Day 12: April 11, 2013 6:45am in the Studio

I’m letting the sun streak my face through the blinds. It’s a winter, blue sky day, and I just love having the sun bounce off the river. I’m going to miss having this river to stare at every day.

Eamon left yesterday morning after breakfast, and it made me quite sad. He was an unexpected gift of our trip. Both Todd and I had him sign his books that we bought from the bookstore. We skedaddled in there Monday, just in time to snatch up two copies. When Eamon left this morning, I missed him. He’s got these troublemaker eyes and a great laugh. He’s the kind of man and poet you hope to have the pleasure of knowing for a good long time, someone who you can meet at the pub and exchange stories. Well, perhaps we’ll make it through Poughkeepsie or western Ireland one of these days.

I spent the morning slogging through work study—only 4 more hours to squeeze in. I don’t want to lose the momentum of writing and reading today, but if I get it done, I’ll be free for my (gulp) last day.

Yesterday afternoon and evening I really immersed myself in the history of the Chicago stockyards and the surrounding community. It’s interesting how much you don’t know about your own city and family. Finally, at the end of the day, my research paid off with a decent poem. Eamon suggested that I contemplate making most of my poems prose poems; any new poems that I write are saved as both verse and prose, so that I can make up my mind later.

Yesterday evening was the next slide night, so at 8pm we went down to the dining hall to hear the next 10 people give presentations on their work. Some painters, sculptors, printmakers, mixed-media. Like last week, I enjoyed seeing the variety and getting familiar with the work of people we’ve been talking with at meals.

Tonight are Open Studios, so we can walk around and see everyone’s work in their studios. I’m really looking forward to seeing the variety of colors and styles. The once white rooms coming alive.

Today I have a list of poems I will try to write and a pile of books that I might begin to sift through. It’ll be a busy day. Time to go be a poet.

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.