Day 11: Wednesday, April 10, 2013 6:35am in the Studio

Another rainy gray day, but there is no texture in the sky this morning. Just one long sky of gray. The river is slightly higher this morning and running quicker. Another good day for staying inside and getting the work done.

Yesterday morning started out quite productive with a bit of reading in the City of the Century book Todd loaned me. There’s a chapter in it about the stockyards and the local area of Chicago where my Strohmaier side of the family rooted upon first arriving in Chicago. Then, it was off to the Life Drawing Studio to do some writing on the studio with a male model in it. Steve is quite different from Chelsea, in that he asks the artists about what poses they want, making sure that they work for everyone. There’s a different kind of respect between them. There were short poses, long poses, and continually moving poses. I wrote and wrote and wrote. In the end, I found myself writing about the vulnerability of the human body and how these sessions bring in both the strength and the weakness.

Off and on throughout the day, I kept doing research on the New City neighborhood that surrounded the Stockyards from the end of the 1800s to the mid 1900s. Four generations of the family went through the Canaryville section of the neighborhood. At the heart of the experience lies St. Gabriel’s church. I know that my great-great-grandmother Katherine’s funeral mass was there, her son Charles and wife Irene must have attended the church, their daughter (my grandmother) Theresa married Larry there, and my mom was baptized there. There must be even more connections with the church than the few annotations I’ve found.

The Stockyards were a horrible place, and I’m not saying that just because I’m vegan. By all accounts the smells and sounds permeated the neighborhoods, polluting the air and water. This was the poorest area of the city, though it seems that there were different levels of living. Canaryville had small houses, and the neighborhood was both German and Irish Catholic. The Back of the Yards section of New Town, more to the west of the stockyards were mostly Eastern European—as was portrayed in The Jungle.

I keep thinking about my great-great-grandpa Charles straight off the boat from Germany. How did he make his journey to Chicago? When did he root down in Chicago? In the 1910 census his occupation is listed as a baker. Did he escape the stockyards upon arrival, or did he do both? Were they in the neighborhood during the 1904 workers strike? So many questions. After digging into Missouri quite a bit, it’s fun to start digging further into the Chicago roots.

Yesterday afternoon, as I mentioned in my previous post, was a Sound of Music pilgrimage, in a way, the bookend to my other experience in Austria in April 1995. Kirsteen and I had a lovely afternoon together, and I am so grateful that she was willing and excited to take the afternoon road trip. We left around 2 and it only took us about a half hour to get there. Stowe looked fairly cute, but touristy cute—the town clearly has money for preserving the old houses and historical feel. So, we drop straight up to the Trapp Family Lodge. A quick browse through the gift shop left my mouth watering, so I thought it best to leave purchases until after the tour.

 View from the delibakery

 Trapp Family Lodge

We went to the lodge’s delibakery for some hot drinks and desserts. After being served by one of the most untalkative, uncommunicative barristas, we took our tea, coffee, and linzertorte (Kirsteen) out to the brisk but delightful outdoor porch. With a view of the Green Mountains and the shifting clouds, we chatted about our international experiences (hers in Brazil, mine in South Africa) and our writing. As I said to her later, there’s nothing like a beverage with a view!

The tour wasn’t quite what we were expecting. We basically sat in a downstairs room for an hour and a half. The lecture was great, the short film was interesting, but there wasn’t really any walking around except a brief foray into the upstairs lounge to see some pictures. The Lodge is still run by the family, and at the end of the tour, one of the grandchildren came out to answer a few questions. He was fresh from a cross country ski, but he spoke quite animatedly about the family history and how they try to have a VTOD (von Trapp on duty) at the Lodge at all times.

What a legacy. His grandparents, Georg and Maria, were even more gutsy than the film portrays. Georg basically refusing to sing at Hitler’s birthday part—to Hitler’s face. The time frame of their story is lengthier than the film suggests, and by the time they arrive in America, Georg and Maria have three new children. With ten children to feed, they toured the US singing and eventually bought a farm and settled in Stowe, Vermont. It’s quite a story. Outside the lodge is the family graveyard where Georg, Maria, and several of their children are buried.

The hills are alive and slightly off tune

Georg and Maria's graves in the family graveyard

Kirsteen and I made our way back to the VSC just in time for dinner. I was too excited from the day to do anything but play with the day’s photos and do a little bit of research. I skipped the visiting artist’s sculpture talk completely. Today should be a busy day of morning work-study and afternoon writing. Eamon leaves today, so I will accost him at breakfast to sign my book. Well, I could ramble on and on, but the clock is ticking away to breakfast.

Remember, the hills were/are/always will be alive with the sound of music…

Day 10: Tuesday, April 9, 2013, 6:40am in the Studio

The forecast looks to be correct this morning. The ground is wet from a good rain, and the clouds rolling in look like they mean business. There will be rain everyday for the remainder of our time here, which means more reason to stay in the studio and write. Let’s hope it at least reaches the forecasted 50F as well. We’re starting to risk not wearing our winter jackets. Optimism or foolhardiness? Both apply at various times of day. 

 Yesterday was the kind of productive Monday that you don’t every expect or count on. I’m going to give Eamon some credit for putting a spring in my poetic step, driving me back to the studio again and again. I spent the morning doing work-study and the afternoon slogging away on revisions.

Eamon offered some ideas about titling poems, voice of characters, and styles of poems. Since I already felt myself needing to work on those, his suggestions hit the mark. I churned out ten revisions at least, tacking up the new versions on to my corkboard for positive reinforcement!

It’s growing into a more cohesive manuscript, and I might even find myself laying them out by Friday, seeing how they talk together when side by side. I made a list last night of all the poems I need to write this week to round out some of the empty spaces in the narrative. I’ll have to think/imagine some new geographies and cultures for these poems.

I rearranged my cork board yesterday to give myself more room for revised poems. I also wanted to put up titles for the poems so that I could see where the gaps lie. Time to hit the Strohmaier-Eisen line a bit harder. I did manage to revise a poem about Karl, the German baker, yesterday. It’s now time to hit the Dutch and the Irish sides a bit harder. The Scottish Ewings have gotten some good attention, as they are so well-documented. Time to get imaginative.

Yesterday after dinner, I ran back to the studio for an hour to finish the cork board and work on the German baker poem. At 8pm the new visiting artist, Ann Pibal, gave a slide talk about her work. Like Eamon did for us writers, the visiting painter will make the rounds to various studios over the next few days to offer insight and guidance for any who may need it. Her work was not quite my cup of tea, or rather, it didn’t move me. Nice colors, cool designs, but didn’t wow me. I liked more of her recent works, where you could see messy brushstrokes, not just clean lines.

Tonight the new visiting sculptor will give a slide talk, which will also be interesting. That’s not the highlight of my day today. Today, I start off with an hour in the Life Drawing Studio. There is a male model today, and I’ve heard that his style is significantly different from the female model. Then, it’s cramming in a few hours of writing, reading, and revision, so that after lunch I am ready for a road trip.

The Von Trapp family of Sound of Music fame settled in Stowe, Vermont, which is about 30 minutes from here. A fellow writer, Kirsteen, and I were talking at lunch yesterday, and she offered a little road trip if I wanted to visit Stowe. She is writing an essay about the poet Elizabeth Bishop’s residency at Yaddo and the various entertainments (ie going to the racetrack and getting drunk) that she experienced—instead of writing. So, Kirsteen was looking for a little entertainment of her own as comparison. I looked up the ski resort the Von Trapp family runs, and lo and behold there is a tour today. So, we will head out after lunch to head to Stowe and take this tour. I’m giddy with excitement, and I’ve realized almost 18 years ago to the day, I was traveling around Europe and visited Salzurg, Austria and took the Sound of Music  tour. It’s fated… There better be a gift shop… and some kitsch.

Well, it’s time to post and head to breakfast. Lots to do today. Four days to go. Be well.

Day 9: Monday, April 8, 2013, 6:35am in the Studio

As Todd and I were walking to the studio this morning, the sky layered with clouds and light from the sun rising behind them, we both relished the beauty of the mountains in the distance. Todd said, “Maybe it’s the Irish reaction in me, but I feel like I’m already mourning the loss of this place.” So it begins.

5 more days of precious studio time. Every minute in the studio will count this week. It will be a race with ourselves to get as much done as we can, knowing we won’t get it all done.

Yesterday, Sunday, was a mixture of productiveness and practicality. Only two meals: brunch and dinner, so that rearranged the day a bit. In the morning after breakfast, I spent time in the library with the gas fireplace, letting the warm heat dry my hair, reading two books I brought with me, Into Such Holes…, which I wrote about yesterday, and Late Wife by Claudia Emerson. The various structures of their narratives give me ideas for my own, and the simplicity in which they write also appeals to me.

After a few hours, it was time for my conference with Eamon in the library. He strolled in and we enjoyed an hour conversation about my genealogy manuscript and the twelve poems that he read. He offered such thoughtful suggestions and genuine encouragement for my project. He gave me some fine detail edits about specific words and lines, but he also looked at the project as a whole, giving me ideas about structure (of the individual poems and the manuscript) and further writing. Todd has given and continues to give great feedback, as have quite a few other poet friends, but it was pivotal for me to get insight from Eamon and in this space. I felt light as air after that conference.

I came down to earth quickly with a rumbling stomach, so I inhaled my leftover Chinese food and waited for Todd to finish with his artistic conversation with Connie. Then, it was time for the practical: laundry. We rolled our suitcase full of clothes to the Laundromat, and rehashed our day to the tune of the spin cycle and tumbling clothes. We attempted a long walk as the day was warmer than usual, but spitting rain drove us back into the world of washing.

After a dinner of BBQ ribs and BBQ tempeh, it was time to cram for the evening’s reading. Six of us resident writers were reading from our various projects in front of the rest of the residents—much like the artist slides we saw last Wednesday night. The lineup included a short story, a tv pilot, and four eclectic poetry sets. Kat, the screenwriter, gave a few of us parts to read, so that was quite fun. I really enjoyed reading to these new friends, to hearing their reactions afterwards. Many of them don’t hear poetry often, so they come to the reading fresh, but they are also highly engaged as artists of different mediums. So, an unusually exciting reading. 

We were too excited after the reading, so Eamon, Scott (another resident poet), Todd, and I went to the one pub open in the town for a celebratory drink. We chatted about poetry and our reading, Poetry itself, and our various projects and histories. It was a perfect cap to the day. Such good conversations of an evening really set the tone for work. And here I am, taking these last five days by the horn and having my way with them.

Day 8: April 7, 2013, 8:15am in the Studio

A nice slow start to the Sunday with alarms going off and being ignored. There are only two meals on Sunday: 10am brunch and 5pm dinner. It’s hard to wake up early and then wait so long for breakfast, but two hours I can do. It’s a wet day here in Johnson, and with luck, we’ll inch up to 50F today, fingers crossed. The entire next week says it will be overcast, rainy, and around 50F. We’ll leave long before the sunny spring days and energetic flowering. At least we’ll be able to say we experienced a true Vermont “mud season.”

Yesterday morning took an unexpected turn, as Connie, one of the artist’s we’ve been chatting with throughout the week, invited Todd and I individually into her studios to talk about art. We taught her the word ekphrastic, and she’s been teaching it to all the other artists. Since Todd and I told her that we were poets who found inspiration in art and wrote about art (ie ekphrastic poets), she decided that we needed to talk more in depth together. So, I spent two hours with Connie yesterday morning, and Todd will visit her today. We sat in her studio talking about the process of her art, the various tools she uses, her motivations and techniques. We shared stories about our art, the impetus for individual pieces, the narratives behind and in them, and what excites us about our projects. Two hours very well spent, indeed. She’s a talented poet out of Maine, and you should check out her work here: www.conniehayes.com.

I spent most of the day yesterday revising poems that I’d written this week. Tightening them up, rearranging them, and then printing and tacking them on to my corkboard so that I see the progress. There are many books I want to read this week, and I’ve only scratched the surface. Next week, I’m sure, will be an intensely focused one—not that this week wasn’t. Most everyone else here is only at the end of week 1 with 3 more to go, but we’re now over half way through our residency.

Todd and I walked to the convenience store to stock up on snacks, and I dragged him into the Vermont gift store with maple syrup in any variety you want: liquid, hardened into candy, chocolate, nuts, etc. I see myself raiding this store before our departure. I found some Maureen-friendly chocolate in there, so I stocked up in order to have some kind of dessert with everyone else at meals.

After dinner, we decided to go out in one of the two bar/restaurants in town with some of our new artist friends. We all bee-lined to our studios for two hours of work, then at 9pm we all went and sat in the bar without karaoke. We ordered drinks, tried to tune out the Final Four basketball game on all four tvs in the small place, and told stories: how did we meet our partners, where would we like to travel, how did we find ourselves here, stuff about our art. Two hours flew by as we talked and laughed. We’ve all been super studious, so it was the first night “out” for all of us.

Now, it’s Sunday, the day of my individual conference with Eamon, laundry day, and our reading at 7pm. A full day even without the writing. I have a few poems to write and a few books to read. Perhaps just a little Game of Thrones reading to get me started… Then, I’ll return to the terribly sad but beautiful poetry book, Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes are Pierced. A little balance in my reading list.

Happy Sunday all and enjoy the day!

p.s. I took not one single photograph yesterday. Egads!