Letchworth State Park

G. W. O'Grady - Letchworth State Park, c. 1915, autochrome, George Eastman House, Rochester, NY.

National Poetry Month

Watching The Spring Festival by Frank Bidart Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 2008 811.54 BID
Although Bidart’s poetry is laced with cultural references from the popular culture, (Marilyn Monroe, Home On The Range) to classical ballet and 8th century Chinese verse, it is always elegant. As befits his various subjects, Bidart meditates on how differently art is experienced at different times and places.

First Hand by Linda Bierds G.P. Putnam’s Sons: 2006 811.54 BIE
Bierds is unusual among her peers for writing poetry that is about many things, but hardly ever herself. Her technical skill makes possible an ease in writing about such disparate moments as Archimedes at the moment of “Eureka!”, ancient experiments with the buoyancy of water, and the young Benjamin Franklin standing in a pond, considering his shadow. Her poems are delightful.

Small Gods Of Grief by Laure-Anne Bosselaer BOA Editions: 2001 811.54 BOS
Laure-Anne Bosselaar (b.1943) grew up in Belgium, moved the the United States in 1987, and now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A book of her poems, Small Gods Of Grief, from which these selections are quoted, was published by BOA Editions, Rochester, NY, in 2001 and received the Isabella Gardner Poetry Prize for that year. Bosselaar also translates poetry, from English to French and from Flemish to English. Great Gullet Creek was also published online by WebDelSol.com in Posse Review.

The Palace Of Ashes by Sherry Fairchok
University Press of New England: 2002 811.6 FAI
A native of 100 years of Pennsylvania coal mining, Fairchok moved to Syracuse during her early childhood and attended Syracuse University where she won the Whiffin Prize. Her keen attention to the variety of the natural world may surprise those who know only the destructive effects of mining, which gives the collection its title.

Green Squall by Jay Hopler Yale University Press: 2006 811.6 HOP
Hopler happened to be the 100th winner of the Yale Younger Poets award, chosen by the formidable poet Louise Gluck. Although his poetry rarely breaks out of the narrow confines of his own imagination, it is very entertaining. A sense of humor mitigates the relentless self-awareness.

The Glass Age by Cole Swensen Alicejamesbooks: 2007 811.54SWE
The Glass Age, Swensen’s tenth book of poetry, achieves unity through her affinity with the paintings of the French artist, Pierre Bonnard. Bonnard liked to paint views seen through a framing window and Swensen explores how her poems do something similar. From there, she circles out to a consideration of the ways glass has been used in various arts. A thought-expanding collection.

Native Guard by Natasha Tretheway Houghton, Mifflin:2006 811.6 TRE
Winner of the 2007 Pulitzer prize, and with good reason. The child of an illegal (in 1966) marriage between a black woman and a white man, Natasha Tretheway grew up in the South, but learned as an adult about the Louisiana Native guards, a brigade of black soldiers who fought bravely on the union side in the Civil War. Her poetry is infused with these richly suggestive materials; her technical and stylistic abilities are nearly unbeatable.

Cayuga Lake

William H. Rau (1855- 1920) was the official photographer of the 1904 World's Fair, held at St. Louis, Missouri. Born in Philadelphia, Rau took this photograph near Cayuga Lake while on board a train, when he was the official photographer for the Lehigh Valley Railroad.



William H. Rau - Bluff On Cayuga Lake from the train, 1895, Museum Of Modern Art-NYC. Albumen silver print from a glass negative.

On The Road With 100 Boots

100 BOOTS by Eleanor Antin, Philadelphia, Running Press: 1999 (197-) 779.092 ANT

With the arrival of spring, our thoughts turn to getting out and looking around. That may be why, in March 1971, the artist Eleanor Antin began a project that became a picaresque novel in postcards – 100 Boots.
Antin (b. 1935) was living in southern California at the time; she bought one hundred boots at an Army Navy Surplus store with no clear purpose in mind. But, lined up in pairs, they began to hint at latent possibilities. Soon Antin was photographing the boots, arrayed in pairs and lines in various settings. She captioned the pictures to suggest a narrative and began sending the resulting postcards (51 in all) to approximately 1,000 people she had met in the art world. Some were baffled when they began receiving the semi-regular missives; others were intrigued.
Between March 1971 and July 1973 the boots crossed the country from California to New York They began their odyssey in a conventional way, shopping at a grocery store, attending church, visiting the bank, and attending a drive-in movie. Antin took their very first group photo on the beach at Del Mar, California.
Soon the boots were walking about their generation, they got political. They joined demonstrations, committed trespasss and civil disobedience, and finally had to hit the road. Along the way they dabbled in the back-to-nature movement in the Sorrento Valley, once memorably passing a flock of geese headed in the other direction. Huddled under a bridge, the boots resembled so many black leather hobos and after crossing the La Jolla Desert on foot, in September they definitively headed east by hopping a train.
After various adventures, the boots arrived in New York City in May, 1973, like generations of immigrants, on the ferry. Disembarking, they became tourists, crossing Herald Square, strolling through Central Park, and entering the Egyptian Garden where they circled around a belly dancer.

And then, just as Antin had hoped, the boots marched triumphantly into the Museum of Modern Art, where they were given their own room, making their creator one of a mere handful of women to receive a solo show at MOMA in the 1970s. For, all along, Antin had been looking for a way to circumvent a system that was inhospitable to women. Conceptual art, which places the idea before the aesthetic execution, was a likely tool for a subversive moment. Credit (or blame, depending on your viewpoint) for initiating conceptual art if usually given to the surrealist Marcel Duchamp for his 1917 creation of "R. Mutt."