Pretentious Artists

As neighborhood taverns

go the Literary Café in Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood has long been one of my favorites. It has a regular cast of characters (heavy on the character side) and also hosts one of the best poetry series in the city.

Another bunch that calls the Lit Café home is the Pretentious Artists of Tremont Drawing Club. Every Friday this crew invites a model to come in for a three hour sitting. To be a model all one has to do is sign up on the calendar that is hanging in the back room. The poobah of the event Tim Herron invited me to sign up back in the beginning of the year. The calendar was booked five months into the future so finally this past Friday I was their guest.

Here are three of the resulting portraits.

by larry zuzik

by tim herron

by Artour

All the MUSE that's fit to print.

Attended a reception for a couple of local journals last night, MUSE (yeah I know not the most original title) is the flagship publication of The Lit and the Barn Owl Review is a journal out of the Akron area. The reception was held at The Lit’s space on Superior Ave. – The Lit is the reincarnation of the monogram embroiderer’s nightmare of the Poets and Writer’s League of Greater Cleveland of which I am the vice president. 145 or so of Cleveland’s literati gathered in the space to celebrate the publications and the published.

Now any time you can crack the c-note attendance mark for an event with required reading attached congratulations are definitely in order. Nin Andrews was mentioned as an instigator a couple times throughout the event as were The Lit’s Executive director, Judith Mansour Thomas and Barn Owl’s Mary Biddinger. Accordingly, the majority of the evening’s readers were X chromosomally enhanced. Nin Andrews, Mary Biddinger, Emily Dressler, Shurice Gross, Shelly Rankins, Amy Sparks, Toni Thayer - on the testicular side of the equation were George Bilgere and R.A. Washington. Nin opened things up with greetings and a couple of her deftly crafted pieces. She seemed much more comfortable reading from her work than extemporaneously hosting, but as I have noted innumerable times – public speaking is the number one fear of mankind.

Highlights included a short story by Shurice Gross from Barn Owl. The piece was humorous at times employing some comfortable wordplay. Her reading style was relaxed as if she were telling us the story over a cup of coffee. Amy Sparks a self described recluse nonetheless has an easy air at the mic, she always seems as if she is sharing an inside joke with her listeners. None of the readers went on too long, a blessing when you have a slate of nine – but Amy’s set was too short. Bilgere was as ebullient as ever – wearing his risibly suffering middle aged white professorial persona as a badge of honor.

I heard a lot of great comments regarding the Sci-Fi short read by Toni Thayer so I defer to those who embrace that genre. Shelly Rankin scored with a piece comparing men to a quilter’s scraps – when in doubt insulting men is usually a safe bet with an audience of intelligentsia. Washington played bombastic with the mic and is continuing nicely to settle into a position of balding bellied bard statesmanship.

I'm pretty sure Emily Dressler is the the young woman who read a short fiction piece about, I believe, painting a barn and drinking. I'll bet the piece was excellent since it was in such good company. Unfortunately her delivery was so monotone no matter how hard I concentrated I couldn’t put more than a couple sentences together at a time.

All things considered though, the evening was a great success and The Lit’s space was a buzzing - here’s looking forward to future issues of both journals and hopefully more events centered on them.

more pics at my flicker site

Cleveland Poetry Scenes

Attended a reading, publication event for the new anthology and history Cleveland Poetry Scenes -published by Bottom Dog Press yesterday. The event was hosted by the Cleveland Public Library and the head of that institution’s literature department Ron Antonucci.

Extra big kudos goes out to the editors of the book – Larry Smith, Nina Gibans and Mary Weems. A rouges gallery of Cleveland poets showed up for the event and read from their works contained in the tome. We all jumped on stage afterwards for a group photo. While this is not all the great poets living in the greater Cleveland area at this time this was one of the more inclusive gatherings that I have been a part of.

Your scorecard is below.

1. Jim Lang 2. Meredith Holmes 3. Sara Holbrook
4.Chris Franke 5. Terry Provost 6. Adam Brodsky
7. Katie Daley 8.Ray McNiece 9. Mary Weems
10. Larry Smith 11. Kelly Harris 12. Michael Salinger
13. Kisha Foster 14. Mary Francis Player 15. R.A. Washington
16.Douglas Hoston Jr. 17. Bonnie Jacobson 18. Bree
19. Mwatabu S. Okantah 20. Nina Gibans 21.Mark Kuhar
22. Susan Grimm 23. Leonard Trawick 24. Vince Robinson

more pics from the event at my flickr site:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelsalinger/

look for the Cleveland Poetry Scenes set.