TRANSCENDENTAL RAIN

TRANSCENDENTAL RAIN: personal recollections of the old year, 2005.
On December 24, 2005, a cold wet snowy night, an unassuming yet dedicated group of readers and writers met at AREOPAGITICA BOOK STORE, 3510 N. High St. There were about twelve of us -- the Poets Guild, founded and convened by Dotte Turner, is open to all-- and we read established work that reflected the season. The much honored poet Jean Desy read a piece written by Thomas Hardy around the time of World War I. In this poem the animals who, traditionally, knelt at midnight to worship Baby Jesus, are compared to soldiers slumped against the sides of trenches. Desy read her own hard edged intricate poem about a gas station and the city in winter.
Jackie Wetmore read poetry by Emily Dickinson. In it there were "leaden sieves of snow."Jeanni Ray enlivened all with a reading from David Sedaris.
Liz James read Kathleen Gallagher's poem "for Anna Akmatova," and Irina Ratushinskaya's "I will live and survive." In both of these "dissident" poems, images of light and ice radiate from the walls of a prison in winter. Pat Peterson read the traditional elocution piece, "jest fore Christmas" by James Whitcomb Riley.--A little nostalgia is good for everyone, like pepper on popcorn! Mark Stoll rocked his own version of The Twelve Days of Christmas, and Diana DelBianco looked like, and read about, a wintery goddess.
Best, and most revolutionary, or evolutionary, of all, was Rebecca Rutledge's reading from John Keat's The Eve of St. Agnes written in 1819.--Letting go, closing my eyes, I saw the moonlight, the luscious fruit on a silver tray, the heroine's beautiful hair. I saw, I heard, a necklace of words smouldering with imagination and craft.
I thought about Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti. . . Yes, Kerouac and The Beats--how they knew the master poets -- not only Whitman, Dickinson, Rukeyser--but how they mastered the ballades
and villanelles of some bottle tossing young French guys. I recalled how the Beats studied and practiced and when they did break free
the pure gold glistened waiting to be panned.
These were my thoughts at Areo on December 24.
I pictured us , the readers, as an enduring, marginal people.--We're the new Subterraneans, maybe, or maybe the new Transcendentalists!--We who sip pot-brewed coffee and nibble cookies while we listen to Keats on a bleak winter's night.
The name, Areopagitica comes from the great English poet John Milton's dedication to free speech, in case you didnt know. I didn't.
Areopagitica hosts an easy going writer's workshop from two to four p.m. on the Third Thursday of each month.--You're welcome to
bring copies of your own work. The Poets Guild meets every Fourth Friday at 7:30 p.m.
Doug Rutledge owns and manages Areopagitica, a marvelous second hand book store patrolled by a marvelously literate dog, Zack.
MORE TRANSCENDENTAL RAIN, more personal recollections. BalletMet and Toulouse Lautrec in 2005.
As one who has studied and loved ballet for over thirty years I think I've developed an "eye." I hope our Columbus audience knows how good their Company is! The Nutcracker was a confection with just the right vintage pouf or elan, in costuming , scenery, casting. Choreography was icicle clear and candy cane sweet! Everyone was perfect. I went on opening night. For some reason two details continue to dance in my memory. Randolph Ward was incredibly light and precise as he manipulated his sabre as a swordsman (a toy swordsman, of course.) And Hisham Omardian as the sardonic and mysterious visitor who brings the Nutcracker toy, seemed to have taken a direct flight from Tchaikovsky's Russia.The dance-technique was finely honed, igniting snowflakes,diamonds and, of course, sugar plums!
Alice inWonderland will run from Feb. 9th thru the 19th. Call 229-4860 for tickets..
TRANSCENDENTAL RAIN III: LIZ AND LAUTREC It is June 2005. I'm at the Lautrec and Montmartre exhibit at The National Gallery in Washington D.C. The exhibit is crowded and noisy but everybody is nice. Lautrec is popular! Hannah is two; she rides in Mommy's arms, or on Daddy's shoulders. She loves the black cats. There are a lot of them--Remember The Black Cat night club? Things really rocked there, not far from the Moulin Rouge. Ganny is impressed with what a great painter Lautrec was. How strong and versatile. She loves seeing his posters of the actress Jane Avril and she double-loves the serious and respectful oil portrait he painted of Avril, where shes a beautiful, fine featured woman in a long coat and it's dawn and she's leaving the theatre. She's a three dimensional human being. Berthe Morisot sits , without make up, serious, fine featured, at her dressing table. She's thin. She reads. I think she's beautiful. So did Lautrec. He took his subjects, yes, even the women, seriously. Morisot is lovely, she is his friend. A man says, "Ugh. Not sexy or pretty." I want to smack him but I don't. --Later, I see the Renoir's Women exhibit at the Columbus Art Museum. Lautrec seems more versatile than Renoir, and in most ways, as strong a painter as Renoir. I try to censor my thoughts . But I continue to remember the portraits by Lautrec. His women seem , well, to be thoughtful individuals. In a way, I think, its Lautrec who really loved women; he could be a friend. Hannah and I love to watch the 1890 film clip of the barefoot dancer Loie Fuller who is performing in Paris, like a butterfly. In black and white film she flutters and skips and her wings and scarves never stop moving. Isadora Duncan will be influenced by Loie and long after Lautrec is dead she herself will die in a phantasmagoria of scarf in Paris.--Isadora was right. she said "Art is greater than governments."--Hannah calls "Kitty, butterfly!"--Happy New Year,everyone.
If you read my blog and you want to send me positive comments you can send them to AMSCON Box 141251 Columbus, Ohio, 43214.