Nest Book

My friend, Shiela Hale, artist and thinker extraordinaire, just won first prize at the Contemporary Confrontations exhibition at Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, New York. Her piece, "Nest Book I," invites the fascinated viewer into its nest of altered text. I love the way Shiela's mind gathers and reshapes elements from nature and language into something stunning and meaningful. Quoted in The Record-Review, Shiela says "Nature and culture are frequently presented as opposing forces. I am questioning that adversarial relationship and suggesting the possibility of a mutually enhancing alternative."

The exhibit runs through February 22, 2009. Over 800 artists entered the competition. 126 were chosen. Nan Rosenthal, former senior consultant for modern and contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was the juror. Congratulations, Shiela!

For more information on Shiela and her work, click here: Shiela Hale.

The photo was taken last week at the museum. Looking through the lens made me admire the assemblage even more.

Stirring the Mirror Signing at Katonah Fall Festival

For those of you in the area, please join me for a book signing at Awakenings during the Katonah Fall Festival and Street Fair this Saturday, September 29th. I'll be there, pen in hand, with copies of my new book, Stirring the Mirror, from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM, possibly later if the crowds are promising. Awakenings is at 215 Katonah Avenue. I'll have copies of my first book, Teaching Bones to Fly, also from Bitter Oleander Press, available as well. Scroll down to the August 13th entry for a photo of the cover and blurbs for Stirring the Mirror.

Here's an excerpt from "Giving Away Bones," a prose poem in Stirring the Mirror:

GIVING AWAY BONES

I stood at the corner giving away my bones. My ribs went to the little girl who needed a cage for her ferret. My toe bones went to a gambler to replace his unlucky dice. My spine went home coiled around the neck of a snake charmer. As I plucked out each one, I felt delightfully emptier, translucent as breath. I simply stepped out of my ivory corset.

The only piece I had trouble leaving was my skull. It stared at me with cavernous sockets like twin black wells. I appreciated the way it had cradled my brain, holding my thoughts in its bowl. But at last I kissed its brow, placing it on the desk of an artist, something to hold her bouquet of paintbrushes.

You might think my organs were left lonely and cold, but they were already gone by then -- untangled, shriveled by sun, then pinkish-gray dust blown away on the wind. Inhaled by passing clouds. All that remained of me was something like a peeled mirror, a human image without dimension, distilled to particles of light. Like a paper doll, I turned sideways and disappeared....

(This piece first appeared in The Bitter Oleander, then in No Boundaries: Prose Poems by 24 American Poets, an anthology from Tupelo Press edited by Ray Gonzalez, 2003.)

I look forward to seeing you at the Fall Festival!