'Three Rivers' - by Donald G. Redman

Painting by Tami Curtis

Three Rivers
by Donald G. Redman

She fell in love years before.
Recently, she has only
quiet.
Sitting by the water's edge,
The tower and clock in the background,
Her love comes,
Beautiful like the storm.
Music and time and color collided on canvas.
She's painting a dream.
Physically,
Spiritually,
She remembers every stroke.





‘Three Rivers' was created by repurposing an article by Sarah Bonnette in the north shore editions of the Times-Picayune featuring the artist Tami Curtis. The poem is an experiment in blackout poetry inspired by Austin Kleon




Copyright 2014 Donald G. Redman. All rights reserved.

'Blindsided'

Blindsided

by Donald G. Redman

Mary Jane kisses me in traffic.

Long.

I hurry to exit the vehicle

And shyly began to apologize.

“I just … you …”

She was amused.

I had been standing

As a rodent

On the side of the road.

She smiled

Slightly

And told me that it would be best

If I just got back

in the car.

I was nervous

But my mouth

So glad.

Blindsided is a “blackout” poem, created by blacking out large swaths of words in a newspaper article while preserving others to create poetry.

The original article appeared in the Slidell community section of the Times-Picayune. It was a columnist’s recounting of an earlier Halloween experience when she had dressed in costume as one of three blind mice and caused an auto accident. It contained a lot of references to being blind and being angry. At first, that’s the direction I took while trying to cobble together a poem. The name Mary Jane (as in the traditional Halloween candy) was a keeper from the start.

First stab:

Mary Jane,

dressed in black.

Dark Glasses.

Blind

And extremely heavy….

Second attempt:

Mary Jane kisses me

And two of my closest friends …

OK, that left me with nowhere to go.

Third try (I return to the black dress):

Mary Jane

Dressed in black.

Amusing and clever.

Blind and extremely heavy,

I did not want to miss the princess.

Too much of a hurry,

I walk up

And began to apologize.

“I am blind.”

She was not amused.

I summoned the dark for an eternity….

Dreadful!

So another attempt… back to the kisses:

Mary Jane Kisses me.

That is not amusing.

I did not want to.

I apologize.

She is not amused.

She summoned the dark.

She’s mad.

I think she’s going to

Cut off

My mouth…

Nope. Worse than dreadful.

Again …

Mary Jane kisses me.

That is not my idea of fun …

Scratch.

And then I finally let go of the angry aspects of the story and embraced the kiss and the nervous tension and the sensual Mary Jane. The title, Blindsided, pays homage to the three blind mice of the original article, while describing the unexpected passionate kiss from Mary Jane.

The idea of blackout newspaper poetry comes from poet Austin Kleon.

'August White' - Blackout Poetry Experiment

AUGUST WHITE

by Cheryl Backes

Thrill seekers came here.

Surrendering to a strange land,

Hiking boots and layered in fleeces far

from home

White-knuckled drive up spiraling

switchbacks in swirling snow.

A weird experience in August.

Enchanted and ethereal, forbidding

and intimidating –

Ready to fall on you at any time.

“You’ll fall in love, you will.”

I had never given much thought.

A luminous smile, offering a comforting

pat on my shoulder.

“Nothin to stress over darling.”

I shivered with relief,

Stacked between my chowder and cold

beer

Like a deck of cards.

Up the mountain where the sheep

huddled against one another for acres, I

saw her dressed as a fairy godmother,

A celestial white bathed in golden light.

Forces of nature; good for the soul.

We feel alive.

Cheryl Backes wrote August White in response to my invitation to my friends to create poetry from newspaper articles by deleting or blacking out filler words while leaving some words and phrases untouched, yet connected poetically.

The source of inspiration for this technique, which I’ve dubbed “blackout poetry,” Comes from Texas-based poet/writer/illustrator Austin Kleon. I write about Kleon’s technique here.

Cheryl says she’d be amiss if she didn’t give credit to the author of the article, Joe Drape of The New York Times. “All of these beautiful phrases were penned by him,” she says.

Indeed, but Cheryl’s repurposing of Drape’s words has created a beauty of its own.

Copyright 2014 Cheryl Backes. All Rights Reserved.

'Blackout Poetry,' Making Poetry From Newspaper Articles

My poem Monster Mash (printed below) was inspired by employing a unique technique I first heard about after viewing a video profile of Austin Kelon, a Texas-based poet, writer and illustrator.

Stumped by writer's block, Kleon created an entire book’s worth of poetry while scouring the newspaper for words he could craft into his own.

After taking a hiatus from writing following college, Kleon, then working by day as a web designer, eventually returned to composing prose and poetry and quickly discovered that writing the next Great American Novel was not going to be as easy as he had envisioned.

His words had left him, he said in a 2010 interview with the Poetry Foundation. He was stymied by writer’s block.

“I thought I just don’t have any words,” he said. “I kinda looked over at the recycle bin next to my desk and it was piled full of newspapers. I thought, I don’t have any words and right over there are millions of them.”

With black marker in hand, Kleon began “deleting words from the paper and letting some just float there.”

Austin Kleon's collection of
"blackout poetry."

The results were some stunning pieces of poetry, though Kleon didn’t recognize it as such at first.

He wasn’t trying to create poetry, rather he thought of it was a writing exercise to prime the pump of creativity that would lead to “bigger writing,” like a short story, or a novel or even a comic strip. It was his wife who convinced him that he was actually creating textual art and poetry from the newspaper articles.

Kleon began focusing his spare time on the poetry project which was later made into a book, Newspaper Blackout, a collection of his newspaper poetry. He wrote the entire book while scouring newspaper articles during daily commutes on the bus to and from work and in the basement at the office during lunch breaks.

He says he treats the newspaper like a blank canvas and scans articles like a word search puzzle, looking for words and phrases that are eventually shaped into a poem. He approaches each article/poem differently, either totally transforming the article into an unrecognizable piece of poetry or twisting the article to mean something entirely different.

The art, he says, comes from transforming news articles into pieces of poetry that resonate with personal meaning.

Says Kleon: “Transforming this non-fictional journalistic artifact, taking that and turning it into something very personal that’s mine that I feel could have come out of me … that’s the real joy.”

Making Monster Mash

The idea of testing out Kleon’s method for creating poetry has been lying dormant for several years, but on a whim one recent Sunday morning, I scooped up the freebie newspaper off the driveway and brought it inside to attempt to create poetry from a news article.

I scanned the front page of the community section and was immediately arrested by the lede: “It’s all in the accessories; tiaras, wands, wigs, witches hats, capes and pirate eye patches.”

Glancing over the article, I saw words like monster, anger, beauty queens, parade and more. I knew I had struck gold.

First, I started by simply underlying words and phrases of interest and began compiling in my head some sort of sense of the various words. They soon branched out in a multitude of directions so I began jotting them down.

My original list of words as I tried to make order of the imagery

Actually, the article was quite colorful and provided a ton of images. Almost too many; it was hard to focus on just one thread until suddenly a voice came through the clutter. The voice of an erstwhile beauty queen whose superficiality belies the hurt, anger and loneliness that resides inside. Miss Cupcake – all smiles outside but an angry monster beneath the tiara. But not really a monster – just a regular person hurt and alone and desperate for human contact.  

The result is Monster Mash.

Monster Mash

By Donald G. Redman

Tiaras, wands

And eye patches.

I am our monster.

Anger at a young age;

Hours a day,

Eating.

Please call.

Monster masks
for Beauty Queens.

A regal parade
led by

Miss Cupcake,

Riding full-face to the zoo.

Call the Monster.

Call.

Not too shabby for a first attempt. I found the exercise quite stimulating and engaging and look forward to creating more "blackout poetry." I strongly encourage you to give it a try, too.

Austin Kleon is the New York Times bestselling author of three illustrated books: Steal Like An Artist, a manifesto for creativity in the digital age; Show Your Work! a guide to sharing creativity and getting discovered; and Newspaper Blackout,  a collection of poetry made by redacting words from newspaper articles with a permanent marker.

In previous lives, he worked as a librarian, a web designer, and an advertising copywriter.

Learn more about Kleon on his website.

View the 2010 Poetry Foundation video interview here.

Monster Mash, copyright 2014 Donald G. Redman. All rights reserved.

Looking For Dad, Finding A Killer

A Review of The Most Dangerous Animal of All

by Don Redman

Susan Mustafa’s The Most Dangerous Animal of All, a collaborative effort with Gary L. Stewart, defies all labels – part true crime, part memoir, part mystery, part inspirational – but in toto, it’s a very compelling book.

The subtitle gives a clue to the book’s central premise: “Searching for My Father and Finding the Zodiac Killer,” and the person searching for his father is Gary Stewart, Mustafa’s collaborator. Stewart was adopted into a loving family when he was only three months old, but his world was turned upside down when, at the age of 39, he received a phone call from a woman claiming to be his biological mother.

And so Stewart’s journey begins as he sets out from south Louisiana to San Francisco to reconnect with his biological mother, hoping to learn about the circumstances that led to her decision to offer him up for adoption, and to hopefully acquire details about his biological father.

As American novelist James Baldwin once said, “Be careful what you set your heart upon – for surely it will be yours.”

What begins as a feel-good reunion between son and mother, soon devolves into an obsessive pursuit for the truth and a descent into near despair. 

It’s a tough balancing act for Mustafa, who must make sense of bundles of seemingly unrelated threads: underage marriage; an abandoned baby; a ruthless biological father; a happy reunion with biological mother; police cover-up; family secrets; a loving adoptive family; and cold-blooded murder. To say the least, this is not your typical true crime book.

But it wasn’t supposed to be a true crime book. Not in the beginning.

Mustafa’s masterful retelling of the events, based in part on Stewart’s journals and records and on her own meticulous research, weaves for us a full, rich and detailed kesi upon which every aspect of Stewart’s life is on full display: the good, the bad and the ugly.


Stewart is to be commended for opening his life up so completely, and it is not easy not to wince as he speaks frankly about his biological parent’s dubious past, nor is it easy to witness the unfolding of his suppressed but lingering pain of abandonment and rejection. But his dogged determination to expose the truth may have uncovered the real identity of the serial killer known as the Zodiac, Earl Van Best, Jr. – his father.

Earl Van Best Jr. next to police sktch of the Zodiac killer

The Zodiac serial killer is believed to have killed five people in northern California between December 1968 and October 1969 and gained notoriety by mocking the police by writing several letters to San Francisco Bay Area newspapers boasting of the slayings. These letters included four codes or ciphers in which the killer claimed also contained his identity. Of the four cryptograms sent, only one has been definitively solved, but not his identity.

 The Zodiac claimed to have killed as many as 37 people, but police have been able to positively pin only five murders on him. While the case remains open in various jurisdictions, the case is cold and remains a low priority.

Gary Stewart appeared at one point to have been very close to convincing the San Francisco Police Department to actively pursue his father as a plausible candidate as the Zodiac, but for mysterious reasons, the investigation into Earl Van Best, Jr. was shut down without explanation or fanfare. Potentially at the heart of the sudden dismissal may be an attempt by unseen hands to stifle the investigation to prevent possible embarrassment to one of SFPD’s favorite sons, the late Rotea Gilford, who had married Van Best’s ex-wife (and Stewart's mother). Stewart and Mustafa muse that it is possible that Gilford’s friends on the police force wanted to protect Gilford’s legacy; to protect him from forever being tied to the Zodiac killer.

Employing Mustafa’s contacts in the world of forensic science, Stewart has compiled very credible evidence and makes an impressive argument that his biological father was indeed the Zodiac killer. He even finds what past decoders never could uncover: the hidden name of the killer within the cipher – Earl Van Best Jr.

The research and documentation aside, what gives the book a real heart and soul is Stewart’s personal story: his relationship with his own son and his adoptive parents; his topsy-turvy relationship with his biological mother; his disastrous search for his half-brother and half-sister; his spiritual journey; and the emotionally draining but dogged chase after a ghost … a ghost that was alternately a father and a drunk and a monster. And finally, it’s about making peace with the past, whatever that may have been.

Regardless how the facts may play in the future, whether Stewart’s research was correct or not, the book is a very compelling read and a deep and personal examination of one man’s soul.

Susan Mustafa talks about her book, “The Most Dangerous Animal of All.”

Read our interview with Susan here.

An Interview with ‘Radium Girls’ Playwright, D.W. Gregory

By Don Redman

D.W. Gregory grew up in Pennsylvania in a family of Irish Catholics and German Lutherans _- “the Irish won out in the religion department, and the Germans in the culinary department,” she says.

D.W. Gregory

Photo by:

Claire Newman-Williams

During her formative years she became fascinated with the Algonquin Roundtable – a renowned group of writers, critics, actors and wags in the 1920s who met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel in New York to trade lively banter. She was particularly drawn to writer and drama critic George S. Kaufman, whose notable works include Of Thee I Sing – earning the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to a musical – and the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, You Can’t Take It With You.

“I thought it would be really cool to be a theatre critic in the 20s,” says Gregory. “Since I couldn't engineer that career choice I went into journalism as a business reporter and worked in daily newspapers for a number of years.”

She says she drifted into playwriting because she “didn't have enough nerve to be an actress. So I get to play all the parts at the keyboard.”

Gregory began her career path as a playwright first by attending workshops and “writing terrible one-acts with no real point.”

“That went on for a few years,” she said, “and then one day something clicked and I wrote a children's play that won a contest and a 10-minute play that eventually was a finalist for the Heideman Award at Actors Theatre of Louisville.  This proved encouraging and I kept on writing plays.”

Drawing on her working-class roots, Gregory’s plays, whether comedies or dramas, often explore the disconnect between the dream and reality of American blue-collar experience. That’s what attracted her to the Radium Girls when she read about the real-life events in a newspaper article.

“What interested me about the story,” she says, “was the idea that you could be on the job, at work, just doing the job you were instructed to do and end up with a horrible disease -- I found it morbidly fascinating and as I dug into the story it became apparent that there were incredible parallels between that story and the story of big tobacco, big Pharma, and myriad other cases of product liability.”

Working from a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, Gregory developed the play at Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey.

“The original production involved the associate artistic director of the theatre,” she recalls. “I did not choose him, he just stepped into the job, but we worked together in casting -- which is really fun. Lots of actors coming in and reading the parts. I was amazed at how hard they worked to prepare. Before we got to that point, though, the play went through a series of readings and a workshop.”

The play premiered at Playwrights Theatre in 2000 and was named the Best New Play of the 1999-2000 season by the Newark Star-Ledger.

 Nearly 15 years later since writing Radium Girls, what still stays with her?

“How young they were,” she says, “how trusting, and what a horrible betrayal it was, that they were poisoned and then the company dragged its feet in taking its responsibility.”

Gregory’s approach to writing a play varies, depending on the subject: “Each play is different. Radium Girls took a lot of research, and I didn't start out with an outline so much as a list of events I knew had to be in the play. I'm writing one now that I outlined in detail. Some I start just by writing scenes and letting the characters talk.”

She says because of her regular job, she usually has to write in bunches.

“I'm a binge writer,” Gregory says. “Since I have a day job I can't put in more than an hour or two during the weekdays. When I'm working on a play I like to hole up in my office on a long weekend and crank out about 50 pages in three days.”

 Juggling multiple writing projects, Gregory’s weekends are undoubtedly busy.

“I have a couple things in development,” she says. “One is a black comedy about a young couple who move into their dream house, only to discover the new neighborhood is being stalked by a serial sniper.”

D.W. Gregory writes in a variety of styles and genres, from historical drama to screwball comedy, but a recurring theme is the exploration of political issues through a personal lens. The New York Times called her “a playwright with a talent to enlighten and provoke” for her most produced play, Radium Girls, about dialpainters poisoned on the job in the 1920s. A resident playwright at New Jersey Rep, she received a Pulitzer nomination in 2003 for the Rep’s production of The Good Daughter, the story of a Missouri farm family struggling to adapt to rapid social change. Other plays include The Good Girl Is Gone, a black comedy about maternal indifference; October 1962, a Cold War era psychological thriller; and Molumby’s Million, a comedy about the boxer Jack Dempsey, which was nominated for the 2011 Barrymore Award for Outstanding New Play by the Theatre Alliance of Philadelphia.

Gregory also writes frequently for youth theatre. Her play Salvation Road, about a boy whose sister disappears into a fundamentalist church, was developed through New York University's Steinhardt New Plays for Young Audiences program. A member of the Dramatists Guild, a former national core member of The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, and a recent inductee into the League of Professional Theatre Women, Gregory is also founding member of the Playwrights Gymnasium, a process oriented workshop based in metro Washington, D.C.

'First Ladies,' A Poem By Eve Brouwer

First Ladies,   m. 1963—d. 1976

 By Eve Brouwer

(reprinted with permission)

We were the first ladies . . .
Kay, Diana, Sharon and I.

Ladies first—through doors, to be seated,
into aisles of theater seats. 

We were always ladies,
first, and foremost, and above all else.

We’d been dutiful daughters, and virgin brides,
and became good wives, and loving mothers. 

Yes, we were ladies first, and foremost, and above all else.

We were the first ladies

upon whom our husbands

bestowed their names,

the first ladies to whom they

plighted their troths.

A place of honor was given us.

We knew our place and kept to it.

We supported husbands
earning degrees

and, by degrees,
their masculinity,

husbands who came
—and went—

with impunity.

We stayed still, in ladylike passivity.

In still nights we stayed
—and waited—

loosed our chignons, our French twists
—and stopped. 

Frozen in an earlier time.

The world turned and skewed, and,

through curious eyes,

we viewed askance
political revolutions.

Through amazed eyes,

we read, titillated
by a sexual revolution.

With guilty consciences, we stood in line,

signed the children into pre-school.

Minute cracks in our polished veneer
let longings in,

let the Ms.’s hook their fingers toward us,

let the Ms.’s beguile us thus.
They kept their own names,
Wrote their own vows,
Took their own bows.

Looking back, are those our new “sisters”
marching on DC?

Is that us, sitting still, still sitting,
watching on TV?

Yes, and then . . . the husbands left.

Yes, and then . . . we fell
into the abyss.

Some to sink, some to swim,
most to flounder, betrayed

by our mothers’ voices,

our husbands’ vows,

our sisters’ visions,

our own ambitions.

Swept away, footloose, we lost our bearings,

doubted our instincts.

A toe
touched a rock here

A hand
reached for a branch there.

We loosened the weights dragging us down.

Then grabbed them back to our maternal breasts.

We emerged alive, to find

that women had put away

their feminine touches

—their pill-box hats, their white gloves, their recipe collections—

had relegated their children to others’ care,

were pursuing degrees, careers, orgasms galore.

Through it all, even as we
threw off the fancy hats,
drew on more appropriate gloves,
entered the no-holds-barred fray,

it never felt right.

Behind it all, under it all,

we were still

ladies who waited

for their men to return.

And waited, for a long time

after they'd finally gone for good. 

Yes, the first ladies in those husbands' lives

were merely the first in their series of wives.

Eve Brouwer
Photo by Donald G. Redman

Eve Brouwer lives and writes in Covington, Louisiana. An author and poet, her published works have been recognized by the New Orleans Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society and by Louisiana Inklings. She is the 2012 St. Tammany Parish Literary Artist of the Year and she serves on the board of the Northshore Literary Society.











Copyright Eve Brouwer. All rights reserved.
Illustration by Donald G. Redman