Blogorrhea Junior

Natasha Richardson, RIP

The Accident

He crouches beside her,
the space too small for his tall frame
even were he the one tucked in blankets, like she is.
He folds himself onto the narrow seat
and holds her hand through the flight,
through the long, uncomfortable drive
to yet another hospital,
this one closer to home,
as she held his
when it was he laid out here.
When he lay there, he could feel his bones
grinding, already cracked,
and now it’s his heart, because
she feels nothing.
He caresses her face with outsized hands
(an ex-boxer’s hands, blunt, thick, rinsed
of brutality now)
as he has done
for fifteen years
and two children—boys, a year apart
—prays they won’t be motherless
so young,
and he a widower.

There is little hope.

Or so I imagine
from the news reports.
But it needs little imagining, and
the actors need no names.
Not long ago, it was my mother
and a stroke,
and my bantam dad
held her hand too,
and like Natasha,
she never knew that last caress.

© Lee Kottner 2009

Shakespeare's Likeness

I'm always psyched to see something about Shakespeare and this is really cool: we might finally know what he looked like. I don't know why that matters, but it does. I always want to see pics of the people who write the literature I love because it makes them seem human. Writing sometimes seems like such a superhuman effort that it's good to know real people do it, even if they are geniuses.

Prior to this portrait, all we've had was an engraving from the First Folio, apparently based on another portrait, and a portrait (right, click to enlarge) now owned by the Folger Shakespeare Library, based on another unknown portrait, and a ghastly bust, both done after Shakespeare's death in 1616. But this new portrait, in the family of an Anglo-Irish clan for more than 300 years, looks like it might be the one everything else is based on. And it's a far more skillful portrait than the others as well, which are all a little stiff and clumsy.

If you freeze the frame where the two portraits are side by side (that's the new Cobbe portrait at left; click to enlarge), you'll see that the biggest difference in the two of them is the mouth. In the new portrait, Will's a rather handsome looking guy, at 46 or so, not at all the prissy, pinched-mouthed guy you see in the other portraits, balding and with a goofy pageboy haircut. I like the new glam image, though it may not be much more of a true likeness even if it is him, because portraits in the Renaissance were more about making your guy look good than capturing his likeness. Anyway, take a look at the news report.

Figuring out what Will looked liked is just a small part of the literary detective work surrounding his plays though. There's a fairly large contingent of people who maintain that Shakespeare didn't even write the plays and poems he's famous for, that he was, instead, a front for an aristocrat (possibly Francis Bacon) who would have been pilloried for writing something considered as vulgar, common, and often politically controversial as plays like "MacBeth" or what's known as the Hollow Crown cycle ("Richard II," the two "Henry IV"s, and "Henry V") had he done so openly. I'm not buying it; it's always smacked of class snobbery to me and I don't find the evidence compelling.

And on the heels of this news about Will's likeness is a great piece of news about the original theater where he first trod the boards as an actor. While digging a foundation for a new theater in Shoreditch, London, along the Thames, the construction team found remnants of a theater they think was the one which eventually became the original Globe.There is, of course, the new recreation of the orginal Globe in London, and a push for another on Governor's Island here in NYC, which I think would be a great use for that land.

Shakespeare is such an important part of the heritage of the English language that the more we know about him, the better. There's so much an author's life can tell you about their work (up to a point) that it can only give us more insight on his works to know more about him. Of course, the portraits don't tell us much about his life, except that he did well for himself. But it's nice to know he looked a bit more like Brad Pitt than Woody Allen. <sarcasm>Cuz, you know, looks matter. </sarcasm>

Illuminated Books and Medieval Iconography

The Morgan Library is one of my favorite museums in the city, though I don't get there nearly often enough. Right now, it's got a couple of cool things going on, one virtual, one a realspace exhibit. The virtual exhibit is of a prayer book once belonging to Queen Claude of France in the early 1500s. Curator Roger Wieck flips through the book and explains the iconography of several of the scenes depicted in the prayer book. It's a tiny little thing, palm-sized, and the paintings and illumination and calligraphy are really exquisite. It's books like this that got me interested in Medieval history and in bookmaking. This one appears to be covered in red velvet, and has gorgeous little fleur-de-lis clasps on it, in addition to the lovely decorations of the text.

You'll notice that even though the scenes depicted are Biblical, the characters' dress is Renaissance-style. That's typical for the time when this book was created, and theater "costumes" would have been the same: no attempt at historical authenticity. It's fun to hear the little tidbits of completely useless but amusing knowledge that Wieck drops along the way, too, such as the fact that executioners, assassins and such are generally the best-dressed people in pictures like this. The well-dressed are depicted as evil because of their concern with appearances (vanity) and wealth (greed). I wonder, too, if it wasn't a snarky comment against the hypocrisy of sumptuary laws that forbade lower classes of people from wearing certain types of fabric, decorative accessories, and jewelry. The artist, like most illuminated manuscript artists, is anonymous, but was probably a cleric of some sort, who might have made just this sort of snarky comment.

It's an 8-part lecture, but make sure you stick with it to the end, where Wieck describes the background to depiction of a little miracle of St. Nicholas, in which an innkeeper who's run out of bacon chops up three little boys to use instead. *boggles* And you thought Jeffrey Dahmer was bad.

The other exhibit is only on until March 29th, so get there soon, if you're interested. It's "Protecting the Word: Bindings at the Morgan," an exhibit of fine bookbindings from the Morgan. "Highlights include a bejeweled eighth-century binding used on the famous Lindau Gospels, a magnificent seventh-to-eighth–century Coptic work, and a seventeenth-century English Bible and prayer book in stump work embroidery." So if you're interested in beautiful historic bindings, this is the show for you.

"Rare Editions" Book Arts Show @ Lehman College

Hey NYC book arts peeps! Lehman College's art gallery is hosting a show called "Rare Editions: The Book As Art" through May 20, 2009, with a reception on Monday, March 16, 2009 from 6 to 7:30 pm. Nice to see the Bronx getting some representation, or at least hosting some book arts work. Here's the blurb from the show:

The exhibition presents a selection of work by 15 contemporary artists who use the book form as a container for their ideas, feelings, and aesthetic sensibilities. The exhibition includes unique one-of-a-kind objects, limited editions, and unlimited multiple editions. Many of the works are hybrids incorporating painting, drawing, printmaking, collage, photography, sculpture, installation, and performance. The artists in RARE EDITIONS use a host of inventive strategies as they manipulate color, line, shape, pattern and texture and make decisions about type if text is part of their work. This wide variety of book structures includes accordions, single folds, scrolls, boxes, pop-ups, fans, tunnels and altered books. Content is as varied as format with artists exploring narratives inspired by poetry, literature and myth, aspects of the natural world, history and politics, the environment, biography and identity, and personal and aesthetic issues.

This is definitely a show I plan on seeing. Here's the address: 250 Bedford Park Boulevard West, Da Bronx (718-960-8731) 10 AM to 4 PM, Tues-Sat. (Take the "4"or the "D" line to the Bedford Park Boulevard station. Walk west to the campus.)