Literature and Poetry Sightings
Sightings
Mildred Benson, author of the Nancy Drew series
The author of the series, still popular today, has died. The University of Iowa (the author's home state) special collection on Ms. Benson reveals how she viewed her heroine: It seems to me that Nancy was popular, and remains so, primarily because she personifies the dream image which exists within most teen-agers. Definitely, Nancy had all the qualities lacking in her author. She was good looking, had an oversupply of college "dates," and enjoyed great personal freedom. She never lost an athletic contest and was far smarter than adults with whom she associated. Leisure time was spent living dangerously. She avoided all household tasks, and indeed, might rate as a pioneer of Women's Lib.
And Ms. Benson seems to have written her own end, in a way:
So now it is time for the final chapter, seemingly one destined from the beginning. A fadeout becomes the most difficult of all, for though the story is finished, the reader must be led to believe that the very best lies directly ahead. New worlds to conquer! New horizons to explore!
There is a website for the author who used Carolyn Keene as a 'ghost' name for her writing and who published 130 children's books. What you might not know is that she was an accomplished pilot. There is also a Nancy Drew Cruise site with tours organized by a niece of Ms. Benson's.
Read Mary McHugh's Take Five column on the late author, Me and Nancy Drew:
But Nancy Drew still draws a crowd. Young girls in my 11-year-old grandson’s class read those books. Nancy may be overshadowed by Harry Potter for the moment (I love him, too), but our Nancy will always be there, forging ahead, showing the way, fearlessly leading us into new adventures.
Benson was busy up to the end of her life, encouraging senior men and woman to remain active. Well done, Mildred.
Literature & Poetry: Book Fairs, Madame Bovary and The Warden, solving the rebus
Seattle's Poetry Festival begins on April 29th, but the site can be mined for videos of poets delivering their work during the 2001 fair. One aspect of the organization involved in the Festival is its program, Emerging Voice. It was designed as a community outreach project by Eleventh Hour Productions to help "attract, develop, and encourage young poets by offering them professional guidance and opportunities through a series of writing and performance workshops that culminate in a paid, public reading during the Seattle Poetry Festival." The poetry slam segment of the site has links to other similar groups nationwide.
The New York Antiquarian Book Fair is taking place April 18-21 but the site already has substantial lists of book 'specialists,' those who you can consult for pricing those books in your house thought valuable. The exhibitor list contains, in most cases, webpages for those who are showing at the Fair.
A bit ahead on the calendar is the Gold Rush Book Fair in Nevada City, CA. The show is held at former foundry and steel mill, Miners Foundry, in the heart of the California northern mines Gold Country. The Oakland Museum's site provides some gold mining history to absorb before attending the fair itself. Another history file is on the Empire Mine State Park website is the site of one of the oldest, largest, deepest, longest and richest gold mines in California located in Grass Valley. The town of North Bloomfield hosts a visitor center for the Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park.
The Antiquarian Booksellers site has inaugurated a 'This Day in Literary History' feature and April 12 celebrates one of the most haunting 'feminist' novels, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. One of those books to be found on the Web, Madame Bovary may be enjoyed at the Classical Library, so to speak. And, if you're enjoying the Masterpiece Theater Anthony Trollope piece, you might try "The Warden" by the same author.
And, on this classic golf weekend, you might heed Mark Twain's remark, "Golf is a good walk, spoiled." It's the quote of the week at Ask Oxford.com. Oxford is also conducting a word challenge, a 'Fiendishly Difficult Word Game,' — a Rebus: Rebuses are groups of letters, numbers, pictures, etc. that represent words or phrases. IOU is a kind of rebus, representing the phrase ‘I owe you’. Most people know a puzzle in the form of a rhyme which starts; ‘YY U R,’ which means ‘Too wise you are . . .’)
I had no doubt that all SeniorWomen are wise!
Most of us over a certain age (with thrifty pocketbook habits) have made many a library our home.
The New York Public Library site has online exhibit called Heading West, which uses impressions of the West in maps from 1540 to 1900, while Touring West celebrates the creators, promoters, and performers of professional theater, music, and dance who toured the American continent from the early 1800s to the end of that century.
The NYPL also presents a gallery of photography Berenice Abbott's Changing New York, 1935 -1938, with page upon page of New York City views unseen by most of us and many of buildings that are no longer extant or those that have been radically changed.
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture hosts a number of online exhibits including: Harlem 1900-1940, An African American Community; The Schomburg Legacy, Documenting the Global Black Experience for the 21st Century; The African Presence in the Americas, 1492-1992. In addition, there are digital images of 19th c. African Americans, including one section of 84 portraits of the women of this time and African American Women Writers of the 19th century.
The Internet Teen Library has a section listed as "For those who care about girls, check out Helping Girls Succeed." The British Library has resources in order to listen to a recording of Florence Nightingale on 30 July and, in 1890, James Joyce reading an excerpt from Ulysses. The Millennium Memory Bank includes a vast archive of remembrances of United Kingdom citizens reminiscing over the last 20, 50 or 100 years. Each series showed how — in that part of the UK — different aspects of life have changed.
The National Library of Australia has a recording made from a film entitled Excerpt from History 1917-67: Gandhi's India 1969 and a Letter from Gandhi to Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, from Bombay, written on 2 February 1932.
The Bodleian Library in Oxford has an online source for ephemera images: The John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera that can be accessed after agreeing to their image provisions. The subject matter is 'A Nation of Shopkeepers, Trade Ephemera from 1654 to the 1860s.'
The Library Journal has several features of interest...one is Authors on the Highway, structured both with US and foreign authors on the road with readings schedules.
And, for Library shops, the NYPL has some interesting trinkets and objects: Children's explorers books and a rather unique set of performing pillows: they scream, giggle, twinkle, or play songs wittily relevant to the images on the pillows.
Poetry/Dialogue Through Poetry and Poetry on the Peaks
The coordinators for Dialog through Poetry week contacted reading coordinators, editors, poets, and poetry lovers around the world and asked them to organize readings in their cities. Last year, there were over 200 readings in 150 cities around the world and were open to everyone. The program is continuing in 2002 and there are organized readings for the week of 17, March 2002--Dialogue Through Poetry Week. In addition, that week includes UNESCO's World Poetry Day.
Poetry on the Peaks is a part of the Dialogue; the UN has designated 2002 the International Year of the Mountains. Poetry by Pablo Neruda, Walt Whitman, William Blake, Han Shan, Rumi and the Dali Lama are being read on mountains (or peaks, as the New York Times notes) around the world on behalf of the UN. The editors of Suien Haiku magazine will climb Mt. Fuji and read a poem by Native American poet Joy Harjo; Five Point magazine's editor Megan Sexton will read excerpts from Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech on Stone Mountain, GA.
The Red Iguana site informs that "One of the main readings will take place on Mt. Everest’s summit where Kazi Sherpa will read the poem, “Never Give Up” by His Holiness The Dalai Lama and translated by Ron Whitehead. The entire expedition will be video recorded and broadcast on the web with preview screenings at Hugo House in Seattle, St. Agnes Library in New York City and at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa."
For those of you who do not want to wait for the week of the 17, Poetry Daily awaits. And beyond March, there's the conference being offered by the National Association for Poetry Therapy's annual conference, Emerging Landscapes: Poetic Visions and Vistas.
The Times piece by James Gorman quotes a verse from William Blake:
Great things are done when men
and mountains meet;
This is not done by jostling in the
street.
Authors/Dawn Powell, Rediscovered & Fêted
New York city is in the midst of a Dawn Powell festival from now until March 11th. The City is an apt location as she came to New York in 1918 and died there in 1965. But there are claims prior to the New York sojourn—those of the state of Ohio. Last year, The Atlantic magazine published an article, The Country and the City, which compared the novels written in the Midwest and those created in New York. Tim Page's Pulitzer-winning biography of Powell, Dawn Powell at her Best, quoted her as saying that the day she left Ohio she "split in two at the crossroads and went up both roads, half of me by day here in New York and the other half by night with the dead in long-ago Ohio."
There are readings and play performances of Powell's work during the fête called Permanent Visitor: A Festival Celebrating Dawn Powell in New York. Last year, Yale Repertory Theater presented a symposium in conjunction with their production of Powell's Big Night, the first full staging of the play in nearly 70 years and the premiere of Powell's original 1928 version.
Dawn Powell was the subject of one of those luscious public arguments that well known authors and critics indulge in occasionally. This time it was between author Gore Vidal and critic Diana Trilling and it took place in November, 1987 following a Vidal essay in the New York Review of Books. But, in spite of the spite, Trilling did make the remark about Powell that's been quoted since:
Miss Powell is one of the wittiest women around and our best answer to the familiar question, "Who really says the funny things for which Dorothy Parker gets credit?"
Last year, nine of her novels were packaged by The Library of America and The Washington Post included a first chapter from her diaries.
Here are the plot lines and descriptions of the productions being staged by the Sightlines Theater Company.
"Assignment:
Dawn
New Georges [Theater] asks eight compelling new voices to take a
gander at Dawn Powell and dig in. Some playwrights hew closely to
the source material, others play fast and loose. Outcome: two diverse
programs of short plays pay tribute to Powell while bringing her
distinctive point of view steadfastly into the present day.
Jig Saw:
A boozy set of lovable decadents let the good times roll at
Claire Burnell's New York penthouse. The party seems to be over
when Claire's prim daughter shows up from Swiss finishing school
in Powell's hilarious send up of 1930s cosmopolitan life.
As We Were Saying (or Were We)
A young Herald Tribune Reporter is swept away by the ever-droll
Dawn Powell during an alcohol-assisted interview in this fictionalized
account of a real interview Powell gave at age sixty. A speculation
on Powell's thoughts about her own life -- and about the personal
fictions that underpin all love and loss.
Women at Four O'Clock
(previously unproduced)
A single woman of a certain age (aha, we can identify) struggles
to reconcile her repressed longings for the jazz musician next door.
Dawn Powell unleashes her sassy wit and biting humor on the plight
of the new woman caught at the crossroads of burgeoning feminism."
Literature & Film/Lord of the Rings
Our Resident Observer (and the first writer we asked to contribute to this site), Julia Sneden, introduced me to the trilogy "Lord of the Rings" in 1964. This was during a time when I most needed distraction and fantasy. The books were the first present I gave my future (and present) husband a year later. Our three daughters read the books as well as the the story that was supposed to precede the trilogy, "The Hobbit."
On my desk is a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Father Christmas Letters," letters that Tolkien began writing each year to his children in 1920, when his eldest, John, was only three years old. Through the following twenty years, these letters arrived yearly for the family of four children.
This week the filmed first book of the trilogy arrives in theaters to favorable (or as the English term it, 'encouraging') advance reviews. The Tolkien Society site includes a BBC article that publishes Christopher Tolkien's denial that he's unhappy with the movie version of the first book. At the Society is also a link to a vast collection of other sites that contribute to the Tolkien myth.
Houghton Mifflin has been the publisher of record for the Tolkien books beginning with the publication of The Hobbit in 1938 and therefore stand at the top of what has become a lucrative trove of books by and about the author. The projects director gives an interview answering such questions as:
Why has The Hobbit been so popular for more than six decades? and What are the major themes of The Lord of the Rings, and what are its virtues?
Tom Shippey, the author of "JRR Tolkien: Author of the Century," writing in The Guardian has put together a list of books about Tolkien, if you're so inclined. The American Prospect magazine weighs in with Tolkien on Homeland Defense And Why He's More Like J.K. Rowling than Christians Admit.
In fact, if you're able to receive BBC Radio 4, they're about to rebroadcast its 13-hour version of The Lord of the Rings. The 24-Hour Museum has a related trails article that
will transport you to Tolkien's Middle Earth - a world of hobbits, wizards, evil sorcerers, orcs, elves, goblins, and many other weird and wonderful inhabitants. So take up the quest, or be forever banished to the black land of Mordor!
The British Library has revamped its site and along with it is a current exhibit on The Lie of the Land: The Secret Life of Maps.
One of the examples is a map that appeared at a time when "Protestant belief in the literal truth of the Bible meant that Paradise was frequently shown on maps as a geographical location, which is why this map depicts the Garden of Eden or Earthly Paradise." There's also an illustration of the first manufactured jigsaw puzzle (1766) and, the exhibit comments, for the next 20 years the only jigsaws made were, like Spilsbury's, in the form of dissected maps.
Also on the site is an example of what happens when cartographer's play with their craft, having only one hill left to record. They decided to use their imagination filling the area with a fictitious image in the shape of an elephant.
If interested in viewing the famous Book of the Hours among other manuscripts, the pdf file download is painless and viewing is enjoyable, hosted by the Cary Collection at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Wellesley College's Library section has a site devoted to Women in the Book Arts created by Jill Bent that should not be missed.
For a multimedia bibliography on the book and paper arts for children from kindergarten through the ninth grade, consult Louisiana librarian Tanya DiMaggio's pages for a rich collection of for books, videos and links. For Holiday giftgiving, there are many independent dealers of rare, secondhand, and out-of-print books; Abebooks is just one.
For a look at other, more contemporary bookmaking, step into the Book Arts Gallery and enjoy the works of an imaginative band of book artists such as Pamela Moore. She's done one work that is described as "containing the fundamental text of alchemical philosophy, The Emerald Table. The rhombus shaped book is constructed of binder's board and copper. The copper pages fold out accordion style creating a labyrinth design when entirely open."
The name of this work: The Philosopher's Stone. How very Potteresque!
Poetry & Literature/Imbroglios, Collaborative Poem , Poets House, Books Online & Women Illustrators
The Academy of American Poets has ousted its popular executive director, William Wadsworth and laid off about half its staff to 'forestall an impending financial crisis.' This has caused a great flap in the community of poets but we will leave that to them.
An interesting sidelight of the APL site is the 'Poetry Map.' Upon clicking on a particular geographic region, you're presented with a full blown examination of the poets in that area and their contributions.
The Curated Poetry Exhibits include 'Influences from the British Isles' and 'Eros and the Lyric Imagination: Poems of Love.' For those of you (and myself) who might be poetry impaired or challenged, there is a section called 'Serious Play: Reading Poetry with Children,' where one might be able to begin again to understand this art form.
Surprisingly enough, the APL Project has recently begun collaborating with Yellow Pages publishers to feature poetry in their directories. Over 12,000,000 Yellow Pages with great poetry displayed throughout their listings are being distributed in every region of the US and their goal is to have poetry in 50,000,000 Yellow Pages by the year 2000.
So while you're fuming that you can't locate that listing of the tree guy some friend mentioned, you can calm your soul with a poetry break. At least we hope so.
Poets House is a "literary center and poetry archive - a Collection and meeting place that invites poets and the public to step into the living tradition of poetry. " The People's Poetry Gathering, an offshoot of Poets House, has a collaborative poem in process wherein you may add a line to memorialize September 11th.
Perhaps you'd like to turn to prose. In that case, there's a site we came across in our surfs that might appeal: Kellscraft Studio. The site includes many full texts of out-of-print, public domain books. The focus is primarily Arts and Crafts influenced publications from the turn-of-the-20th-century. A number of them are illustrated by women artists: Helen Stratton, perhaps best known for Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales and The Tinder Box, on this site. Another was Blanche McManus, who illustrated The True Mother Goose.
An author who enjoys repeated rebirths of popularity is that ultimate road guy, Jack Kerouac. Literary Traveler has posted an article on Jack Kerouac and the Satori Highway and the account of a fan who traveled to New York to see the scroll of On The Road, that Kerouac used for a manuscript, before it was auctioned off at Christie's. That artifact and others belonging to Kerouac reside at the New York Public Library's Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
The Atlantic has published an interview with author Jonathan Franzen, whose novel, The Corrections (about a dysfunctional family—are there any other kind?), has been nominated for a National Book Award. In Australia, Peter Carey has won a second Booker Prize for his novel, True History of the Kelly Gang, having won previously (1988) for Oscar and Lucinda.
Bloomsbury Magazine has come out with another quiz, this time about pseudonyms used by authors, such as:
Which contemporary North
American writer’s real name is Anne Rampling? Anne McCaffrey
Anne Tyler
Anne Rice
Anne Michaels
And if you find it difficult to understand today's (yours or your children's) teenager, take heart. This year's Teen Read week is just over but you can sign them up for next year's, Oct. 13–19, 2002. Local bookstores are hosting a Lord of the Rings event featuring a 20-minute video made exclusively for Houghton Mifflin, Nov. 8 . to celebrate the release of the movie "The Fellowship of the Ring."
Reading and Authors/Festivals, Readings and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression
The Library of America is hosting a series featuring New York writers and celebrating New York literary past beginning October 2 and called, Great New York Writers in Great New York Places. On October 5, 2001 the Dawn Powell Plaque Dedication Ceremony will take place.
The fourth annual Sarasota (Florida) Reading Festival expects to host 17,000 guests for a free celebration of reading, literacy and the written word beginning with November 9th. There will be four dozen literary events going on in eight venues. Presentations will be by award-winning authors in addition to readings, storytellers, theatrical performers and book signings As an added inducement to participation, a free book for every child under 18 will be given out.
The Hudson Valley Writer's Center Calendar contains a schedule of upcoming events for writers and readers including the annual festival and, in December, a talk by playwright Wendy Wassertein.
One of the most important links to books nowadays is the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. Banned Books Week is coming to an end (September 29th), but many of the issues remain: the foundation has successfully defended booksellers who were subpoenaed in the search for materials in the Torricelli investigation. The federal government has agreed not to pursue the production of customer records in their ongoing search for documents.
In early October, the granddaddy (or is it grandmother?) of the international book fair circuit takes place in Frankfurt. The 2001 Latino Book Fair will be held in Los Angeles on October 13-14 and San Bernardino/Riverside on December 1-2, and Chicago on December 8-9.
The Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, TN takes place on October 12-14. There's a staggering lineup of authors attending, part of the more than 200 authors of both adult and children's books and approximately 35,000 visitors each year attend.
Special activities for children at the Southern Festival include appearances by favorite characters, birthday parties to celebrate classic children's books and a children's stage featuring poets, storytellers and songwriters. A celebration is planned to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Winnie the Pooh.
The South Carolina Humanities Council will be sponsoring 'Look Homeward: The 2002 South Carolina Book Festival & Antiquarian Book Fair,' on Saturday, February 23 and Sunday, February 24. The festival will feature Southern-themed panel discussions on foodways, travel, women's fiction, politics, "writing with a sense of place," mysteries, gay and lesbian writings, short stories, poetry, and "Wild Women of the South." Admission, as always, is free. You can't beat that for price and a mid-winter ice breaker of an event.
Reading: Entire towns reads the same book!
Nancy Pearl is the executive director of the The Washington Center for the Book in Seattle, WA. Ms. Pearl proposed a program now being adopted by libraries l around the country and known locally as the "If All Seattle Read The Same Book." If you want to know what the Seattle Library selection is for next Spring, it's Wild Life by Molly Gloss.
Now, as the New York Times makes note, Chicago has followed suit: Quiet, Please; Chicago Is Reading The Same Book at the Same Time. In this case, it's To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. In Rochester, NY they're reading A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines.
If you'd like to organize your own reading program or book club, the Seattle Library has some tips. Or if venturing further afield for literary pursuits is your goal, try the Ottawa International Writers Festival or the William Faulkner Festival: Words and Music, A Literary Feast in New Orleans.
Or, stay at home and read Senior Women Web's Culture Watch.
Culture & Arts/Poetry
We couldn't let the National Poetry Month slip away without some notice. Yusef Komunyakaa, poet, is a professor in the Council of Humanities and Creative Writing Program at Princeton University and a participant in the Dialogue Among Nations Through Poetry. These readings took place around the world including on Mount Everest, Antarctica and West Philippine Sea. The Act!vated Storytellers are a national touring theatrical troupe performing folktales and poetry at schools and libraries.
The Poetry and Literature Center of the Library of Congress will be holding, in celebration of Shakespeare's birthday on April 24th, public readings of the Bard at a "Poetry at Noon" program. There is a book (and series of readings) called the Best American Poetry 2000 which might appeal.
And finally, for a little interactivity, nominate a poet for a US stamp. Yes, there are further links to explore, thankfully, on the Web.
Authors/Dorothy Dunnett
This author (and, yes, she's a senior woman) has become known to new readers but some have been reading Dorothy Dunnett for forty years. Her historical novels have inspired many to create sites to celebrate her talent and appeal, including a Scottish bookseller who includes on his site, a file to aid on Scottish pronunciation. In addition, Dorothy answers some questions about unchaperoned and servantless travels of some of her women characters. There's even a page on some edition errors in her books!Authors/Anthony Powell
Since his death, devoted fans have gathered at a site dedicated to Powell, replete with a volume-by-volume synopsis (there are twelve in all) of A Dance to the Music of Time. There's a conference in 2001 hosted by the Society. Two articles, one titled When the Music of Time Stops and the other, In Bellowing Distance of a Genius, that will be of interest, particularly the latter about his wife, Lady Violet Pakenham. And yes, thankfully, there is Anthony Powell's curry recipe.
