tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63340275811067835832024-03-12T23:03:41.050-07:00Lobster and CanaryLobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.comBlogger329125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-36563797525029500792015-09-06T10:13:00.000-07:002015-09-06T10:13:12.999-07:00City Dreaming <div style="text-align: center;">
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<img alt="Castle-and-Sun-by-Paul-Klee" height="326" src="http://totallyhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Castle-and-Sun-by-Paul-Klee.jpg" width="400" /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Paul Klee, <i>Castle and Sun </i>(1928)</span></div>
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The lobster emerges just long enough from the bottom of the bay to converse with the canary. </div>
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"City lights," says Canary.</div>
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"Drinking their reflection," says Lobster.</div>
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Daytime work precludes more frequent posting-- and will continue to do so this fall. You can catch glimpses of the lobster and the canary on Twitter: @DanielRabuzzi</div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Elias Sime</span>,<span style="background-color: white;"> <span style="line-height: 16px;"><i>The Computer Cemetery - or Addis Ababa as Motherboard </i>(c. 2005?)</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">In the meantime, slivered recommendations, best of what I read this past year (alas! no time to comment further) in no particular order: <a href="https://veschwab.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">V. E. Schwab</a>, <i>A Darker Shade of Magic</i>; <a href="http://www.sofiasamatar.com/" target="_blank">Sofia Samatar</a>, <i>A Stranger in Olondria</i>; <a href="http://www.annleckie.com/" target="_blank">Ann Leckie</a>, <i>Ancillary Justice</i>; <a href="http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/" target="_blank">Jeff VanderMeer</a>, The Southern Reach trilogy; <a href="http://www.harpercollins.com/cr-107550/erika-johansen" target="_blank">Erika Johansen</a>, <i>The Queen of the Tearling</i>; <a href="http://www.katherineaddison.com/" target="_blank">Katherine Addison</a>, <i>The Goblin Emperor</i>; <a href="http://www.dianesetterfield.com/" target="_blank">Diane Setterfield</a>, <i>Bellman & Black</i>; <a href="http://www.danielhwilson.com/" target="_blank">Daniel H. Wilson</a>, <i>Robopocalypse</i>; <a href="http://www.helen-marshall.com/" target="_blank">Helen Marshall</a>, <i>Hair Side, Flesh Side</i>; <a href="http://www.rookfiles.com/" target="_blank">Daniel O'Malley</a>, <i>The Rook</i>; <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/nathaniel-mackey" target="_blank">Nathaniel Mackey</a>, <i>From A Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate</i>; <a href="http://www.genevievevalentine.com/" target="_blank">Genevieve Valentine</a>, <i>Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti</i>; <a href="http://www.bookslut.com/features/2006_05_008735.php" target="_blank">Kathryn Davis</a>, <i>The Thin Place</i>; <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/121768/the-good-mayor-by-andrew-nicoll/" target="_blank"> Andrew Nicoll</a>, <i>The Good Mayor; </i><a href="http://www.paulcornell.com/" target="_blank">Paul Cornell</a>, <i>London Falling</i>. </span></span></div>
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<img alt="Lower East Side Photo" src="http://images.nymag.com/images/2/realestate/neighborhoods/2010/les100413_lede.jpg" /></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #7f7f7f; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 15px; text-align: right;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px; text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao, "Lower East Side, NYC, Street Scene" (c. 2014)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">And a handful of favorite short stories, some old, some new, that have intoned their magic over me this year: Steven Erikson's "<a href="http://malazan.wikia.com/wiki/Goats_of_Glory" target="_blank">Goats of Glory</a>" (from the Strahan & Anders anthology, <i><a href="http://www.harpercollins.com/9780061723810/swords-and-dark-magic" target="_blank">Swords & Dark Magic</a></i>); Ellen Kushner & Caroline Stevermer's "The Vital Importance of the Superficial" in Datlow & Windling's <i><a href="http://us.macmillan.com/queenvictoriasbookofspells/ellendatlow" target="_blank">Queen Victoria's Book of Spells</a></i>); and Yoon Ha Lee's "Iseul's Lexicon" from her <i><a href="http://www.tor.com/2013/05/09/review-conservation-of-shadows-yoon-ha-lee/" target="_blank">Conservation of Shadows</a>.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: #f1f1f1; line-height: 16px;">Aleksandr Brodsky & Ilya Utkin, "The Paper Architects," from their <i>Projects</i> (1980-1990)</span></span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-5984781284038783732015-01-04T05:41:00.000-08:002015-01-04T05:41:03.604-08:00Dragon by Da Vinci <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #202020; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 9px; text-align: left;">Study of Cats and Other Animals c. 1513</span></div>
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Look carefully, there among the cats.</div>
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Da Vinci thought hard about dragons--he pondered most of all the proper placement of their wings. With his superior knowledge of anatomy and physics, he made sure dragon-wings were positioned in the place of arms, rather than appended helicopter-style to the shoulder blades (he drew winged dragons elsewhere; I cannot find the image at the moment).</div>
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I require such scientific exactitude in my creatures of fantasy. </div>
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Except when they are bumble bees.</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-2957667730171685822014-11-30T07:56:00.000-08:002014-11-30T08:02:19.319-08:00Kianja Strobert at The Studio Museum Harlem <br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Kianja Strobert</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><em>Untitled</em>, 2011 (<span style="line-height: 1.25em;">Mixed media on paper; </span><span style="line-height: 1.25em;">30 × 22 in.;</span><span style="line-height: 1.25em;">Collection of </span><a href="http://www.zachfeuer.com/" style="line-height: 1.25em;" target="_blank">Zach Feuer</a>)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><a href="http://www.zachfeuer.com/artists/kianja-strobert/" target="_blank">Kianja Strobert</a></b> evokes the deep energy, the stop/look/listen to your beating heart, the stillness of the Now. Immerse yourself in her work, currently exhibited at <a href="http://www.studiomuseum.org/exhibition/kianja-strobert-day-in-time#sthash.cs62Jf3r.dpuf" target="_blank">The Studio Museum Harlem</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Her own vocabulary, her own identity, with nods to Diebenkorn, Alston, Twombly, Thomas, Frankenthaler, Mitchell.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I especially love the title of her exhibition: <i>Of This Day In Time</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Brings me into what I call "Drop-Time." I have summoned the Drop-Time in earlier <i>Lobster & Canary </i>entries: <a href="http://lobsterandcanary.blogspot.com/2013/12/drop-time-revisited-shatter-stop-run.html" target="_blank">Drop-Time</a>,"the moment that is frozen in motion, simultaneously gliding and flying while having been lived once, in a specific blink or gasp, months or years or decades ago."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>[As always, all images copyrighted to the artist and/or her legal representatives, and/or the photographer; images used here solely for non-commercial purposes of commentary].</i></span></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-8996188687184912742014-10-25T07:06:00.001-07:002014-10-25T07:06:27.409-07:00Lock-tight doors and paint-over windows<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #333366; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Cy Twombly, <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 10px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Untitled</em>, 1970. Pencil, plywood, color pencil, oil paint, wax crayon and Scotch Tape</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333366; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Most mornings-- in the deep pre-dawn-- I drift through landscapes of my mind's devising, listening to my own voice filtered through rock and cloud, reciting poetry in an obscure tongue.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333366; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Today, so early it might almost have been last night, I wandered through long corridors, hallways bathed in sepia tones and wisps of palest ruby. Cryptic scribbles covered the walls-- I kept trying to read what was written, walked on unenlightened. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #333366; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Doors everywhere along the roofed avenue, none open, taunting me with their resistance to my efforts. Windows too, all inked over-- I could hear winds and bird-calls beyond, but the panes remained opaque.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333366; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">So hard to convey...this Twombly comes closest.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333366; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i>[As always, all images copyrighted to the artist or his/her legal representative, used here solely for non-commercial purposes of commentary].</i></span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-66411999086062944172014-10-05T08:33:00.000-07:002014-10-05T08:33:41.353-07:00Ominous Radiance<img height="245" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81xG-2uqFmL._SX522_.jpg" width="400" /><br />
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Sometimes words wrack me with their power-- I could fall down and drown in them.<br />
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This week I collided with Melville's poem <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175180" target="_blank">"The Berg; A Dream"</a> and have re-read it multiple times, giddy with it, while fearing its danger.<br />
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Above all, this ominous radiance:<br />
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"Along the spurs of ridges pale,</div>
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Not any slenderest shaft and frail,</div>
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A prism over glass-green gorges lone,</div>
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Toppled; or lace of traceries fine,</div>
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Nor pendant drops in grot or mine</div>
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Were jarred, when the stunned ship went down."</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-46392650910684104412014-09-21T08:24:00.000-07:002014-09-21T08:24:32.336-07:00Sinister Beauty<img src="http://www.whatsthatbug.com/wp-content/uploads//2009/08/cricket_wasp_theresa.jpg" /><br />
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Virgil speaks much of bees ("little Romans" he calls them, for their diligence and loyalty) but says nothing at all about wasps-- which is a shame because their biography is at least as illustrious, and frankly more dramatic. I might write a treatise on bees but I would stage a drama about the wasp.<br />
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As summer slides into fall, tribes of husky bees flirt sedulously with the goldenrod and the dwindling vetch and yarrow, with the first surge of aster, in the strips and interstices along the East River. Buttery-banded bees, some almost milky, others orange-lacquered, displaying the hive's livery with brilliant abdominal intarsia.<br />
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Now, over the bee-swarms, in looping caracoles sails the wasp: onyx and cobalt blur. An emissary from the distant blue, from across the wide water I think. Rebecca Solnit, in <i>A Field Guide To Getting Lost</i>, speaks of "the blue of distance," the "color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not." The wasp is a piece of that deep-blue distance bringing itself to me, self-embodied emotional longing made visible, a needle-slice of the far Faerie horizon detaching itself and flying right to my doorstep.<br />
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The wasp is a member of either the Chalybion or the Chlorion genus, a marauder whose daintily trailing legs and slender form belie the venom within. They hunt crickets, grasshoppers and katydids, paralyzing them in underground burrows as hosts for their larvae. (Annie Dillard's reflections in <i>Pilgrim at Tinker Creek</i> on the parasitical nature of wasps haunt me: "What if you were an inventor and you made ten percent of your inventions in such a way that they could only work by harassing, disfiguring, or totally destroying the other ninety percent? These things are not well enough known."). Faerie is no paradise.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-26469112046314102342014-09-07T13:44:00.000-07:002014-09-07T13:44:39.745-07:00Never cease to pursue magic-- it resides in the most mundane places<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Late summer yields to early autumn here in New York City. Before the leaves fall, while the haze still obscures our towers and wreathes our colonnades, as the sun slants in sharply to pick out hues and textures the summer preferred to hide beneath brick-sweat and enervating glare, we strolled this afternoon in the East Village and on the Lower East Side. Some glimpses of what we found...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyQjcD46uKS0Wx6ZxzA6g6CDYJ-lTBjXo-vVsvv9E_t3pqrP-C-5Jfi51Vls4aoBnLjCoGJbB38lRC6zBMGWNWaeImykmSFCgsdcvimxkpLY1G8oiURgqNBGJT0d6kSaizy9cv9XvjRoA/s1600/LES4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyQjcD46uKS0Wx6ZxzA6g6CDYJ-lTBjXo-vVsvv9E_t3pqrP-C-5Jfi51Vls4aoBnLjCoGJbB38lRC6zBMGWNWaeImykmSFCgsdcvimxkpLY1G8oiURgqNBGJT0d6kSaizy9cv9XvjRoA/s1600/LES4.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-27040574213875031962014-05-31T09:02:00.000-07:002014-05-31T09:02:11.786-07:00Lobster & Canary On Summer Hiatus-- But Visit Us At MOUSE<div style="text-align: center;">
<img alt="Fil:Harald Sohlberg, Flower Meadow in the North, 1905.jpg" height="351" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Harald_Sohlberg%2C_Flower_Meadow_in_the_North%2C_1905.jpg/683px-Harald_Sohlberg%2C_Flower_Meadow_in_the_North%2C_1905.jpg" width="400" /></div>
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Harald Sohlberg, <i>Flower Meadow In The North</i> (1905)</div>
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We're going to take a break for the summer, after five unbroken years (322 posts) of musings and observations. Just to gather our thoughts, let the flowers grow, the fruits ripen... </div>
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<img alt="File:Giovanna Garzoni.jpg" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Giovanna_Garzoni.jpg" /></div>
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Giovanna Garzoni, <i>Still Life With A Bowl Of Citrons </i>(1640)</div>
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We hugely value you-- our readers-- and thank you for reading, and for the many notes and comments you send. <b>We will resume right after American Labor Day this September. </b> In the meantime, we invite you to follow our other blog, at <a href="http://mouse.org/news-events/news/mouse-blog" target="_blank"><b>MOUSE</b></a>. </div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[As always, all images displayed here are copyrighted to the artists and/or their legal representatives, or are within the public domain. Used here exclusively for non-commercial purposes.]</span> </div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-76210489945483297242014-05-26T08:50:00.000-07:002014-05-26T08:50:12.110-07:00Long Island City Open Arts-- Taking Wing<img alt="Photo: New poster for the upcoming LIC Arts Open festival! I'm happy to be part of this year's program with an exhibit of theatre work. If you are in NY, don't miss the festival's opening night and enjoy some great music with blues legend Vince Johnson! More info coming very soon!
Art © Luba Lukova" src="https://scontent-a-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/t1.0-9/p403x403/10320415_662398900500345_1605020058375258823_n.jpg" /><br />
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<i>[Poster by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/luba.lukova.studio" target="_blank">Luba Lukova </a>, copyrighted to Ms.Lukova; displayed here solely for non-commercial purposes of commentary.]</i><br />
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In the kaleidoscopic world(s) of the visual arts in New York City, the community of artists in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Island_City" target="_blank">Long Island City</a> is rising. (My wife and artistic collaborator, the woodcarver <a href="http://www.deborahmillswoodcarving.com/" target="_blank">Deborah Mills</a>, has her studio in LIC's <a href="http://diegosalazar.com/" target="_blank">Diego Salazar Building</a>-- so I acknowledge my lack of objectivity on the subject!). Long home to many artists (and housing museums such as <a href="http://momaps1.org/" target="_blank">MoMA PS 1</a> and <a href="http://www.noguchi.org/" target="_blank">The Noguchi Museum</a> -- and, until it was painted over late last year, the graffiti edifice <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Pointz" target="_blank">5 Pointz</a>), LIC has recently seen even more creatives arriving as rents continue to rise in Williamsburg and Greenpoint in Brooklyn-- not to mention in Manhattan. <br />
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Symptomatic of LIC's growing stature as an arts center was the <a href="http://licartsopen.org/" target="_blank">fourth annual open studios event</a> last week. While helping Deborah at her wonderfully crowded carving demonstrations, I took a quick tour of what colleagues had to offer, especially in the <a href="http://www.juvenalreisstudios.com/" target="_blank">Juvenal Reis</a> building across the street. A few highlights from among many, more evidence of LIC's increasing prominence in the arts (as always, copyright held by the artist and/or his/her legal representatives; displayed here solely for non-commercial purposes):<br />
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<img height="400" src="http://www.reisstudios.com/wp-content/gallery/kathy-ferguson/gravity-goes-awry.jpg" width="323" /><br />
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<a href="http://www.kathyfergusonart.com/" target="_blank">Kathy Ferguson</a>, "Gravity Goes Awry" <br />
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<img alt="Atto Kim_3.jpg" height="253" src="http://static.squarespace.com/static/50005bbbc4aaa9de4c0eefee/536f9447e4b0a44be2faea81/536f9451e4b039e44f873d8d/1399821396313/Atto%20Kim_3.jpg?format=1500w" width="400" /><br />
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<a href="http://licartsopen.org/atto-kim/" target="_blank">Atto Kim</a><br />
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<img height="392" src="http://static.squarespace.com/static/506cb3d8e4b0891829a8f798/506deaf7e4b04973cff5907b/5101b8ace4b01cb3fe306ab0/1361579722149/Robert%20Badia%20-%20Capriccio%20with%20Bottle%20&%20Spheres%20.JPG" width="400" /><br />
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<a href="http://aiany.aiany.org/index.php?section=firm-directory&cmpid=2869" target="_blank">Robert Badia </a><br />
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<img src="http://www.suzannepemberton.com/site/Home_files/g.jpg" /><br />
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<a href="http://www.suzannepemberton.com/site/Home.html" target="_blank">Suzanne Pemberton</a> "Sagaponack"<br />
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<img height="266" src="http://www.marialiebana.com/uploads/2/2/6/1/22610350/313321_orig.jpg" width="400" /><br />
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<a href="http://www.marialiebana.com/" target="_blank">Maria Liebana</a> "Speedy"<br />
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<img alt="sim" height="222" src="http://www.ericrue.com/images/1_Interface_th.jpg" width="400" /><br />
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<a href="http://www.ericrue.com/" target="_blank">Eric Rue</a> "Interface I"<br />
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<a href="http://www.kinuart.com/" target="_blank">Kinuko Imai Hoffman</a> "Buff"<div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-88937341181457556372014-05-11T05:45:00.000-07:002014-05-11T05:45:41.331-07:00Tegene Kunbi: Making Colors Speak<img src="data:image/jpeg;base64,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" 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Contemporary art and design flooded NYC this week, with <a href="http://friezenewyork.com/" target="_blank">Frieze</a> and a dozen-odd smaller art fairs now rivaling the <a href="http://www.thearmoryshow.com/about/info.html" target="_blank">Armory Show</a> week in March. The lobster and the canary visited two of the fairs-- <a href="http://pulse-art.com/" target="_blank">PULSE</a> and the <a href="http://www.newartdealers.org/Fairs/2014/NewYork" target="_blank">New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA)</a> --and have this to report.<br />
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PULSE and NADA were each gems of thoughtful curation, possessing a warmth and intimacy that invited genuine interaction with the works, the gallerists and the artists. Booth after booth called us in with playful (but not precious or cartoonish) pieces, work that demanded attention without being shrill or bombastic, wielding instead a quiet authority. If one can speak of a sensibility common to a hundred artists working in a wide variety of media and styles it would be a striving to highlight the physicality of the work-- perhaps a response to the digital and the virtual. The artists at these fairs emphasized the gesture with kneaded impasto, splotches, drips, bold painterly approaches. They highlighted the textures of their materials, crumpling, dimpling and pebbling their surfaces, streaking india ink on canvas, embedding bb pellets in resin, braiding and taping, using nails, bits of glass, wood, ripped paper within the painting. <br />
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PULSE and NADA feature smaller, younger galleries who in turn discover new talent. I encountered several artists for the first time whose work I look forward to following for years to come (*), but the "whoa! stop-me-in-my-tracks" moment was seeing from a distance the luminous color-field paintings by <a href="http://tegenekunbi.com/" target="_blank">Tegene Kunbi</a> in the <a href="http://www.thatcherprojects.com/" target="_blank">Margaret Thatcher Projects</a> booth at PULSE. Call it the instantaneous seduction of artwork, the hunger to throw oneself into the art-- I cast fair decorum aside and nearly jogged into the Thatcher booth to see Kunbi's paintings. <img alt="poster for Tegene Kunbi “Melting Pot”" src="http://www.nyartbeat.com/media/event/2014/1DB0-620" /><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>All images here copyrighted to Tegene Kunbi and/or his legal representatives-- displayed here solely for non-commercial purposes of commentary, no copyright infringement intended. </i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><br /></i></span>
The images here do not convey the richness of Kunbi's color schemes, how the colors jump into the eye, how he sets one block in conversation with another and with the viewer. Kunbi layers and articulates, and unabashedly shows us the artist's hand with his brushwork. He evokes worlds--he is an alchemist like Klee, Rothko, Mitchell, Diebenkorn, Frankenthaler. Kunbi had me thinking of Kandinsky on the spirituality of art. Kunbi reminds us how powerful painting can be in the hands of a confident practitioner. And, in an age wedded to irony and pusillanimous when it comes to any talk of artistic verities, Kunbi unironically presents us with Beauty-- surely still one of the main points of Art.<br />
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(*) Check out <a href="http://www.lisiraskin.com/installation-armada-austin/" target="_blank">Lisi Raskin</a>, <a href="http://www.halseymckay.com/graham-collins" target="_blank"> Graham Collins</a>,<a href="http://www.digitalretna.com/" target="_blank"> Retna</a>, <a href="http://callicoonfinearts.com/artists/james-hoff/images/4#image" target="_blank">James Hoff</a>, <a href="http://rachelfoullon.com/" target="_blank">Rachel Foullon</a>, <a href="http://www.benhorns.com/#" target="_blank">Benjamin Horns</a>, <a href="http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/charlie_billingham.htm?section_name=new_order" target="_blank">Charlie Billingham</a>, <a href="http://theholenyc.com/2014/03/04/matthew-stone-3/" target="_blank">Matthew Stone</a>, <a href="http://invisible-exports.com/artists/treleaven/treleaven.html" target="_blank">Scott Treleaven</a>, <a href="http://www.contemporaryartdaily.com/2011/05/emanuel-seitz-at-christian-andersen/" target="_blank">Emanuel Seitz</a>, <a href="http://www.behance.net/anabidartstudio" target="_blank">Ana Bidart</a>, and <a href="https://artsy.net/artist/katherine-bernhardt" target="_blank">Katherine Bernhardt</a>. <br />
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-66283860111382598002014-05-04T07:30:00.000-07:002014-05-04T07:32:41.700-07:00"The flight of the constellations returns hope to us."<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8kSEI58yvezvZf6fV0NSlihyphenhyphen53oDz6nOEYrs52JmkTwJmFeHHnXlLJUmWJXiLy0ozDaJNQ9aVG4lvO5AmnfdWxksZXmIFttl2bxF-drqWI6rBn-5kDSJ-QSZXsLFicHx3aYd3drREp0U/s1600/MIRO.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8kSEI58yvezvZf6fV0NSlihyphenhyphen53oDz6nOEYrs52JmkTwJmFeHHnXlLJUmWJXiLy0ozDaJNQ9aVG4lvO5AmnfdWxksZXmIFttl2bxF-drqWI6rBn-5kDSJ-QSZXsLFicHx3aYd3drREp0U/s1600/MIRO.jpg" height="214" width="320" /></a></div>
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Miro is one of my touchstones...or perhaps more like a spring bubbling exuberantly from the rock. <br />
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The painting above I have never seen before-- Sotheby's auctions it this week, so I am happy we get a look via the Web before it goes most likely to a private collector.<br />
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Another happiness is the title Miro gave it: <i> L'espoir nous revient par la fuite des constellations</i>. <br />
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[Photo above copyrighted to ArtDaily.org-- shown here solely for non-commercial purposes of commentary; no infringement intended].<div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-28127064741641263312014-04-20T07:08:00.000-07:002014-04-20T07:08:25.630-07:00On beyond Google<img alt="JELLY ROLL" src="http://kevinyoungpoetry.com/assets/images/jelly-roll-lg.jpg" /><br />
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<b>Kevin Young</b>'s poetry inspires with a quirky minimalism and a sly swerving of the senses. <br />
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Best of all, he pulls language into a fresh order that is undeniable, something sharable with the reader while remaining very much his own.<br />
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He re-invents language. Real poetry. Authentic.<br />
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Take these lines from "Deep Song" from his collection, J<i>elly Roll</i>:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">"Belief is what</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">buries us—that</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">& the belief in belief—</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">No longer</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">do I trust liltlessness</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">—leeward</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">is the world's</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">way [...]"</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">"Liltlessness." Utterly perfect and completely unique. Young coins this word, this concept-- the poet's gift to us. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Sing on, Mr. Young!</span><br />
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For more by and about Young, <a href="http://kevinyoungpoetry.com/jelly-roll.html" target="_blank">click here</a>. <div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-85524518193288087042014-03-30T08:26:00.000-07:002014-03-30T08:26:12.836-07:00Dragon & CloudsThe lobster and the canary are too busy at present to do more than point to beauty and wonder that inspires them, such as <i>Dragon & Clouds</i>, a painting on sliding doors (<i>fusuma</i>) by Soga Shohaku. Made in 1763 CE, the work has just returned from Japan to the MFA in Boston. If the lobster were still in Boston, he would go see this, dream himself out of the water and into the swirling clouds, with the canary perched on the dragon's crest.<br />
<img src="http://artdaily.com/imagenes/2014/03/30/dragon-2.jpg" /><div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-13403114412408056292014-03-16T06:26:00.002-07:002014-03-16T06:26:35.146-07:00"Throwing The Ink": Pat Steir's Gestural Genius<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieIuCCMl56Dzb4lV48cEyuWQTOG_h-IB7oKvDB_KtRu3jehIWf0Ri4YTbMqe9GueA7_4yfgifvh_562xxrYtmJh5jh9m-rdqvN7u6dxUYOfGbOCPQAcpN-rCNPzbuni2B_H79VL9hMGDY/s1600/steirONEb7c73d84721f6348ab_40m6bxkah.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieIuCCMl56Dzb4lV48cEyuWQTOG_h-IB7oKvDB_KtRu3jehIWf0Ri4YTbMqe9GueA7_4yfgifvh_562xxrYtmJh5jh9m-rdqvN7u6dxUYOfGbOCPQAcpN-rCNPzbuni2B_H79VL9hMGDY/s1600/steirONEb7c73d84721f6348ab_40m6bxkah.jpg" height="400" width="245" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>[All artwork and images copyrighted to Pat Steir and/or her representatives; no infringement intended; images used here solely for non-commercial purposes, i.e., for commentary]</i></span></div>
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<b>Pat Steir </b>is an artist whose work deeply informs my own thinking about gesture, disciplined spontaneity, form and field. (<i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Steir" target="_blank">Click here</a></i> for her bio).</div>
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In an excellent interview with Phong Bui in <i>The Brooklyn Rail </i>(<i><a href="http://prod-images.exhibit-e.com/www_cheimread_com/brooklyn_rail_3_11.pdf" target="_blank">click here</a></i>), Steir says that she was told thrown-ink painting began in the third century: "I looked everywhere for it, I didn't understand what it was because I couldn't find it. That was because thrown ink meant broken line, not traditional painting. The artists did not actually throw the ink. I was influenced by the idea of throwing the ink but it was just a misunderstanding. I think a lot of art comes about through misunderstanding."</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrWBqHvgcubaiED35hQebKQtJIO7bcdmBaHnB7SFBwQQwZgoNVeQo4iPi7UQfRt3roICqkOB9TwUWXRVdEJK3sH4dpKCg2Al0IAoL9x1pStzKBSLhBEEvEoqJIKIAN8n6lkxbVkI7A-rk/s1600/steir-detail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrWBqHvgcubaiED35hQebKQtJIO7bcdmBaHnB7SFBwQQwZgoNVeQo4iPi7UQfRt3roICqkOB9TwUWXRVdEJK3sH4dpKCg2Al0IAoL9x1pStzKBSLhBEEvEoqJIKIAN8n6lkxbVkI7A-rk/s1600/steir-detail.jpg" height="320" width="294" /></a></div>
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I just love that, the idea of misunderstanding yielding meaning and beauty. I think the misguided search applies to life much more broadly. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieY45Ejd6OJJ9su_54VaywwabsfsGztLMm-FVQBjsRIYDgkZ8RSss171ikfwyRFVY1duErqt_5csmRH6n6QmOKCXzFl9h4GBeJpbJ1aWLhGGPrSWklV-AG3fJTJ7PeT-IgsFWoWb8bZxg/s1600/steir38.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieY45Ejd6OJJ9su_54VaywwabsfsGztLMm-FVQBjsRIYDgkZ8RSss171ikfwyRFVY1duErqt_5csmRH6n6QmOKCXzFl9h4GBeJpbJ1aWLhGGPrSWklV-AG3fJTJ7PeT-IgsFWoWb8bZxg/s1600/steir38.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-40751384717357320752014-03-09T12:46:00.001-07:002014-03-09T12:46:43.301-07:00come celebrate with me: The Work of Lucille Clifton <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8wgrUmdSH4gioEI709H6f2dt3iiSMsgI5ge3saEfEU0xBXOBVnjkgmOr32RMshtNKlOMTBe88RKBV6I2h186UJooPM9aJd4EmlsQ8__enspYV-j-G2pg43iBZFkigotk9xu5ooW2KEKw/s1600/04_Lucille_Clifton_5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8wgrUmdSH4gioEI709H6f2dt3iiSMsgI5ge3saEfEU0xBXOBVnjkgmOr32RMshtNKlOMTBe88RKBV6I2h186UJooPM9aJd4EmlsQ8__enspYV-j-G2pg43iBZFkigotk9xu5ooW2KEKw/s1600/04_Lucille_Clifton_5.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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The lobster & canary last wrote about<b> Lucille Clifton</b> upon the sad occasion of her death: <i><a href="http://lobsterandcanary.blogspot.com/2010/02/sunday-morning-coffee-blogs-and.html" target="_blank"><span id="goog_1935310114"></span>click here</a><span id="goog_1935310115"></span></i>.<br />
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Yesterday, at <b>Poets House </b>in NYC, we spent time at the special exhibition <i>come celebrate with me: The Work of Lucille Clifton</i>. Curated by <b>Kevin Young</b>, with <b>Amy Hildreth Chen</b> and <b>Lisa Chinn</b>, the collection of Clifton's books, notes, manuscript drafts and other ephemera stems from Emory University's libraries & archives. <br />
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<i><a href="http://www.poetshouse.org/programs-and-events/exhibitions/come-celebrate-me-work-lucille-clifton" target="_blank">Click here </a></i>for more.<br />
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Her voice is in our head forever.<br />
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-71638994388599038742014-03-02T05:32:00.003-08:002014-03-02T05:32:58.023-08:00Fund science (thank you Neil deGrasse Tyson)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The wisest statement I read this week is a singularly compelling and important point that astrophysicist & public intellectual <b>Neil deGrasse Tyson</b> makes in an interview in the current issue of <i>Wired</i> magazine:<br />
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"...at least in America, science has been treated sort of cavalierly, not only by the public but also by government. The idea that science is just some luxury that you'll get around to if you can afford it is regressive to any future a country might dream for itself. Innovations in science and technology are the engines of the 21st-century economy; if you care about the wealth and health of your nation tomorrow, then you'd better rethink how you allocate taxes to fund science. The federal budget needs to recognize this."<br />
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For more in this vein by deGrasse Tyson, <a href="http://www.districtadministration.com/article/neil-degrasse-tyson-talks-science-standards" target="_blank"><i>click here</i>.</a><br />
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-26047207009247912052014-02-23T08:00:00.001-08:002014-02-23T08:00:19.389-08:00Dancing Architecture <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Frank Stella, from his <i>Scarlatti Kirkpatrick </i>series (2006--ongoing)</div>
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All images copyright to the artist and/or his representative(s); images used here solely for purposes of commentary, i.e., non-commercial usage.</div>
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I always chuckle at the statement-- variously attributed to Martin Mull, Frank Zappa and several other musicians-- that "writing about music is like dancing about architecture" (<a href="http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/11/08/writing-about-music/" target="_blank">click here</a>). I admire its glibness, but I do not agree; too precious, too clever by half, in my opinion. Why <i>shouldn't </i>we cross those hoary boundaries?</div>
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Was recently reminded of this, seeing one of Stella's <i>Scarlatti Kirkpatrick </i>pieces at the Museum of Art & Design in NYC. Stella bases his series on both the 17th-century Italian composer Scarlatti and on Yale musicologist & harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick, who authored the definitive catalog of Scarlatti's work in 1953.</div>
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As Stella says: "If you follow an edge of a given work visually, and follow it through quickly, you find the sense of rhythm and movement that you get in music."</div>
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<a href="http://theglasshouse.org/visit/exhibitions/frankstella/" target="_blank">Click here</a> for more on the Stella series. </div>
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And <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjghYFgt8Zk" target="_blank">here</a> for a little Scarlatti.</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-34706276307868423612014-02-16T05:31:00.001-08:002014-02-16T05:31:30.889-08:00Hacking The Book <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7YVjDoSiHlGbTaG9PZVLe4nFLdJy7d6Vf_dNYnDhzIYZc1iaRrSaVxlcpqONNHPtBirUnfBhaD3Cd6avfTB-psMFA732pN0NJ6R7t11V_PgWRx-euxmET7LqqBmBr-bSVb7Dttf2mUD0/s1600/Blackwell_2009-out-of-narnia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7YVjDoSiHlGbTaG9PZVLe4nFLdJy7d6Vf_dNYnDhzIYZc1iaRrSaVxlcpqONNHPtBirUnfBhaD3Cd6avfTB-psMFA732pN0NJ6R7t11V_PgWRx-euxmET7LqqBmBr-bSVb7Dttf2mUD0/s1600/Blackwell_2009-out-of-narnia.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
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Su Blackwell, <i>Out Of Narnia </i>(2009)</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">(Blackwell holds the copyright; image used here solely for purposes of commentary, i.e., non-commercial).</span></div>
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The more digital our world becomes, the more we remember to cherish its physicality. Not in a fetishistic way, or with antiquarian longing, but in a visceral, "cut to the gut" joy...we sculpt with our slow food, we mash up our music, we slice and dice our tweets and chats....</div>
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....and our books, oh my yes, we may read on a countless array of screens, yet still return to the printed page and its binding... as works of art in their own right.</div>
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Thinking of an upsurge over the past decade of mixed-media, hand-crafted works involving books, sometimes building on the tradition of "the artist's book," in other cases stemming more from scrapbooking practices, and in others from the principles of collage and iconoclasm saturating the Internet. Su Blackwell transports us into the world within the book. (<a href="http://www.sublackwell.co.uk/" target="_blank">Click here for more</a>). Last July we blogged about Lisa Occhipinti and her re-envisioning of the book as object. (<a href="http://lobsterandcanary.blogspot.com/2013/07/lisa-occhipinti-book-re-envisioned-and.html" target="_blank">Click here</a>). Gabe Cyr's <i>Mixed-Media Books: Dozens of Experiments In Altering Books</i> is a lovely collection. (<a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/Mixed_Media_Books.html?id=OQ6opbob35sC" target="_blank">Click here</a>). </div>
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<u>Other resources:</u> Printed Matter, Inc. (<a href="https://printedmatter.org/" target="_blank">click here</a>). The Contemporary Artists' Books Conference (<a href="http://nyartbookfair.com/conference" target="_blank">click here</a>). <i>1,000 Artists' Books: Exploring The Book As Art </i>by Peter & Donna Thomas and Sandra Salamony (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/000-Artists-Books-Exploring-Series/dp/159253774X" target="_blank">click here</a>). <i> </i>The Center for Book Arts (<a href="http://www.centerforbookarts.org/" target="_blank">click here</a>).<i> </i> </div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-76481555781427865252014-02-09T06:00:00.000-08:002014-02-09T06:00:09.609-08:00Mapping a billion stars: another space break <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9c6XUk2D_XPR8fLXmmIJiaDeJuK7IESsPZB163wRcgcwZkdcPZOa_grVRgCC0U2DwIz0JRCQTZgJ9syutBm-DY2OGAVP75hpcFFz4X1PmieScABO9MnFnVYUjlOZwsYcXg9_h1N-Lv6I/s1600/Gaia_mapping_the_stars_of_the_Milky_Way_medium.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9c6XUk2D_XPR8fLXmmIJiaDeJuK7IESsPZB163wRcgcwZkdcPZOa_grVRgCC0U2DwIz0JRCQTZgJ9syutBm-DY2OGAVP75hpcFFz4X1PmieScABO9MnFnVYUjlOZwsYcXg9_h1N-Lv6I/s1600/Gaia_mapping_the_stars_of_the_Milky_Way_medium.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Giving ourselves another breather, after the long-form interview with Sandra Kasturi.<br />
<br />
The European Space Agency is preparing to launch Gaia, a probe that will map a billion stars over five years.<br />
<br />
Per the ESA site:<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #031e31; font-family: Verdana, arial; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;">"It is expected to discover hundreds of thousands of new celestial objects, such as extra-solar planets and brown dwarfs, and observe hundreds of thousands of asteroids within our own Solar System. The mission will also study about 500 000 distant quasars and will provide stringent new tests of Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity."</span><br />
<br />
Click<a href="http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Gaia/Gaia_overview" target="_blank"> here </a>for more. <div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-583720646312052972014-02-02T06:26:00.000-08:002014-02-02T06:26:13.816-08:00Sandra Kasturi Interview, Part Two <blockquote cite="mid:E1VDd1S-0003Vw-M7@elasmtp-scoter.atl.sa.earthlink.net" class="CITE" type="cite">
<br /><b>Question 4.</b> “Palelemon sunstreaks”...echoes of the “thick Teutonic languages, the
languages of augurs” (as you put it in “Augury”). Similar echoes throughout
your poetry, for instance, in your “October Country”: “the flotsam joy of the
petal storm,” “purple-buttered thistle,” “deranged-yellow heat,” “that
pan-cracked, brittle, ice-slippered sweet,” “its red-leaf-feathered, burnished
golden limbs.” Yet, hold on, strewn among the Germanic thicket are latinate
flowers (“joy,” “deranged,” “burnish”) and blooms from the Greek (“petal,”
“purple”) and Persian (“lemon”). Talk about word choice and especially whether
you think that being a poet from an officially multilingual country has made you
more alert to the inner life of the words you choose.<br /><br />
</blockquote>
<b>Kasturi: </b>Well, with "palelemon sunstreaks" and other things of that
ilk, I am probably cribbing a bit from the feel of Earl Birney's wonderful poem,
"Anglo-Saxon Street" in which he evokes those old odes in a very modern setting.
I always thought that poem was really funny, so it probably infused some of my
work.<br /><br />Language has probably always been important to me, though not in a
conscious way. I was almost a polyglot growing up: English was my fourth
language, after Estonian, Singhalese and German. I'm still fluent in Estonian,
but Singhalese is completely gone, and German is like listening to a radio
station that's not quite tuned in. I also have a smattering of French from the
Canadian school system...but I think those early languages probably altered the
way I think at a very young age. Some languages have concepts that simply can't
be translated...so that probably gives you interesting pathways in the brain. I
sometimes make funny typos when writing really fast--I'll start to spell
something the Estonian way, and then when I look back, I go, "Whaaaat???" My
favourite one was when I wanted to write "used to" and started typing
"juust"--which is how it would be spelled in Estonian. Actually (felicitously!),
"juust" means "cheese" in Estonian, so I had this weird bilingual typo/joke
going on that probably only other Estonians (or maybe Finns) will find
funny.<br /><br />So yeah, maybe living in a multilingual country has helped?
Cultural mosaic? Speaking a bunch of languages at an early ages? Nature/nurture?
Who knows. But I love the sounds of words and I love stringing together things
and making entirely new words. I was influenced in that by my friend, Carleton
Wilson, who's a wonderful poet. He said in one poem something about "the
branches of trees gnarcing..." I adored that. "Gnarcing" isn't a word, but of
course you know immediately what he means. So perfect!<br /><br />
<br />
<blockquote cite="mid:E1VDd1S-0003Vw-M7@elasmtp-scoter.atl.sa.earthlink.net" class="CITE" type="cite">
<b>Question 5.</b>
Words and images, and how to separate the dancer from the dance. Which comes
first for you: the words, summoned from the hoard in the middle of the night,
needing then the image to clothe them in the light? Or the image, born in those
palelemon sunstreaks, needing the proper words to adorn them? “Hummingbirds
don’t fly south for the winter. They just freeze/ where they are in the air,
mistaken for speckles of winter/ sunlight, or, sometimes, low-hanging stars”
(from “Hummingbird Hagiography”). “You are black as bees,/ dark as the spine
of a prison tower” (“Black as Bees”). “Here is freedom, strange as irregular/
knitting. The other side of the wall is static/ with bald poets, wry madmen and
bizarre/ women flapping their arms in the attic” (“The Soft Key”). “...a smile
fifteen years in the making” (“Cryogenics”).
<br /></blockquote>
<b>Kasturi: </b>"Hummingbird Hagiography" is another cheat, I'm afraid,
in that it was done for this wonderful poetry exercise called "Twenty Little
Poetry Projects" by Jim Simmerman. I highly recommend it, especially for when
you are creatively blocked. (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://mypage.siu.edu/puglove/twenty.htm">http://mypage.siu.edu/puglove/twenty.htm</a>)
I wasn't blocked when I wrote that; we just did it in a poetry workshop I was
running with David Clink. We also gave a 15-minute time restriction on writing
it--a lot of great stuff came out of that exercise from a lot of
people.<br /><br />Generally, though, I think words come to me. I think in titles or
in first lines, and they float around, and then the rest comes. I don't really
think in images, but if the words help create the image, I guess I've done my
job? Though I've done some ekphrastic poetry based on paintings or other
images--but they're never as good, I feel. I guess my brain just doesn't work
that way. I'm bookish to the core.<br /><br />
<br />
<blockquote cite="mid:E1VDd1S-0003Vw-M7@elasmtp-scoter.atl.sa.earthlink.net" class="CITE" type="cite">
<b>Question 6. </b> You’re funny--I laughed out loud several times while reading
<i>Come Late</i>, and chuckled often. Daedalus spinning the story of Icarus in
“Obese Mythologies,” the Avian High Supreme Action Committee requiring a special
license for caged-bird keepers (shades of Monty Python!) in “Bird Logic,” the
European Bee-Eater going hungry because the bees have moved to condos in the
city (“Regretful Orbits”), in your shoe the bee (“a sort of dirigibly-fat,
apian/ ghost ship, damned for whatever sins bees/ commit.../ a bumbleship”) in
“Big Bee Cosmology.” Do you set out to be humorous or does the humor suggest
itself as the poem emerges?<br /></blockquote>
<b>Kasturi: </b>I think I'm just weird. I
don't usually set out to be funny. In fact, I've had poems receive huge yuks
(like "After Misreading Emerson" which is my earlier collection, <i>The Animal
Bridegroom</i>), which I've actually thought were sad poems. But then people
laugh when I read them aloud. Go figure! Or maybe I just had my skirt tucked
into my underpants or something.<br /><br />But I do confess that sometimes there
are things that I'm so enchanted with, and so charmed by, that I really hope
other people will feel the same way. Bumbleship! Who wouldn't like that? It's
adorable.<br /><br />Like many other people, I think I find the universe and
existing in it to be this kind of absurdist comedy, so maybe that comes
through?<br /><br />It's nice to hear I'm funny, though. Feel free to tell me that,
often.<br /><br />
<br />
<blockquote cite="mid:E1VDd1S-0003Vw-M7@elasmtp-scoter.atl.sa.earthlink.net" class="CITE" type="cite">
<b>Question 7.</b> Humorous yes but often tinged with sorrow, with longing for
the unattainable, with <i>la musica del amargue</i>: “Just as you and I wish to
be birds...wish to listen to the fabled echo, the faint/ but steady pull of
birdsong, that brags/ to landbound mammals about the joys of flight,/ the
sweeping pull of wings” (“The Movement of Men and Gods”); “Let us end this
tyranny/ of waiting, of longing to fly/ south for the winter, to imaginary/
countries where it only rains/ lullabies...” (“Let Us Begin”); “We are not
wading,/ but are treading water carefully/ in a narrow sea” (“Godwit”). Does
writing poetry ease your yearnings, or enflame
them?<br /></blockquote>
<b>Kasturi: </b> I've felt lost for much of my life, I think. Or
maybe I read too many fairy tales. That's also possible. It's not surprising
that Sondheim's "Into the Woods" is one of my favourite musicals of all time. I
love stories and reversals in stories and tales that go wrong.<br /><br />I often
feel like I'm homesick for places I've never been or that are long past, or
places that don't even exist: Agatha Christie's England, Michael Gruber's
voodoo-riddled Miami, Hogwarts, 1920s Paris. Narnia. Middle-Earth. Though I look
at that list and realize that all those places were filled with terrible things.
Murder, racism, dictators, evil and abuses of all sorts. I always thought the
Germans would have some sort of giant compound word for "longing for places that
you have never been" but I haven't found it yet. I just finished rereading The
Lord of the Rings for the umpteenth time, but for the first time in my life, I
wept at the end. What's that about? Sorrow at partings, at journey's (and
book's) end? Yearning for magical things? Yearning for the time in my childhood
when I first read it? Knowing I can never re-experience that first sense of
wonder again? Nostalgia, that criminal muse? God, it's all so terribly
sentimental and maudlin, isn't it? I'm ashamed of myself!<br /><br />I think
writing, for me, gets the yearning on the page. Does it ease anguish? No, I
don't think so. But maybe it gives it parameters. Here is the very thing that is
breaking your heart: you can look at it cleanly. Does doing this mend you? No.
But knowing a thing can help.<br /><br />I don't reread the sad poems like "Godwit"
much. Elegies are often too hard and the memory is (cliché alert!) like probing
a sore tooth. You become like Laurence Olivier doing terrible things to your
mouth, muttering "Is it safe?" Why do that to yourself? Of course I do it. We
all do it. That terrible, delicious anguish of loss and memory.<br /><br />
<br />
<blockquote cite="mid:E1VDd1S-0003Vw-M7@elasmtp-scoter.atl.sa.earthlink.net" class="CITE" type="cite">
<b>Question 8. </b> Along the same lines, I recently ran across this statement
in Mary Ruefle’s “On Beginnings” (in her collected lectures, <i>Madness, Rack
and Honey</i>): “Gaston Bachelard says the single most succinct and
astonishing thing: We begin in admiration and we end by organizing our
disappointment.” Your reaction to this sentiment?<br />
</blockquote>
<b>Kasturi:</b> Ha! That's wonderful. It's such an enormous statement on so
many levels, I'm not sure I can even answer properly. My initial reactions:
Hilarious! Awful. Apt. Why can't I say anything that profound? Depressing. Is
that my own humdrum little life? Do I admire myself and my work only to find it
all terribly disappointing? Embarrassment and shame at the possibility of
admiring myself too much. Not done! Off-track. What did Daniel ask me? Oh yeah,
that quotation. Hilarious! No, sad. Do I understand it? Or myself? Or my
writing? Maybe not.<br /><br />Maybe that's the best example of how my squirrelly,
self-absorbed little brain works. Show me something profound, and all I can
think of is how it relates to me. Quel horreur!<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-36977724932111387972014-01-26T10:02:00.003-08:002014-01-28T16:32:48.774-08:00"Come Late To The Love Of Birds": Sandra Kasturi Interview, Part One <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDz0d0CXhhEUynlf0WlmLp34a1XGe1r3gT8HsDhZxXwt2wVWtszd7r_hMkEPE5Tua-6lyu_XfCOblDuDwbe8-ohcjFZDyJ0VTC1Pr14dQBWz3yEtLOPRF6NJFWMYiqBBgZWYSgwe3vS1E/s1600/love-of-birds2-200x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDz0d0CXhhEUynlf0WlmLp34a1XGe1r3gT8HsDhZxXwt2wVWtszd7r_hMkEPE5Tua-6lyu_XfCOblDuDwbe8-ohcjFZDyJ0VTC1Pr14dQBWz3yEtLOPRF6NJFWMYiqBBgZWYSgwe3vS1E/s1600/love-of-birds2-200x300.jpg" /></a></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
Another lovely treat for and from <i>Lobster & Canary</i>, to start our 2014: an interview with poet Sandra Kasturi about her latest collection, <i>Come Late To The Love Of Birds</i>, recently published by Tightrope Books, which also put out her debut collection, <i>The Animal Bridegroom</i>.<i> <a href="http://tightropebooks.com/come-late-to-the-love-of-birds-sandra-kasturi/" target="_blank"> </a></i><a href="http://tightropebooks.com/come-late-to-the-love-of-birds-sandra-kasturi/" target="_blank">Click here</a> to purchase the book. (Full disclosure: Sandra is co-owner of ChiZine Publications, which published my two novels; I received a free advance copy of <i>Come Late To The Love Of Birds</i>).</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
Sandra is a Bram Stoker Award-winning editor. CZP won the British Fantasy Award last year and has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award. She identifies closely with speculative fiction,
the new fabulism. Her work is among the best these hybrid genres have produced in recent
years, and is part of the renaissance within fantastical poetry, along with
that of --among others--our fellow CZP author, Helen Marshall, as well as by
Sonya Taaffe, Theodora Goss, and the many talents gathered by Amal El-Mohtar and
Jessica Wick at <i>Goblin Fruit</i>, by Mike Allen at <i>Mythic Delirium</i>,
and by Erzebet Yellowboy at <i>Cabinet des Fees</i>.</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
I see <i>Come Late
</i>(and <i>Animal Bridegroom</i>), along with the work of Marshall and the
others I list here, as part of an important endeavor within English-language
poetry much more generally: a revitalization of the Romantic mode, building on
Blakean and Wordsworthian tropes and the dreams of Coleridge and Shelley with
sharp-throated words for modern times, not least with a deft ear for the nuances
of gender and the demands of a post-colonialist world. Marianne Moore as one
bridging figure, Jorie Graham another? As I read Sandra's work, I find
myself reaching for volumes by Sharon Olds, by Clayton Eshleman, by Albert
Goldbarth, by Charles Simic. By Alice Oswald, by Sarah Lindsay, by Laura
Kasischke, by Seamus Heaney. Past time for “fantastical poetry” (and isn’t all
poetry fantastical, the changing of words into the world and back again?) to
stake its claim more forcefully in today’s poetry landscape. I hope <i>Come
Late</i> garners the praise it deserves among the readers of Olds, Simic, Heaney
<i>et al</i>. <i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<blockquote cite="mid:E1VDd1S-0003Vw-M7@elasmtp-scoter.atl.sa.earthlink.net" class="CITE" type="cite">
<u>Question One. </u> The title of your latest collection comes from a passage you read decades
ago by J.A. Baker: “I came late to the love of birds. For years I saw them
only as a tremor at the edge of vision.” And actually you first read the lines
as quoted in a Judith Van Gieson novel; lines that you savored for years,
waiting for the chance to use in a recipe of your own. Tell us more about the
origins of the poems as a cycle: the intertextual tracing, the widening of your
own vision to include birds, your desire to widen vision for others (arguably
the greatest gift of poetry).<br />
</blockquote>
<u>Kasturi</u>: Firstly, thanks so much for
having me on Lobster & Canary! And you are very kind in your praise indeed.
My god, to be mentioned in the same breath as Heaney, etc! Swoon.<br />
<br />
I was
so struck by that quotation when I saw it in Van Gieson's book, <i>The
Raptor</i> (a mystery novel, incidentally), that I looked up Baker's book,
<i>The Peregrine</i>, which is where the lines are originally from, and bought a
copy from Abe Books. I think it's out of print now? Anyway, <i>The Peregrine</i>
is itself an odd thing, and not much is actually known about Baker himself. He
wrote this naturalist's study, but it actually reads like poetry. His passages
are so eloquent and beautiful, I can't even describe them. I'm not a huge
non-fiction reader unless I'm doing research for something specific, but that's
a book that I'd go back to, just for the beauty of its language. I think it
should be on all poets' must-read list! I mean, he's even mesmerizing when he's
talking statistics! But that's not the question. <br />
<br />
I often think in
titles, so "come late to the love of birds" was just something ringing in my
head for a long time, and I thought it would be a good title for a book. And
then it just seemed like I was writing poems that involved birds in some way,
without really planning to. It all coalesced when I wrote the first poem in the
book, "Roc" although of course I didn't really think of it as an opening poem
for anything--it was just a thing I wrote and workshopped in my poetry group. So
when I was thinking about my next poetry book, it all came together, and I went,
"Hey, that might be a cool thing to do." I went through my newer poems and
picked out the ones that seemed like they would fit in the books--poems
literally about birds, or about flight, or space travel. Which was when I
realized I had nowhere nearly enough and I'd better get off my ass! <br />
<br />
The
thing is--as you start thinking about themes for your writing and pulling a book
together, you start looking at the actual things your poems are about. So I
would really <i>notice </i>birds in a way I hadn't before. I would notice their
funny little personalities, and how some of them would get cross with each other
and squabble in our backyard. When we were in Rhode Island, I saw this hawk in
the botanical gardens there--which resulted in the poem "One Red Thought." The
movement of birds is like poetry.<br />
<br />
Incidentally, Helen Marshall liked the
title of my book so much, that she developed the very naughty habit of writing
all these awesome poems which were perfect for <i>my </i>book, so I will
obviously have to write poems for <i>her </i>next book now. Heh.<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote cite="mid:E1VDd1S-0003Vw-M7@elasmtp-scoter.atl.sa.earthlink.net" class="CITE" type="cite">
<br />
<u>Question Two</u>. I came early to the love of birds: I started birdwatching
when I was nine years old. So, I am enthralled by your trenchant sketches of
birds as (in your words) “poetry made flesh,” nodding as I see old friends so
well depicted. Since your “conversion,” besides seeing birds for the first
time, have you also found them in literature where you previously had not
noticed them? I am thinking of, to name just a few in a flock: Ted
Hughes...Mary Oliver...the sublime Walton Ford (devious homage to the
magnificent Audubon)...Emily Dickinson...<i>Birds Drawn For John Gould </i>by
Edward Lear...Bartram’s <i>Travels Through North & South Carolina,
</i>etc<i>. </i>and Wilson’s <i>American Ornithology</i>...White’s <i>Natural
History of Selborne</i>...da Vinci’s <i>Codex on the Flight of Birds</i>...from
our medieval forebears, <i>The Parliament of
Fowls...</i></blockquote>
<br />
<u>Kasturi: </u> I think I notice them more in mythology and
folklore or fairy tales. You find them in Grimm and Andersen, and the Greek
myths of course. Weirdly, I don't really read a lot of poetry, but the stuff I
love, I love a lot. People like Anne Carson, Anne Sexton, Laura Lush, David
Clink, Helen Marshall of course.<br />
<br />
But I remember the birds in the Mary
Poppins books best, I think. P.L. Travers was such a weird and funny writer! I
love her so much. She anthropomorphized birds (and animals) of course, but I'll
always remember Mary Poppins arguing with the cheeky starlings.<br />
<br />
And you
know I grew up loving dinosaurs--all those in-school claymation "documentaries"!
How I loved them. I'm still sad brontosaurus doesn't really exist. And later:
Ray Harryhausen! Bliss. So when the theories about how dinosaurs evolved into
birds, it all seemed to make a kind of exquisite sense.<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote cite="mid:E1VDd1S-0003Vw-M7@elasmtp-scoter.atl.sa.earthlink.net" class="CITE" type="cite">
<i> </i><u>Question Three</u>. Let’s talk prosody for a moment. When you compose a
poem such as “The Flowering Tide” (“Palelemon sunstreaks arc wide amid snow- /
falls of cherryblossoms that shiver through chills/ or warmth, fickle gusts of
vernal air that blow/ from the east.”), do you have the meter already in your
head before the words come, or do the words tumble out, challenging you to order
their rhythm? Here is another passage that spurred this question, from “Poets
and Other Birds of Prey”: “Such exsanguinations had to be effected personally:/
flesh rendered by others/ was, even at the very moment of death,/ already too
old to be touched./ You were fastidious.” Or likewise this, from “Cardinal”:
“Look two cardinals perch on a still-bare tree,/ one red, one brown, watching,
sharp-eyed; the least/ movement sends them skyward, winging free/ across the
slow evening.”</blockquote>
<br />
<u>Kasturi</u>: I must confess that with "The Flowering
Tide" it was terribly contrived. I had this "Sonnet a Week" project that I was
doing where I was trying to write, yes, a sonnet a week. Because I'm not really
a formal verse person, so I wanted to see if I could do it. One week I couldn't
think of anything, but I wanted to write a spring poem, so I asked my friend,
writer Jason Taniguchi, to give me the end-rhyming words. So he did, but very
naughtily gave me only winter words! Which you can see if you look at the last
word of each line. But I like restrictions when writing--I think sometimes the
more severe the straitjacket, the cleverer you are forced to be. So it expanded
the way I thought and the way I wrote, which I think is good. I sort of trailed
off before the year was out though--so really, it ended up averaging out to a
sonnet every two weeks, I think. <br />
<br />
"Cardinal" of course is also a sonnet.
I wrote it for my great-uncle after he died and read it at his funeral. Again,
the severity of restrictions involved in a form like the sonnet I think lend
themselves beautifully when a tremendous amount of emotion is involved with what
you are doing. It keeps you from veering off into hysteria or maudlin thoughts.
Allows you to say things and makes it easier to handle all the unhappiness and
despair you feel when you lose someone you love greatly.<br />
<br />
As for "Poets
and Other Birds of Prey"--my god, I wrote that a loooong time ago. It might
actually be the oldest poem in the book. I know I absolutely did not think about
meter then; I do it far more now. Some things seem to lend themselves naturally
to certain rhythms, and you usually know from the first couple of lines what
it's going to be. I've had things change from very formal verse to free verse,
because I was trying to force the form and it wasn't working. And I've done it
the other way round too--realized that it was a hodgepodge mess and it needed
more stricture and then gone off into the formal vein.<br />
<br />
Isn't "stricture"
a wonderful word? It sounds like a poison, or something you'd add to a chemical
solution to give colourful results.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>[Second Half Of Interview To Come Next Sunday]</i></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-78494144048545096862014-01-19T07:06:00.001-08:002014-01-19T07:06:17.555-08:00Space Break <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR7VvLvpHkVvn8K6IM9Xmg3Y4z9lq_0FwPPKpz6N-HouELSYuyNgoK0czgQ9-rXT9kueh3QBGQ1KPP9d59pvmyYgUMex_P5EDSQP18EiImB_MUgXN1i3O9KqUomt7k_RoyL2LhyphenhyphensFFups/s1600/jade-rabbit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR7VvLvpHkVvn8K6IM9Xmg3Y4z9lq_0FwPPKpz6N-HouELSYuyNgoK0czgQ9-rXT9kueh3QBGQ1KPP9d59pvmyYgUMex_P5EDSQP18EiImB_MUgXN1i3O9KqUomt7k_RoyL2LhyphenhyphensFFups/s1600/jade-rabbit.jpg" height="221" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
The Chinese moon rover <i>Jade Rabbit </i>(<i>Yutu</i>, in Mandarin) was reactivated last week, having been set on "dormant" for a month after landing so as to ride out inclement "weather." The rover begins its mission in earnest now.</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik_1grJWSaoKQMNMpD6rfe1FwCS78k4XvU3qrHeJQ8NzzR5PcGBnWJyj5SOG1UEUPFB-bPhA8WKMZFtNn7vVMvhmdCxd9LPcaVDnetUO3EESvdpSxrCrVbuCMpgfJRKaqd98Wkx6X5cKs/s1600/Mars0515ML2030002000E1_DXXX.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik_1grJWSaoKQMNMpD6rfe1FwCS78k4XvU3qrHeJQ8NzzR5PcGBnWJyj5SOG1UEUPFB-bPhA8WKMZFtNn7vVMvhmdCxd9LPcaVDnetUO3EESvdpSxrCrVbuCMpgfJRKaqd98Wkx6X5cKs/s1600/Mars0515ML2030002000E1_DXXX.jpg" height="285" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
NASA's Mars rover <i>Curiosity</i> steadily sends back pictures-- this one was taken on January 17th.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Lobster and Canary takes a mini-break this week, between the two-part interview with Mike Carey and another two-part interview to start next week, this one with poet, editor and publisher Sandra Kasturi. In the meantime, we send our thoughts out into space, dreaming, dreaming....</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-36475082819054133462014-01-12T09:30:00.000-08:002014-01-12T09:30:05.756-08:00Mike Carey Interview, Part Two<b><i>Question Four</i>: </b><i>One of the
most compelling features of your Felix novels is the close reading of
urban space, the concrete descriptions of the places where both
thought and action unfold, as well as your allusions to the history
and myth that accrue to and sometimes obscure that very reality.
As a native Liverpudlian, you bring perhaps an outsider's sharp eye
for the quirks and vagaries of London; as Felix says in the first
novel: "I was born elsewhere, you have to understand-- up
North, two hundred miles from the Smoke-- and my view of London is an
outsider's view..." Hence the specificity of the locales:
the Bonnington Archive in Euston, on Eversholt Street near Drummond
Street; the Charles Stanger Care Facility on Coppett's Road near the
North Circular and Coldfall Wood; Number 14 Oak Court, Folgate
Street, "right off Bishopsgate, up the Shoreditch end."
Would you share with us how you structure the space and the action
within your fiction, what place means to the impact of your stories?</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Carey</b>: It’s because the Castor books are
a noir construct. The city often functions as a character in noir
fictions, and the exploration of the darker interstices of an urban
landscape is a big part of the impetus for noir. I was on a panel at
Eastercon where the existence and robustness of rural noir was very
strongly insisted on, and I accept that (Lawless is a good recent
example). The sense of place is still paramount, though, so I spend
a lot of time getting that right. In fact, the largest part of the
research I do on the Castor books relates to location. I go to a lot
of places and walk around looking at them from various angles –
like a casting director, auditioning the landscape.
<br />
<br />
<br />
Even the wholly fictional places in
the Castor books are based on real places and sort of sit askew on
real places. There is a hospital (not a mental hospital, a regular
one) roughly where I put the Stanger home – and the roundabout in
West London where I put the Oriflamme actually has the derelict shell
of a small community museum on it. The Bonnington is very loosely
based on the London Metropolitan Archive – with the location
changed, but a lot of the interior and exterior geography retained.
I like that there’s a thread of real-world sinew running through
the books. Psychologically, it feels like that anchors the
supernatural elements and makes them more believable.<br />
<br /><br /><i><b>Question Five</b>:
Regardless of medium, you work primarily within the field of
horror, the bleaker ends of fantasy, the nouveau-gothic. At its
core, your work strikes me as profoundly moral, in a refreshingly
old-fashioned way. Your monsters are terrifying, but the real
evil is perpetrated by the humans...and you are explicit that
everyone has a choice. Is the presentation of tortured choice,
of personal accountability and potential guilt, in the midst of the
gruesome what keeps readers so attuned to this genre, and
specifically to your work?</i><br /><br />
<br />
<b>Carey</b>: I think it’s a strong theme in my
writing, certainly – and it feels like it’s very much at the
heart of most noir. You very often have a protagonist who’s trying
to do the right thing in a world that doesn’t even present the
right thing as an option.<br />
<br />
<br />
I’ve been thinking a lot about
this lately in connection with The Girl With All the Gifts. The
concept of evil really requires a sense of agency. A monster that’s
insentient, or a monster that just obeys its own appetites and urges,
can be scary but it can’t be evil. You have to choose evil, and
you have to choose it knowing what at least some of the consequences
will be.<br />
<br />
<br />
Maybe for that reason, I think a lot
of horror – like a lot of folklore and fairy tale, which are
precursors to horror – is fundamentally about moral choices. Joe
Hill’s and Graham Joyce’s work spring to mind as very fine and
clear examples. It’s what distinguishes true horror from, say,
fictional disaster narratives. In horror, characters choose their
fates.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /><i><b>Question Six:</b> You are
a reflective practitioner. For instance, your Guest of Honor
keynote address at the 2011 Toronto SpecFic Colloquium, 'Speak of the
Dazzling Wings': Myth, Language, and Modern Fantasy," was
anchored in the work of Wallace Stevens, and spanned evolutionary
biology (touching on Brian Boyd<b>'</b>s On the Origin of Stories:
Evolution, Cognition & Fiction), T.S. Eliot, hard-boiled
detective novels, comic books, Owen Barfield (perhaps the
least-remembered Inkling, whose Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning
from 1928 is steadily gaining more notice and adherents), and
more. You refer to Blake and Defoe, to John Owen and Isaac
Watts ("the reservoir dogs of eighteenth-century theology,"
in your memorable phrase)-- I catch allusions to Poe and Dickens,
possibly Woolf and Balzac-- and you enjoy a sly joke in the way of
earlier learned correspondence (naming your hard-luck protagonist
"Happy Beaver" for starters). Do you plan to write
more critical commentary about your own work and its place within the
genres, and/or about the work of other writers? If so, what
form might such criticism take?</i><br />
<br />
<b>Carey</b>: I don’t know whether there would
ever be a readership or a constituency for that sort of thing! I
love concordances, but I think the worthwhile ones are always written
by people other than the writer of the original text. They’re free
to be merciless in pointing out unacknowledged borrowings and stuff
like that.<br />
<br />
<br />
It’s a fascinating field, though.
I tend to think of Harold Bloom as something of a pillock, and the
Anxiety of Influence as over-egged post-Freudian phallocratic
nonsense, but there is something in the idea that every text is
haunted by the ghosts of other texts, and it’s wonderful when
you’re able to tug on one of those threads and see something
unexpected unravel from it.<br />
<br />
<br />
One of my favourite reads of 2012
was John Fuller’s Who Is Ozymandias? It’s a book about literary
puzzles and unlikely connections. It does a great job of convincing
you that certain words and phrases in certain poems are fossils from
earlier poems left lying around there because the poet’s mind was
unable to let go of them.<br />
<br />
<br />
So yeah, I love the commentaries on my writing that are floating
around on the net, but I’d probably fight shy of writing any
myself. Apart from anything else, the most interesting influences
and echoes are probably the ones you’re not aware of yourself –
or the ones you won’t admit to because they’re too embarrassing.<br />
<br />
<br />
Did I really say that about Owen and
Watts? That sounds like something I may have stolen…<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><b>Question Seven:</b> You can
invite a half-dozen guests to dinner: who would you invite and
why? And what theme or lead topic might you suggest for the
evening?</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Carey:</b> Do these have to be real, living
people or is it a wish fulfilment kind of deal? Assuming it’s the
former, I’d have a horror fantasy evening. I’d invite China
Miéville, Ursula LeGuin, Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Mike Moorcock and
Hilary Mantel (I know she writes history, but she gets an invite
anyway on account of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies). And I’d
steer the conversation around to the things genre can do that
mainstream can’t.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-6441244944130031122014-01-05T07:15:00.000-08:002014-01-05T07:15:34.375-08:00Mike Carey Interview, Part One ("Genuinely Chilling And Numinous") <i>Lobster & Canary starts 2014 with a special treat: a two-part interview with <b>Mike Carey</b>. I had the honor of meeting Mike when he was the keynoter and Guest of Honor at the 2011 <a href="http://specficcolloquium.com/" target="_blank">Toronto SpecFic Colloquium</a>. </i><i>You can read more about Mike<a href="http://www.mikecarey.net/" target="_blank"> here</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Carey_(writer)" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://mikeandpeter.com/" target="_blank">here</a>. The second half of the interview will run in next Sunday's edition.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><b>Question One</b></i>:
<i>Many writers are famously lone wolves, but you collaborate with many
others, often over many years (thinking of, for instance, your
long-standing partnership with Peter Gross, and your work with Linda
Carey & Louise Carey). What makes collaboration work in
your experience, when is it the optimal way forward and when not? </i><br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Carey</b>: I think the enormous blessing that
comes with collaboration is that it inevitably pulls you away from
your own centre of gravity as a writer. When you’re working in a
single genre area and writing a lot of different works that share the
same DNA, it’s very easy to plagiarise yourself without even
meaning to. You just mine the same seam of inspiration repeatedly,
and your work converges on a single flavour or feel.
<br />
<br />
<br />
But when you collaborate, you’ve
immediately got somebody else’s comfort zone to accommodate
yourself to. A lot of things have to be done by negotiation –
which means they take a terrifyingly long time – but you
come out in a different place. You find yourself trying out different
things and taking chances that you wouldn’t normally take. I don’t
think I could have written <i>The Girl With All the Gifts</i> without having
done the two collaborations with Lin and Lou first.
<br />
<br />
<br />
But notwithstanding all that, I’d
say collaboration only works – and is only worth the trouble –
when it’s a real meeting of minds. I was working on a comic book
series a few years ago where I was essentially co-writing. But
because of other commitments, I was having to let the other writer do
all the conceptual heavy lifting. It was a pretty bleak experience
for both of us, and I think it would have come out better if I hadn’t
been involved at all.<br />
<br />
<br />
Comics, of course, are always a
collaboration, which is one of the reasons why they’re such a
wonderful school for learning the craft of writing. You get a lot of
rough edges knocked off you very quickly, because you get exposed to
a lot of different people’s ideas of good practice.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /><i><b>Question Two</b>: You are
also more versatile than many writers, working in media ranging from
comic books to novels, and including screenplays and less-definable
forms. How do you select the medium (or does it select you) for
a given project? What remains the same within your craft, what
differs as you tell stories across various platforms? </i><br /><br />
<br />
<b style="font-style: italic;">Carey</b><i>: </i>Wow. That’s a tough question to
answer – or at least, to answer without falling into tautology.
Because on one level, what remains the same is you – your
perception and your take on the story. If you’re doing the job
right, everything else should be up for grabs. The last thing in the
world you want to do is to come up with a scene-for-scene faithful
translation of the story from one medium into another.<br />
<br />
<br />
I was lucky enough when I was first
getting established as a writer to be offered a lot of adaptation
work. I adapted the Fantastic Four movie into comic book form, and
also did comic book adaptations of two novels – Neil Gaiman’s
Neverwhere and Ender’s Shadow. I felt like I learned a lot from
that. When you’re adapting, you really have to dismantle the story
and examine all the moving parts closely, then decide what structure
would best express them in the new medium. With Neverwhere,
we decided to use a first person narrator – Richard Mayhew – and
we radically recast Richard and Door’s first meeting with
Islington. Both of those things, it seemed to me, made the story
work more smoothly and organically in the comic book medium. An
omniscient narrator is perfect (if slightly obvious) example of a
convention that’s invisible in prose but often really marked
and awkward in comics.<br />
<br />
<br />
But to come back to the first part
of your question, I believe that any story can be made to work in any
medium – although it will often have one medium to which it feels
really “native”. For example, Star Trek Next Generation
functions perfectly well in movies and novelisations, but the TV
episodes feel like the ur and genuine statement of those characters
and that situation.<br />
<br />
<br />
The trick, always, is to find the
way through – to make the medium serve the story. I hated the
movie version of The Road because I felt that in spite of wonderful
acting and often imaginative direction it really failed to do that.
When you read the novel, the unrelenting bleakness of the situation
is leavened by the sublime beauty of McCarthy’s prose, so you’re
constantly in a suspension between despair and some other emotional
state I can’t quite name. The movie didn’t find or even look for
an audio-visual equivalent of that experience.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /><i><b>Question Three</b></i>: <i>I am a
particular fan of Felix Castor, the freelance exorcist and anti-hero
of the series you began with The Devil You Know. Felix
is a most worthy addition to the tradition of occult detectives that
goes back to, among others, Blackwood's John Silence, Hodgson's
Thomas Carnacki, and Wellman's John Thunstone. More
recent cousins would include Preston & Child's Agent Pendergast,
Butcher's Harry Dresden, Stross's Bob Howard, Selene in the
Underworld series, Anton Gorodetsky in the Night Watch
trilogy, Buffy, Mulder & Scully in The X Files, more
distantly Tyador Borlu in Mieville's The City & The City.
How do you see Felix within this tradition? How do you explain
the reading public's apparently boundless fascination with all things
paranormal? </i><br /><br />
<br />
<b>Carey</b>: I’m delighted to see you put Castor in that distinguished
company. I think what I was trying to do with that series, more than
anything else, was to create a supernatural crime fusion that was
true to the spirit of both of those traditions. In other words, I
wanted the supernatural elements to feel genuinely chilling and
numinous, and I wanted the mystery elements to work as a mystery –
with no supernatural “get-outs” or breaches of logic.<br />
<br />
<br />
In terms of style, I took my cue
from Raymond Chandler. I was trying to make Castor feel like the
exorcist half-brother of Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade. I don’t know
how far I succeeded in that, but that was the blueprint – an
exorcist who walks the mean streets and does what he has to do for a
moderate daily fee plus expenses.<br />
<br />
<br />
The other aim was to create a
supernatural taxonomy that makes sense and is consistent. We’ve
got ghosts, zombies, were-creatures and demons, but there’s only
one mechanism at work in all these different manifestations – so
you only have to believe one impossible thing before breakfast, and
everything else flows from that one thing. Obviously many
supernatural stories work without any explicit explanation at all,
and that’s fine. But I felt like I’d be missing a trick in the
Castor novels if I didn’t make the ultimate mystery be: why is this
happening?<br />
<br />
<i>[Second half of the interview next week.]</i><div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334027581106783583.post-62597589175510516472013-12-29T06:44:00.000-08:002013-12-29T06:44:08.283-08:00Skiffs on the Endless River, a Convoy of Joy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Skimming dozens and dozens of "year's best" lists, I once again come to the three-parts delighted, one-part melancholy conclusion that my time will run out long before I can possibly read even a small number of all the books on my "to be read" list. Oceans of books, fathomless pools of words, serpentines of sentences...and me there, the humble lobster, dabbling, clutching and slowly clambering as best I can in the shallows. The canary can only sigh... <br />
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Any sense that literary culture is declining dashes itself on the sheer volume of publication. The tidal river accommodates every taste, form and subject Even assuming <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_Law" target="_blank">Sturgeon's Law </a>holds true, the vastness of global literary output assures us of more high-quality, worthy books published in any one year than any one of us could possibly read in that one year. And then the next year is upon us...and what about all those acknowledged classics still unread...?<br />
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A marvelous situation as we cozy up to whatever we are reading right now, our eyes already looking ahead to the book to follow immediately and the ones stacked up beyond. <div class="blogger-post-footer">Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.</div>Lobster and Canaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16543560121491115076noreply@blogger.com0