chore and thought filing also would give him an excuse to read and learn about other artists.

What I discovered, though, in going through the five-years-plus information piled up on the windowsill were some old poems whose existence I'd forgotten. I occasionally stumble across old poems in various nooks and crannies, and this sheaf of three were, I realized, poems from a stay at MacDowell years ago. So I read them -- which was interesting because after several years of separation I could read the poems as a reader and not their author. What a relief to discover that I loved "Opera For William Carlos Williams," a long poem about the sexual lives of visual artists; its epigraph -- and may it amuse you as much as it must have amused, and still amuses, Moi -- is

"the derivation of the adjective venereal is from Venus!...I was stunned!"
--Dr. William Carlos Williams

Not only that, it's a long poem -- 216 couplets! I immediately thought it'd make a neat chap! Interestingly, one line was from what my notes say was a breakfast conversation with then co-resident Lucy Grealy!

I also discovered a 22-part poem, except the first three parts are missing; I don't yet know what to do about the missing parts. I might do a "Dave Brubeck" on it, in terms of how he ended up composing/finishing "The Time of Our Madness".

The third poem was a silly one-pager about martial arts and I must have thought it also unsatisfactory at the time I wrote it as I hadn't bothered to transcribe it yet from handwriting.

Still, this is a pretty good haul to discover -- I often wonder what's lurking within moi voluminous files. In any case, perhaps I should clean house more often!