POETRY!

by Chazda Albright
Lulu.com
Copyright ©2009
127 Pages
$21.45 Hardcover

With a title like that, I just had to take a look at Chazda Albright’s book.  Being a fellow poet and artist, the title alone definitely captured my attention.  Chazda introduces the book with an explanation about her medium:

The images here that are “something sort of like art” have been drawn directly in the book using tools available within the Microsoft Word program and a cordless mouse. Each image has been drawn as a
visual and spontaneous reaction to the poem it follows.

I’ve never been a fan of computer generated art or the limits and confines I myself have experienced with programs like Word or Paint.  I have tinkered with both when it comes to creating book covers – with not much luck – so I admire anyone who can do a better job than me.  Viewing Chazda’s manuscript in Google docs was quite fun since I could catch a glimpse of each upcoming page in the right hand margin before viewing it full size.  Here’s a sample:

This sun pattern accompanies each poem for about the first 90 pages.  The poems are each broken up by a piece of “Word” art, which also has the same sun pattern as a border.  I didn’t mind the border at first although it does take up quite a bit of each page, but once the border disappeared from the poems and art on page 90 I almost felt like the poet/artist in Ms. Albright had been set free…free from the limits and confines that computer programs can place on our talents.  It was also nice to see the “greeting card” feel of the book go away. At this point, the art also changes and has more of a sketch book feel to it which I think is very appropriate in poetry collections.  I much prefer the raw edge.  This small verse from this section seems to serve as an explanation:

I don’t know.
This is strange.
Nothing is responding properly.
Is it me?
The computer?
Life?

Most of the poems are rants probably best spoken out loud, like one I particularly enjoyed about people who wear sunglasses indoors and why.  I envisioned the poet wearing sunglasses while reading it and really playing it up for the audience.  There’s not a lot of rhyme to the verses, but I was glad.  I think this type of book, with its mix of poems and art, would have seemed even more “greeting card” like had the poems contained a more metric verse.  That aside, some of the poems do have sing-songy titles which I found to be distracting like “IntentionsIntentlyIntended” and “Dancing Daisies.”  Most of the time, I enjoyed the poem more itself after having ignored its title all together.

My favorite poem of the lot was actually one of the more simpler ones called “He Brings Yellow Flowers to the City.”  For me, it’s the best example of the type of word art a poem should convey.  It paints a very clear and distinct picture and leaves the viewer/listener maybe wanting  just a bit more, but left with a rambling of their own thoughts that can take them in any direction. Here is the poem in its entirety:

There’s a man
On the street corner
Selling yellow flowers
To passersby.
He’s tall and so
So thin
With inch thick black rimmed
Glasses worn high
On his face.
Salt speckled thick hair
Sweeps over his eyes
And a long, glowing white
Cigarette stands erect
Under his nose.
He shaved this morning,
But he’ll need to again soon
People, people
Take a flower and
Carry it in the city.
Yellow flowers are here!

As for the art, it’s an odd mix of shapes, repeating patterns,  and doodles, reminiscent of and probably inspired by the likes of Warhol, Escher, and Van Gogh. Most of it, for me personally, didn’t really create a connection between it and the poetry.  I also felt some of the art would have been better had it been printed in color when it came to pieces that used specific shapes, but that would have definitely increased the cover price of the book itself which is unfortunate. I think the connection is lost due to a lack of color.  The artwork with a border is also not symmetrical in size to the poems with borders, that while not really necessarily, does create an odd balance when you are looking at two pages at once.  Here’s an example:

My personal tastes in art lean more toward the doodles and sketches although a large carpet on my living room floor displays a repetitive pattern of squares and circles resembling martini olives that I believe Mr. Warhol himself would have loved. I certainly appreciate pop art, but I think the lack of color is what turned me off to most of the pieces in this book.  But, I did particularly like the sketches that were meant to resemble people.  Here’s one of my favs called “unartist.”

The biography of Ms. Albright in the back of the book lets us know that she is self-taught, but has had a number of personal art exhibitions throughout the western US and in Germany. She has written some erotica under a pen name and is currently at work on a fantasy thriller screenplay. You can view her ePortfolio at www.chazda.com.  And you can preview POETRY! at fReado.

I commend Ms. Albright for using self-publishing to its full potential in creating both a work of art and a collection of poetry that is exactly what it should be: a presentation of one’s true self.  Like a good museum or a good book, I enjoyed my time here.

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For a camera enthusiast like me, there’s just something about the feel of that magic black box with lense and flash in hand.  In college, I spent my loan refund on a $400 35mm Canon Rebel SG and a love of photography was born.  Last year, I snatched up a digital Canon Powershot on sale at a Circuit City that was going under.  I love it because it still has that big bulky feel of my old 35mm.

Most people these days are all about convenience.  They prefer the palm sized snapshot matchbox cameras with only two or three buttons.  Heck, even cell phones have cameras now.  But not me.  I’ll take my two handed SLR and a tripod anyday!  There’s just something about it.  Susan Littlefield knows what I’m talking about.

Susan was an office manager for her local cable company for 32 years.  Always the first into work each day, she went into the kitchen to make the morning coffee when she slipped on a spill on the floor one day.  She fell forward and hit her head on the sink and was knocked unconscious for six hours.  This resulted in a brain injury causing Susan to have to retire from her job exactly 32 years from her date of hire.  Despite her family taking a financial hit by now having to rely on only the income of her husband, Susan also suffered from speech problems, depression, and memory loss.

Susan’s husband presented her with a DSLR camera one Christmas, but mastering photo taking was not an easy process for her.  Three major issues that Susan still deals with because of the accident are short term memory loss, difficulty multi-tasking, and hardships with trying to learn new things.  Susan would dutifully sit for hours listening to CD’s on camera operation, lighting, settings, focus, etc. only to forget everything when she picked up the camera.  Obviously, Susan becomes frustrated easily but fell in love with the camera despite all the difficulties.  It was the advice of her youngest son which led to a new hobby.  Her son suggested that she photograph the miniature 1/2 inch people from her husband’s model railroad.

She began with sight gags: a man fighting waves in a Cherrio raft or hikers climbing boulders of dog kibble.  Soon, she began adding witty puns to the photographs.  After posting several photographs at www.jpgmagazine.com, someone commented that Susan should put her photographs in a book.  Susan was pointed in the direction of Lulu and her book, It Doesn’t Hurt to Laugh, was born.

The book is a collection of 34 of Susan’s best snapshots. At first glance, you definitely appreciate Susan’s clever photos of “little people” interacting with large everyday objects like spools of thread and fruit, but you might miss the tongue-in-cheek play on words that accompany each photo.  There are often two or three puns in each phrase, some more obvious than others, such as a couple standing between a few giant mushrooms with the caption, “After a hallucinogenic trip through the wood, Psylla sighs, “been fun, Gus.”  My favorite is of a few people seated on top of one of those cans of air used to clean your keyboard, riding “Can A Da Air.”

The sharpness and clarity of each picture is very in-depth.  While Susan calls herself a novice with the camera, it is obvious that she applies great care and attention to detail and lighting when shooting her subject matter.  The railroad people also seem to be naturally reacting to what is taking place in the photo, such as a man hunched over in one photo and pulling a rope attached to a large clam shell.  He has “pulled a muscle.”

Another of my favorites is not even available in the book, but was posted to the JPG Magazine website by Susan on New Years Day.

Jim and Susan spent New Year’s Eve in the darkroom but nothing ever developed.

Another, published to the site late last year, pretty much sums up my thoughts on Susan’s hobby and her book.

Sam strived to take unique and different photographs; this time he was really on a roll.

Susan Littlefield is definitely on a roll!  Despite JPG Magazine falling on hard times and shutting down just 5 days ago, I know there is a photographic outlet somewhere out there just waiting for Susan’s talent.  Whether it be greeting cards or morale boosting posters for office walls, Susan has potential to accomplish great things.  Her Lulu book has barely scratched the surface!

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Four years ago while on vacation, I passed by one of those pottery painting places.  It was something I had never done before, and two close friends agreed to go inside with me.  We decided to each paint a platter and give all three to a friend to hang on their dining room wall.  My two friends painted abstract designs: swirls and dots and shapes and colors.  I painted a lake and a tree with mountains in the background.  My friends convinced me that I was pretty good at painting, so I made a trip to a craft store when I returned home.  I purchased some canvases, acrylic paint, and brushes, and a new hobby was born.

I only painted one 11 x14 painting that year, taking almost 6 months to meticulously add layers and layers of color and detail to it.  The following year I painted 4 paintings which  became birthday and Christmas gifts for family.  A coworker then commissioned me to do two paintings for her kitchen.  The next year I achieved eight various sized paintings which again became gifts for others.  Several hang in both my mother and sister’s homes today.  Over the past four years, painting became a very relaxing hobby for me in between my writing, and offered me a great sense of accomplishment.  So, when artist Gil Jawetz emailed me directly asking if I would be interested in reviewing a book of his art, I immediately said yes without even looking at the Lulu preview first.  And I can proudly say, I was not disappointed!

His book, Human(e) Beings, is a collections of paintings from three shows.  The first section is called “Blues”, and depicts themes of New Orleans musicians and jazz halls.  Although Jawetz paints with oil, his style is not too heavily detailed and does leave a lot of depiction up to the eyes of the viewer.  For instance, there is one painting called Preservation Hall which shows a small band made up of a piano player, a few brass players, and a percussionist in a small wooden room with a white light hanging over head.  The wooden planks making up the walls are just quick brush strokes of brown and tan.  The musicians’ legs and chairs fade away to silhouette, completely leaving it up to the eyes to know what shapes are there outside the light.  And yet, Jawetz’s attention to detail such as the shine of the light on their faces, or the drummer looking right at you, even a window in the background with a twinkle of light provide just enough substance to the painting to make you stop and commit it to memory.  I have.

The same goes for another painting of blues favorite Lead Belly.  Jawetz has not painted him with any instrument although the man could play about seven different ones from piano to guitar to accordion.  It is a simple bust painting of black and white for his tux, and yet the heavy shading and highlighting in the face are enough to show the life lines of this man and tell his story.  You don’t need to see the arm of a twelve string to know this man played the blues.

The second section is called “Big Dogs,” and presents 15 paintings of man’s best friend.  Each is a close up perspective from the dog’s point of view, and if you are an animal lover then every single one of these will bring a smile to your face.  Gil again focuses his detail on giving the dogs’ face superb attention.  The backgrounds are usually just a swirl of colors from green and blue to represent grass and sky, to just a whirl wind of tints of blue to depict night.  Gil used photographs of beloved pets for inspiration and the lively personalities of dogs definitely shines through.  My favorite in this section is of four dogs and a bird.  You can see this painting for yourself on Gil’s website.

The last section of the book, “Human(e) Beings,” brings humans and pets together.  None of these are traditional portraits of a person with a dog or cat posing for a photo.  From a lady in a red evening gown sleeping on a white mattress with a white dog lying next to her, to a dog and a tennis ball and only the leg of his owner showing, there is a nice balance of angles from both the human and the animal eye.  One painting is done completely in shades of white and blue and is of a lady and her dog lying on the sofa watching TV.  The television is not even in the painting, but the glow of the TV set on their faces is enough for the person looking at the painting to know exactly what is being depicted.

With the holidays fast approaching, I highly recommend this collection as a gift for the art enthusiast or animal lover.  If you are like me and appreciate brilliant art or photography, then Human(e) Beings would also make a nice coffee table book for your collection.  Visit Gil on the web to see more of his work or to contact him about commissioned pieces of work.

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