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PEACEMAKING<br />

AN AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN EXCHANGE OF ART AND WRITINGS<br />

GALERIE KERSTAN<br />

BREITSCHEIDSTRASSE 48 | 70176 STUTTGART<br />

22. JUNI – 21. JULI 2018 | JUNE 22 - JULY 21, 2018


© Copyright: 2018 Andreas Kerstan<br />

Umschlaggestaltung, Illustration: Andreas Kerstan<br />

Lektorat, Korrektorat: Andreas Kerstan<br />

Verlag: Kunst Stuttgart International e.V. | Schmalzstraße 4 | 71229 Leonberg<br />

Druck: Wir machen Druck, Backnang<br />

ISBN: 978-3-947408-09-2<br />

© Copyright Fotos: liegen beim jeweiligen Künstler des abgebildeten Werkes<br />

Das Werk, einschließlich seiner Teile, ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung ist ohne Zustimmung<br />

des Verlages und des Autors unzulässig. Dies gilt insbesondere für die elektronische oder sonstige Vervielfältigung,<br />

Übersetzung, Verbreitung und öffentliche Zugänglichmachung.


<strong>Peacemaking</strong> – An American and European Exchange of Art and Writings<br />

We are grateful to Gallery Kerstan for hosting this exhibition of art and writings from the USA, a<br />

two-year venture that is now coming to full fruition. We present 29 American perspectives on Peace<br />

and <strong>Peacemaking</strong>, thirteen professional artists, thirteen professional writers and three student<br />

artists. Each artist and writer offers their unique perspective on the subject, a passion for each.<br />

Our primary US sponsor, Elizabethtown College was founded by the Church of the Brethren, "one of<br />

the three historic peace churches in the USA." The college houses the Young Center, a leading<br />

research center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. The following was compiled and written by<br />

Project Peace participant, Julia Spicher Kasdorf.<br />

This exchange of art and writings between American and German people recalls our particular<br />

histories. Stuttgart became home to American military personnel after World War II, but our<br />

memory reaches to an earlier time. In the seventeenth century, pacifist Täufer (Anabaptist /<br />

Mennonite) fled Swiss persecution and migrated to the Rhineland Palatinate and worked hard to<br />

restore the land destroyed by war. William Penn, familiar with Mennonites after traveling through<br />

the Palatinate in 1677, specifically invited them to join his “Holy Experiment” in America. In<br />

1683, they began to settle in Germantown, north of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. The Neue Täufer<br />

(Church of the Brethren) began in 1708 in Schwarzenau, North-Rhine-Westphalia, and reorganized<br />

on Christmas Day, 1723, in Germantown. Elizabethtown College was founded by the Church of the<br />

Brethren, one of three historic peace churches in the United States, along with the Mennonites and<br />

Quakers.<br />

A special thanks to all the contributing artists and writers in this project. The artists and writers<br />

give insight into their personal struggle for inner peace, compassion, and a passion for World Peace.<br />

Each expression is filled with the past, the present and a hope for the future. We ask difficult<br />

questions, and perhaps the answers are challenging. We are grateful and thank our sponsors for<br />

Project Peace: Kunst Stuttgart International; the Joseph Robert Foundation; a CISP Grant, Elizabethtown<br />

College; the Center for Global Understanding and <strong>Peacemaking</strong>, Elizabethtown College;<br />

the Bowers Writers House, Elizabethtown College; the English and Fine and Performing Arts<br />

Departments, Elizabethtown College. Thank you Andreas Kerstan and the City of Stuttgart for<br />

hosting our project. We hope that this gesture on our part, will make a lasting impression on your<br />

city and all who see and read our work. We are grateful for this opportunity.<br />

Elizabethtown | USA | June 2018<br />

Milt Friedly, David Kenley and Jesse Waters<br />

Directors – Project Peace USA | Elizabethtown College


<strong>Peacemaking</strong> – An American and European Exchange of Art and Writings<br />

Direktoren<br />

Co-Direktoren<br />

Kuratoren<br />

Sponsoren<br />

Milt Friedly<br />

Andreas Kerstan<br />

David Kenley<br />

Jesse Waters<br />

Milt Friedly<br />

Andreas Kerstan<br />

Samantha Redles<br />

Jesse Waters<br />

Kunst Stuttgart International e.V., Leonberg, Germany<br />

Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, USA<br />

Joseph Robert Foundation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA


Projekt Frieden | <strong>Peacemaking</strong><br />

Kunst Stuttgart International e.V., kurz [KUN:ST] International, ist ein gemeinnütziger, internationaler<br />

Kunstverein mit Sitz in Leonberg, der am 21. Dezember 2015 gegründet wurde. Per 1.<br />

April 2018 zählt der Verein genau 280 Mitglieder aus 14 Ländern, u.a. aus Australien, Dänemark,<br />

Deutschland, Finnland, Frankreich, Italien, Indien, Luxemburg, Niederlande, Österreich, Polen,<br />

Russland, Schweiz und den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika.<br />

Eines der wichtigen Ziele des Vereins ist es, seinen Mitgliedern auf nationaler und internationaler<br />

Ebene Ausstellungs- und Präsentationsmöglichkeiten zu verschaffen. Zur Unterstützung dieses Ziels<br />

veranstaltet [KUN:ST] International seit 2017 jährlich einen Kunstwettbewerb. In 2017 ergab sich<br />

das Wettbewerbsthema Projekt Frieden aus dem Kontext einer Austauschausstellung unter dem<br />

gleichnamigen Titel mit dem Elizabethtown College, in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.<br />

Im Mai und Juni 2017 wurden in der Galerie Kerstan, Stuttgart, 50 ausgewählte Werke dieses<br />

Wettbewerbs in der Kunstpreisausstellung Projekt Frieden gezeigt und Preisträger in vier Kategorien<br />

gekürt. 37 dieser Werke wurden im Anschluss vom 21. September bis 21. November 2017 auf dem<br />

Elizabethtown College Campus in Elizabethtown, USA, präsentiert.<br />

Dieser Ausstellungszyklus wird nun mit zwei Ausstellungen in der Galerie Kerstan, Stuttgart,<br />

abgeschlossen: mit der Ausstellung der Projekt Frieden Kunstpreisträger aus 2017 und der direkt<br />

danach folgenden Ausstellung <strong>Peacemaking</strong> – An American and European Exchange of Art and<br />

Writings.<br />

Wir freuen uns außerordentlich, dass wir zum Abschluss dieses großen kulturellen Austauschprojektes<br />

29 Künstlerinnen und Künstler aus den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika in der Galerie Kerstan,<br />

Stuttgart, willkommen heißen dürfen und wünschen den Künstlern und Besuchern viel Freude mit<br />

dieser Ausstellung. Wir bedanken uns bei den an dem Projekt beteiligten Künstlerinnen und Künstler<br />

für ihre Teilnahme und den Unterstützern dieses Projektes für ihren unermüdlichen Einsatz, ohne<br />

den dieses Projekt nicht möglich gewesen wäre.<br />

Leonberg | im Juni 2018<br />

Andreas Kerstan<br />

Direktor / Kurator – Projekt Frieden<br />

1. Vorsitzender Kunst Stuttgart International e.V.


Projekt Frieden<br />

Teilnehmende Künstler in alphabetischer<br />

Reihenfolge<br />

<strong>Peacemaking</strong> – An American and European<br />

Exchange of Art and Writings<br />

Participating artists in alphabetical order<br />

Teil 1 | Bildende Künstler<br />

Chapter 1 | Contributing Visual Artists<br />

Anne Phong<br />

Chris Raschka<br />

Claire Giblin<br />

Helen Beekman<br />

Helen Berggruen<br />

Herb Weaver<br />

Leslie Kaufman<br />

Lucio Pozzi<br />

Michael Arrigo<br />

Milt Friedly<br />

Nina Buxenbaum<br />

Sandy Brunvand<br />

Steven Rubin<br />

Teil 2 | Autoren<br />

Chapter 2 | Contributing Writers<br />

Carolyn Forché<br />

Daina Savage<br />

David Kenley<br />

Deanna Nikaido<br />

E. Ethelbert Miller<br />

Jesse Waters<br />

Julia Spicher Kasdorf<br />

Lawrence Ferlinghetti<br />

Leslie McGrath<br />

Michael White<br />

Romie Lie<br />

Scott Cairns<br />

Taslima Nasreen<br />

Teil 3 | Teilnehmende Studenten<br />

Chapter 3 | Contributing Students<br />

Adam Way<br />

Cooper Siegel<br />

Georgia Grimm


TEIL 1<br />

BILDENDE KUNST<br />

CHAPTER 1<br />

VISUAL ART


Ann currently teaches art at California State<br />

University Pomona. She also serves as the<br />

board president of VAALA (Vietnamese<br />

American Arts and Letters Association), a nonprofit<br />

organization to promote Vietnamese<br />

American artists who live outside Vietnam. Ann<br />

has been invited to speak at many high<br />

schools, colleges, universities, galleries and<br />

museums on the subject of her own work and<br />

the work of other Vietnamese American artists.<br />

Ann Phong<br />

Ann Phong was born in Saigon, escaped from<br />

the communist Vietnam and now Ann has<br />

settled in Los Angeles, California.<br />

Ann Phong received her MFA in painting from<br />

California State University, Fullerton in 1995,<br />

and has actively participated in more than 150<br />

solo and group shows in galleries and<br />

museums. Her work has been exhibited in Los<br />

Angeles, to Houston, Vancouver, Bangkok,<br />

Karbi, Seoul, Chengdu, Taichung and Tokyo.<br />

Ann's artwork is collected and displayed in<br />

many public areas such as the UC Riverside<br />

Sweeney Museum, the Queen's Gallery in<br />

Bangkok, Cal Poly Pomona University Student<br />

Center, Cal State University Fullerton Student<br />

Center, and also in many private collections.<br />

“I have lived in many different countries in my<br />

life, from Asia to America. Each nation has<br />

given me unique memories about its culture<br />

and living environment. I like to wander, to<br />

listen to the voices of people, to blend into<br />

the crowd and to watch, as people juggle<br />

their everyday lives. In each one of my art<br />

pieces, I let my feelings flow from my past to<br />

the present, and seek to record most<br />

memorable scenes.<br />

Having seen cities embrace and protect<br />

nature, it is painful to witness some other<br />

places that have such destruction due to<br />

human greed. It seems like the more<br />

convenient we make our lives, the more<br />

pollution we create and the more carelessly<br />

we deplete the earth’s resources. Mother<br />

nature has given a home and we should be<br />

treating it as such. To obtain a peaceful life,<br />

one first needs to make peace with mother<br />

earth.”<br />

Ann Phong | April 2018<br />

Angel<br />

Mixed media<br />

61 x 22 cm | 2018<br />

www.annphongart.com


eceived two Caldecott Medals and one Honor<br />

forThe Hello, Goodbye Window, by Norton<br />

Juster; and for his own A Ball for Daisy; and his<br />

Yo! Yes? Five of his titles have been named<br />

New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s<br />

Books, including Mysterious Thelonious and A<br />

Poke in the I.<br />

Chris Raschka<br />

Chris Raschka never meant to be an illustrator.<br />

Certainly he had no thought of becoming a<br />

picture book artist. Though in his school days<br />

he always drew and painted, he studied<br />

science and was ready to enter a career in<br />

medicine. But on the eve of that next step, he<br />

understood that taking it would finally mean<br />

the end of his painting life, which was after all<br />

what he wanted most. So he just didn’t go.<br />

Instead he opened the newspaper to find a<br />

part-time job, one which happened to find him<br />

his first steady employment as an illustrator:<br />

illustrating all of the articles each month in a<br />

law journal (his job had been factotum to a<br />

private attorney). For the next three years he<br />

created illustrations for magazines and<br />

newspapers in Ann Arbor and Detroit, Michigan,<br />

before moving to New York City.<br />

This city would be the place he required to<br />

complete his education. Chris Raschka has<br />

created over sixty books for children. He has<br />

He was the US nominee for the Hans Christian<br />

Andersen Award in 2012 and 2016. Chris<br />

Raschka was born in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania,<br />

in the USA, in 1959. He studied biology, music,<br />

and art, in Minnesota, and since 1989, has<br />

lived with his family in New York City.<br />

Chris Raschka’s illustrations have been exhibited<br />

throughout the United States, including a<br />

solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago<br />

in 2007 through 2008. In Europe his work has<br />

appeared at Bad Berleburg, Germany, and in<br />

Italy at Bologna, Padua, and Rome.<br />

"We are as close as sienna is to umber and<br />

umber is to ochre, which is to say, very close<br />

indeed. We are made with the same strokes,<br />

of the same materials. Peace is not that<br />

hard.”<br />

Chris Raschka | April 2018<br />

It’s Not That Hard<br />

Watercolor on colored paper<br />

48 x 48 cm | 2017<br />

www.nccil.org/artists/chris-raschka


government funded exhibitions, solo shows,<br />

joint, invitational, national and international<br />

juried exhibits, museum and gallery exhibitions<br />

in the US, Spain, Italy, Japan, New Zealand,<br />

Turkey and Korea, and has served as juror and<br />

panelist for art organizations and the<br />

Pennsylvania Council of the Arts.<br />

Claire Giblin<br />

Claire Giblin was born and educated in New<br />

York City. She majored in fine art in high<br />

school, earning honors in NY State Regents and<br />

Board examinations. Giblin learned studio<br />

techniques under the tutelage of artist and<br />

historian, Vincent Mercaldo, later briefly<br />

attending F.I.T. (life drawing and Fashion<br />

Illustration).<br />

In Pennsylvania, Giblin studied studio art,<br />

Chinese brush painting - calligraphy and<br />

mountain painting - at Franklin & Marshall<br />

College; Lebanon Valley College (Art History,<br />

Philosophy of Religion, Anthropology); Millersville<br />

University (Art History, Photography).<br />

Giblin is the recipient of national and regional<br />

awards in art, and is listed in Who’s Who in the<br />

Arts, Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who of<br />

American Women. Giblin was honored as 2003<br />

“Woman of the Year” by the Women’s Center<br />

at Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA.<br />

She has curated exhibitions, participated in<br />

Her work is in national and international corporate,<br />

museum and private collections. She has<br />

taught in her studio, at workshops, and at<br />

Franklin & Marshall College (adjunct) in<br />

curriculum. Claire is former co-owner and<br />

Director of Pfenninger Gallery in Lancaster<br />

City. She is former Curator of Exhibitions at the<br />

Phillips Museum of Art on the campus of<br />

Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster,<br />

Pennsylvania where she has taught introductory<br />

painting and workshops in professional<br />

practices, and facilitated a weekly life-drawing<br />

studio. Giblin earned a Certificate in Fine Art<br />

Appraisal at NYU. She is an Associate of<br />

Appraisers Association of America and co<br />

founder of Atlantic Appraisal Services LLC.<br />

“I choose to point to a place where the eye is<br />

able to rest and the mind is able to consider<br />

the power in choosing a course of peace and<br />

non-violence.”<br />

Claire Giblin | April 2018<br />

Wounded Dove<br />

Digital Print on Rag Paper<br />

Print No. 1<br />

28 x 36 cm | framed | 2017<br />

www.giblinart.com


Literally, they can be touched and a<br />

subliminal understanding within my mind and<br />

heart is transformed into reality. Connecting<br />

these dots is like tracing constellations with a<br />

paintbrush. Look up into the darkness of the<br />

night sky and be awed by the unknown. In the<br />

vastness of the universe, humankind is a speck<br />

in that celestial sky. Our wars and worries,<br />

joys and dreams are inconsequential in the<br />

scope of outer space. Seeking peace amidst<br />

the troubles of the world seems like a mirage.<br />

Helen Beekman<br />

Helen Beekman, sculptor and painter, works<br />

and lives in New York City. She grew up in<br />

Menlo Park and Inverness, California and in<br />

1971 received a B.A. in Fine Art (focusing on<br />

sculpture) from Mills College in Oakland,<br />

California. Helen Beekman was a visiting artist<br />

at The American Academy in Rome. Her work is<br />

in private, corporate and museum collections.<br />

“Peace is as mercurial as the night sky. Trying<br />

to capture peace or holding stars in your hand<br />

is a daydream. I want you to look deeply into<br />

my hay sculptures. The painted hay is<br />

manipulated on neutral surfaces where my<br />

wordless thoughts and visions only imagined<br />

become three dimensional palettes. Stars fall<br />

into the hay like fireflies landing on grass.<br />

Still, I am a believer in peace. I am uplifted<br />

knowing that while our home rock floats in<br />

the infinite darkness of nothingness, twinkling<br />

lights brighten churning chaos. We are made<br />

of stardust, the identical atomic elements<br />

(oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen) of<br />

the Milky Way. This is humbling but the very<br />

nature of humans has something intangible,<br />

optimism.<br />

I peer into the night sky and hear John<br />

Lennon’s song Imagine. I feel a sense of<br />

possibility and peace. We humans are<br />

stubborn, arrogant yet we try to be good<br />

citizens on earth. We will fight for our blue<br />

planet and peace. We are stardust with a<br />

shared responsibility.”<br />

Helen Beekman | April 2018<br />

Shooting Stars<br />

Hay, acrylic on Masonite<br />

104 x 102 cm | 2017<br />

www.helenbeekmanart.com


I reaffirm a belief that art has the power to<br />

be a transformative force for good.<br />

The animating sources for Peace Accord: the<br />

Triumph of Music are two-fold. The first is a<br />

visionary series of concerts, “In War & Peace”,<br />

launched two years ago by the American<br />

mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato.<br />

Helen Berggruen<br />

“I was born in San Francisco in 1945. My artistic<br />

life began, not as a painter, but as an<br />

actress. From the age of twelve, I was<br />

determined to be on stage. In the early 80’s I<br />

stepped away from theater life and started<br />

painting. The canvases would be “peopled”<br />

not with figures, but with objects, trees,<br />

houses. Early on I was highly influenced by Van<br />

Gogh and by the early 20th Century European<br />

painters, especially the French Fauves and<br />

German Expressionists. Their emphasis on the<br />

“liberation of color” became guiding<br />

principles. My work has been exhibited in San<br />

Francisco, New York, London and Berlin and is<br />

in the collections of the Springfield Art<br />

Museuam, Missouri, and the Cedar Rapids<br />

Museum of Art, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.”<br />

“As artists, as members of society, we find<br />

ourselves faced with the challenge: how to<br />

resist being dragged down into the negative,<br />

fearful despair that surrounds us. In response,<br />

Through the sublime music of Handel, Purcell,<br />

and other Baroque masters, the concerts<br />

explore the darkest conditions of the human<br />

soul, as well as the most exalted. We hear<br />

searing melodies set to words crying out for<br />

revenge, but also, melodies conveying a sense<br />

of hope. The scourge of war is interwoven<br />

with a craving for peace. The second source is<br />

the painting St.Cecilia and the Angel, by the<br />

Seventeenth Century Italian artist Saraceni. In<br />

my narrative composition, St. Cecilia and her<br />

lute have been replaced by a determined<br />

young singer. The angel beckons to the singer;<br />

she has already embarked on a fierce mission.<br />

In one hand she holds a sheet of music; in the<br />

other, she carries a blazing torch. The winged<br />

angel joins the singer, offering to accompany<br />

her on his bass viol. Together their song<br />

vanquishes dark forces. Hostilities cease.<br />

Swords lie broken at their feet.”<br />

Helen Berggruen | March 2018<br />

Peace Accord: The Triumph of Music<br />

Oil on linen<br />

71 x 56 cm | 2018<br />

www.helenberggruen.com


MFA from James Madison University. For nearly<br />

two decades Herb lived and taught at Bethany<br />

College in West Virginia where he and his wife,<br />

Anita, raised three daughters. While in West<br />

Virginia, Herb’s artwork evolved into<br />

statements about life circumstances, both<br />

whimsical and political. His work has been<br />

exhibited in 200 shows throughout the United<br />

States and abroad. Herb retired from teaching<br />

in 2015 to build a house in Virginia and make<br />

art full time.<br />

Herb Weaver<br />

An art educator for over three decades ranging<br />

from middle school to the college level, Herb<br />

Weaver strives to take art off the pedestal and<br />

into the daily lives of the viewer. Initially<br />

trained more as an “art generalist” in a liberal<br />

arts setting, Weaver later focused on the<br />

medium of ceramic sculpture and earned an<br />

“The “arrows through the heart” are actually<br />

rods extracted from a library cabinet’s card<br />

catalog, intended to accentuate Trump’s 4th<br />

grade reading level. The chains hanging down<br />

from the neck-area are symbolic of “chain<br />

migration” to remind us that the current First<br />

Lady is a recipient of this policy. And the<br />

plastic “umbrella” of “Make America Great<br />

Again” that covers the head represents the<br />

shield of ignorance under which he and his<br />

base mask their true values. On the base are a<br />

series of ten quotes extracted from the<br />

internet. The black text are Trump’s words<br />

that are compared to biblical passages in red<br />

text. This oxymoronic juxtaposition of<br />

thoughts are intended to signify the hypocrisy<br />

of the “Christian Right” who blindly deny the<br />

actual teachings of their “Prince of Peace.”<br />

Herb Weaver | April 2018<br />

A Great, Great Peace Extinguisher<br />

Ceramic and mixed media<br />

117 x 41 x 41 cm | 2015<br />

weaverworks.yolasite.com


She is a founder of Philadelphia Sculptors, the<br />

Philadelphia - based organization of professional<br />

sculptors, and has served as its president<br />

since its inception in 1996. She founded the<br />

Burlington County College Sculpture Garden in<br />

Pemberton, NJ, and directed it for 20 years.<br />

“Ongoing traumas and tragedies are taking<br />

place throughout the world, causing people to<br />

be uprooted, marginalized, expelled, starved<br />

and otherwise treated in the most inhumane<br />

ways.<br />

Leslie Kaufman<br />

Leslie Kaufman lives in Philadelphia and has<br />

been active in the arts for over 40 years. She<br />

has exhibited her sculpture in numerous local,<br />

regional, and international shows including a<br />

one-person show at Shippensburg University<br />

(Shippensburg, PA) and a two-person show at<br />

Highwire Gallery (Philadelphia). Other venues<br />

where she has exhibited her work include<br />

Budapest Gallery (Budapest, Hungary) and<br />

Washington Square (Washington, DC), among<br />

others.<br />

Her work has ranged from carved stone and<br />

wood to ceramic sculpture to mixed-media<br />

constructions. She has participated in numerous<br />

collaborative, alternative, and public art<br />

projects, including the “Artfronts Partnership,”<br />

the Main Line Art Center’s “Kites: Art Takes<br />

Flight” and Philadelphia Sculptors’ “Cart Art,”<br />

“Chairs in the Air,” and “A Case for Art.”<br />

I created the Safe Haven series as a response<br />

to this upheaval. I am interested in the<br />

possibilities for escape and new life, even as I<br />

acknowledge the complexities of transitioning<br />

from one place to another. In this series of<br />

sculptures, I chose to repurpose some objects<br />

so that their new identities reflect the<br />

process of bringing to light something that<br />

wasn’t visible before.<br />

Understanding those who are different from<br />

us involves changing our focus from what is<br />

different to what is similar. If we are allowed<br />

the freedom to develop our lives in an<br />

environment not bombarded by hostilities,<br />

life and creativity can return to replace<br />

emptiness and despair.”<br />

Leslie Kaufman | April 2018<br />

Safe Haven: Root<br />

Wood, cardboard, plaster, fabric, mixed<br />

33 x 48 x 33 cm | 2018<br />

lesliekaufman.artspan.com


Sculpture Program, Princeton University,<br />

Maryland Institute of Art, School of Visual Arts.<br />

He currently is an occasional instructor at art<br />

schools in the US and Europe. His work has<br />

been presented at Documenta 6 (1977) and at<br />

the Venice Biennale (American Pavilion) in<br />

1980. His art is represented in many private<br />

and public collections.<br />

Lucio Pozzi<br />

Lucio Pozzi was born in 1935 in Milan, Italy.<br />

After living a few years in Rome, where he<br />

studied architecture, he came to the United<br />

States in 1962, as a guest of the Harvard<br />

International Summer Seminar. He then settled<br />

in New York and took the US citizenship. He<br />

now shares his time between his Hudson (NY)<br />

and Valeggio s/M (VR) studios.<br />

In 1978 the Museum of Modern Art, New York,<br />

exhibited his early videotapes in one of the<br />

first single-artist exhibitions of the Projects:<br />

Video series. He occasionally writes and has<br />

taught at the Cooper Union, Yale Graduate<br />

“The Next 475 Years Of My Art And Life” is<br />

both a lecture and a work of art. I have<br />

delivered it for about thirty years always with<br />

the same title. Even though it contains a fixed<br />

nucleus of images, it changes over the years<br />

according to circumstances. In this event I<br />

move constantly and hop from one idea to the<br />

next not so much to explain but rather to<br />

trace the evolution of a way of thinking about<br />

art. I describe how I have turned upside down<br />

the canons of my generation’s Conceptual and<br />

Analytic art so as to make of them a point of<br />

departure instead of a point of arrival. Since<br />

then I live my art at the widest range, in all<br />

its possibilities. I have chosen to seek the<br />

intensity of inspiration by structuring a<br />

practice of continuous shifts from one mode<br />

of art making to the next. I believe that<br />

coherence of style and meaning does not<br />

depend on formula but surfaces uncalculated<br />

in the practice of the artist.”<br />

Lucio Pozzi | April 2018<br />

Diaspora<br />

Acrylic on plywood<br />

Size variable - a proxy artwork | 2018<br />

luciopozzi.com


He currently is Professor of Art at Bowling<br />

Green State University, and serves as a<br />

National AP Studio Art Reviewer. Arrigo has<br />

taught painting at Studio Arts Center<br />

International in Florence, Italy and served for<br />

two years as the director of Young Artists at<br />

Work, a nationally recognized arts outreach<br />

program for young adults.<br />

Michael Arrigo<br />

Michael Arrigo is a multi-disciplinary artist<br />

based in Toledo, Ohio. He received his M.F.A.<br />

in Painting and Drawing from the Ohio State<br />

University and has been included in many<br />

national juried and invitational exhibitions.<br />

He has received a G.C.A.C. Individual Artists<br />

Fellowship, and awards from The Columbus<br />

Museum of Art, The Maser Museum of Art and<br />

The Toledo Museum of Art.<br />

Recent solo exhibitions include Crumbs Gather<br />

in the Folds at the Mariani Gallery in Greeley<br />

CO; Packing Up at Cascade Gallery in Portland,<br />

OR; and Interface with Jake Rowland at the<br />

Rosemary Duffy Larson Gallery in Miami FL.<br />

“People die, often at the hands of other<br />

people. Death, however, cannot die. This is<br />

perhaps one of the things that make it<br />

troubling and powerful. Death cannot do what<br />

it is and therefor it persists in being.<br />

Similarly, words cannot speak. They cannot<br />

bring themselves into being. Euphemisms are<br />

the words that we humans breathe into<br />

existence because we dare not speak the<br />

words that cannot speak themselves- words<br />

that might actually materialize the world as it<br />

is. Euphemisms are the words we speak to<br />

bring a less troubling more convenient world<br />

into existence, a parallel world of alternative<br />

facts (thank you Kellyanne Conway). Spade, A<br />

Spade is an attempt to lay some of the<br />

euphemisms of drone warfare to rest.”<br />

Michael Arrigo | April 2018<br />

Spade, A Spade<br />

Digital imaging on canvas | 183 x 245 cm<br />

2017<br />

www.michaelarrigo.com


Printmaking) and the University of Wyoming<br />

(MFA Sculpture and Printmaking). He is<br />

Professor of Art at Elizabethtown College and<br />

directs the Susquehanna Center for the<br />

Creative Arts.<br />

Milt Friedly<br />

Born: 1958, Powell, WY<br />

Resides: Elizabethtown, PA<br />

Milt Friedly has received recognition locally,<br />

regionally, nationally and internationally for his<br />

work in ceramics, printmaking and sculpture.<br />

His work has been included in exhibitions at<br />

the Urban Center for Contemporary Art; the<br />

Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition; the<br />

Yellowstone Art Museum; the Nicolayson Art<br />

Museum; the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts;<br />

Museum; the Gallery of American Craft; the<br />

Susquehanna Art Museum; the Lancaster<br />

Museum of Art; Lynden Gallery; Denise Bibro<br />

Fine Art; the Demuth Museum; the George<br />

Krevsky Gallery; and the University of the Arts,<br />

Philadelphia and many other art centers and<br />

galleries. His work is included in a number of<br />

public collections and many private<br />

collections. He received Fine Arts Degrees from<br />

Arizona State University (BFA Ceramics and<br />

“The 'free world' vs Kim Jong-un, tensions<br />

rising, an American President compelled to<br />

flex his muscle and mouth, raising the boiling<br />

temperature for what could be a nuclear fallout.<br />

Ballistic - 38th Parallel, a recent work,<br />

defines a dynamic for world peace. Donald<br />

Trump pointing a finger, Kim Jong-un spying on<br />

his own people across the 38th parallel,<br />

spewing hate and distrust; missiles dividing<br />

the two powers - a missile raising Kim's hair.<br />

Mount Rushmore and a Lotus flower look on,<br />

wondering, what have we become?<br />

Gun Control, an American problem, the World<br />

looks on in disbelief - shootings in our schools<br />

and public places. Are we out of control,<br />

teaching our children violence is the answer?<br />

Are video games and television numbing the<br />

minds of our youth and to the point that they<br />

cannot discern make believe from reality?<br />

What are the consequences, no regard for the<br />

sanctity of human life? Broken homes, broken<br />

children who look on and see hypocrisy - what<br />

is life? Our children and citizens become<br />

terrorist, for what cause?”<br />

Milt Friedly | April 2018<br />

miltfriedly.com


Gun Control | Defunct gun, rebar, pulley, hook, chain, spring and motorcycle foot peg | app. 315 x 61 x 25 cm | 2016


Nina Buxenbaum grew up in the Crown Heights<br />

area of Brooklyn, NY. She received her MFA<br />

degree in Painting from the Maryland Institute<br />

College of Art and her BFA from Washington<br />

University in St. Louis in Drawing and Printmaking.<br />

Her work has been included in several<br />

exhibitions including the Studio Museum of<br />

Harlem (NYC, NY), The Slater Museum (Norwich,<br />

CT), The Painting Center (NYC, NY), the<br />

Ingalls Gallery (Miami, FL), Rush Arts (NYC,<br />

NY), including a solo show at The Stella Jones<br />

Gallery (New Orleans, LA). She is currently<br />

represented by Galerie Myrtis (Baltimore, MD).<br />

Her work has been reviewed in the International<br />

Review of African American Art. She is<br />

a member of the Silvermine Guild of Artists in<br />

New Canaan, CT. She is an Associate Professor<br />

at York College, CUNY, in Jamaica, NY, and<br />

Coordinator of the Fine Arts Discipline in the<br />

Department of Performing and Fine Arts. She<br />

maintains and active studio practice in<br />

Brooklyn, NY and Bethel, CT.<br />

“I began my work as an exploration of images<br />

of African American women in our society. We<br />

judge a culture and a civilization by the<br />

images and art objects that they create. I<br />

have always focused on creating honest and<br />

personal depictions of women, particularly<br />

women of color, as a means to provide an<br />

alternative to the stereotypes prevalent in<br />

our culture.<br />

Nina Buxenbaum<br />

I use the “Topsy-Turvy doll” as a metaphor of<br />

black women and the way we learn to define<br />

ourselves. The doll, whose name is derived<br />

from the character of Topsy in the Harriet<br />

Beecher Stowe novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is<br />

designed to look like a southern belle on one<br />

side, but her dress conceals a black girl<br />

underneath. These dueling images deal with<br />

some of the complexities of identity that go<br />

beyond race.”<br />

Cousins: Buxenbaum/Engst<br />

Oil on linen | 122 x 91 cm | 2017<br />

Nina I. Buxenbaum | April 2018<br />

www.ninabuxenbaum.com


Scotland. Brunvand was recently named one<br />

of Utah’s 15 most influential artists, voted on<br />

by Utah’s on-line arts magazine, Artists of<br />

Utah-15BYTES.<br />

“This multi-part work is from an ongoing<br />

series, The Positive of Space of Silence. These<br />

works use player piano scrolls as a substrate<br />

and as an integral part of the concept. The<br />

scrolls are encodings of music, but by themselves<br />

are silent.<br />

Sandy Brunvand<br />

Born in Michigan, Sandy Brunvand moved to<br />

Salt Lake City in 1982. Sandy is an Assistant<br />

Professor (Lecturer) in studio art & art education<br />

in the Department of Art and Art History,<br />

University of Utah. After receiving her MFA in<br />

2003, she co-founded Saltgrass Printmakers, a<br />

non-profit printmaking studio and gallery<br />

located in Salt Lake City. Brunvand’s artwork<br />

incorporates painting, drawing, printmaking,<br />

and mixed media and has shown throughout<br />

the United States, as well as in Canada,<br />

England, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Bosnia,<br />

China, Colombia, Palestine, Hungary, and<br />

Their negative space encodes the notes, but<br />

the actual scrolls are composed primarily of<br />

positive space. Not only are the scrolls<br />

reminiscent of Asian scrolls in their physical<br />

aspect, I am also emulating the Asian tradition<br />

of grouping scrolls into four seasons of<br />

images, although not as literally as tradition<br />

dictates. There is no season recognition in<br />

war or peace. The titles of the individual<br />

scrolls, when placed in this setting, take on an<br />

entirely different interpretation from their<br />

original intent. Each scroll has images<br />

depicting both a darker turmoil and a hopeful,<br />

peaceful portion rising to the top of the<br />

scroll.<br />

Each of the scrolls is held down at the base<br />

with one or more wishing stones.”<br />

Sandy Brunvand | April 2018<br />

Positive Space of Silence, Peace<br />

4 Piano scrolls with ink painting<br />

244 x 152 cm | 2017<br />

www.sandybrunvand.com


from The Fund for Environmental Journalism.<br />

As a Community Fellow with the Open Society<br />

Institute (Baltimore), he co-directed the<br />

innovative program Healing Images, providing<br />

digital cameras, instruction and therapy to<br />

survivors of torture. His current projects<br />

investigate the rise of wind energy in the<br />

Midwest, the precarious conditions of Burmese<br />

Chin refugees in India, the upsurge of diabetes<br />

in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the social and<br />

environmental impacts of Marcellus Shale gas<br />

development in Pennsylvania.<br />

Steven Rubin<br />

Steven Rubin is an Associate Professor of Art in<br />

the Photography Department at Penn State<br />

University. Previously, he worked for more than<br />

twenty years as a freelance photojournalist<br />

and documentary photographer, traveling on<br />

assignment around the world and throughout<br />

the United States.<br />

His photographs have been published in The<br />

New York Times Magazine, National Geographic,<br />

Time, Newsweek and The Village Voice,<br />

and internationally in Stern, GEO, Focus,<br />

L’Express and The London Independent Magazine,<br />

among numerous other publications.<br />

His work has been exhibited across the United<br />

States and in Europe, Asia and Central<br />

America. A Fulbright-Nehru Scholar in<br />

northeast India, he is also the recipient of the<br />

Leica Medal of Excellence, a New York<br />

Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellowship, a<br />

Nieman Fellowship at Harvard, an Alicia<br />

Patterson Journalism Fellowship and a grant<br />

“The photographs and poem included in the<br />

exhibition are part of Shale Play, a book of<br />

documentary poems and color photographs<br />

created between 2012 and 2017 with poet<br />

Julia Spicher Kasdorf, in response to the rush<br />

to exploit the Marcellus Shale natural gas<br />

formation in Pennsylvania by means of the<br />

controversial well stimulation method commonly<br />

called fracking.<br />

The photograph here depicts a farm silo and<br />

Chevron gas condensate tanks on the Honsaker<br />

Farm in Masontown, German Township,<br />

Fayette County, Pennsylvania. In many Pennsylvania<br />

communities, farmers no longer find<br />

dairy and crop farming profitable, but they<br />

can gain substantial profit from leasing their<br />

land for natural gas development.”<br />

Steven Rubin | April 2018<br />

Silo and Chevron gas condensate tanks<br />

Pigmented inkjet print<br />

41 x 61 cm | 2015<br />

www.stevenrubin.com


TEIL 2<br />

POESIE<br />

CHAPTER 2<br />

POETRY


Carolyn Forché<br />

Forché was born in Detroit, Michigan. Forché<br />

earned a Bachelor of Arts (B.A) in Creative<br />

Writing at Michigan State University in 1972,<br />

and MFA at Bowling Green State University in<br />

1974. She taught at a number of universities,<br />

including Bowling Green State University,<br />

Michigan State University, the University of<br />

Virginia, Skidmore College, Columbia University,<br />

San Diego State University and in the<br />

Master of Fine Arts program at George Mason<br />

University. She is now Director of the Lannan<br />

Center for Poetry and Poetics and holds the<br />

Lannan Chair in Poetry at Georgetown University<br />

in Washington, D.C.<br />

Forché lives in Maryland with her husband,<br />

Harry Mattison, a photographer, whom she<br />

married in 1984.<br />

Forché's first poetry collection, Gathering the<br />

Tribes (1976), won the Yale Series of Younger<br />

Poets Competition, leading to publication by<br />

Yale University Press.[6] In 1977, she traveled<br />

to Spain to translate the work of Salvadoranexiled<br />

poet Claribel Alegría. She has also<br />

translated the work of Georg Trakl and<br />

Mahmoud Darwish, as well as many others.<br />

Upon her return from Spain, she received a<br />

Guggenheim Fellowship, which enabled her to<br />

travel to El Salvador, where she worked as a<br />

human rights advocate. Her second book, The<br />

Country Between Us (1981), was published<br />

with the help of Margaret Atwood. It received<br />

the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di<br />

Castagnola Award, and was also the Lamont<br />

Poetry Selection of the Academy of American<br />

Poets. She won the 2006 Robert Creeley Award.<br />

Although Forché is sometimes described as a<br />

political poet, she considers herself a poet who<br />

is politically engaged. After first acquiring both<br />

fame and notoriety for her second volume of<br />

poems, The Country Between Us, she pointed<br />

out that this reputation rested on a limited<br />

number of poems describing what she<br />

personally had experienced in El Salvador<br />

during the Salvadoran Civil War. Her aesthetic<br />

is more one of rendered experience and at<br />

times of mysticism rather than one of ideology<br />

or agitprop. Forché is particularly interested in<br />

the effect of political trauma on the poet's use<br />

of language.<br />

www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/carolyn-forche<br />

Image Credit: Don J. Usner.<br />

Courtesy of Blue Flower Arts.


The Boatman<br />

We were thirty-one souls all, he said, on the gray-sick of sea<br />

in a cold rubber boat, rising and falling in our filth.<br />

By morning this didn’t matter, no land was in sight,<br />

all were soaked to the bone, living and dead.<br />

We could still float, we said, from war to war.<br />

What lay behind us but ruins of stone piled on ruins of stone?<br />

City called “mother of the poor” surrounded by fields<br />

of cotton and millet, city of jewelers and cloak-makers,<br />

with the oldest church in Christendom and the Sword of Allah.<br />

If anyone remains there now, he assures, they would be utterly alone.<br />

There is a hotel named for it in Rome two hundred meters<br />

from the Piazza di Spagna, where you can have breakfast under<br />

the portraits of film stars. There the staff cannot do enough for you.<br />

But I am talking nonsense again, as I have since that night<br />

we fetched a child, not ours, from the sea, drifting facedown<br />

in a life vest, its eyes taken by fish or the birds above us.<br />

After that, Aleppo went up in smoke, and Raqqa came under a rain<br />

of leaflets warning everyone to go. Leave, yes, but go where?<br />

We lived through the Americans and Russians, through Americans<br />

again, many nights of death from the clouds, mornings surprised<br />

to be waking from the sleep of death, still unburied and alive<br />

but with no safe place. Leave, yes, we obey the leaflets, but go where?<br />

To the sea to be eaten, to the shores of Europe to be caged?<br />

To camp misery and camp remain here. I ask you then, where?<br />

You tell me you are a poet. If so, our destination is the same.<br />

I find myself now the boatman, driving a taxi at the end of the world.<br />

I will see that you arrive safely, my friend, I will get you there.<br />

Carolyn Forché


R.E. Foundation Award for Outstanding Poetry<br />

and her work has been nominated for the 2014<br />

Pushcart Prize. Her debut collection, Traces,<br />

was published by I. Giraffe Press in 2013.<br />

She has been a featured reader in Baltimore,<br />

Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Reading, Gettysburg,<br />

and Lancaster events.<br />

www.dainasavage.com<br />

Daina Savage<br />

Daina Savage, works as a freelance journalist<br />

for magazines and newspapers in the Mid-<br />

Atlantic region, with more than 3,000 published<br />

stories. She is a co-founder and codirector<br />

of the Spoken Word Festival in<br />

Lancaster, Pennsylvania.<br />

As the director of the Lancaster Poetry<br />

Continuum, she organized numerous poetry<br />

reading series in Lancaster museums, bookstores,<br />

and coffee shops. She is the co-founder<br />

of the Lancaster County Young Writers Workshop.<br />

Her poetry has been published in numerous<br />

regional journals and has garnered many<br />

writing awards. She is the 2013 recipient of the


How to Live, Riga 1939-2017<br />

Butter the black<br />

bread. Snip sheaves<br />

of dill fold<br />

into sour<br />

cream. Line<br />

up the sprats<br />

like little soldiers,<br />

gold of their scales<br />

winking in the morning<br />

light.<br />

Remember the taste<br />

of hunger. Fry<br />

bacon. Render<br />

onions translucent<br />

as ration-cards<br />

in sweaty<br />

hands.<br />

Fill your plate<br />

with gratitude.<br />

Let there be enough<br />

now.<br />

Be enough<br />

now.<br />

Daina Savage


Movement and the Chinese Diaspora, 1919-<br />

1932 (New York: Routledge Press, 2003, 2007,<br />

2013) and Modern China (Association for Asian<br />

Studies, 2012), and Contested Communities:<br />

Identities, Spaces, and Hierarchies of the<br />

Chinese in Havana, 1902-1968 (Brill, 2017). He<br />

has also researched Brethren mission<br />

peacemaking activities in China, and has<br />

published his findings in the Journal of Asian<br />

History.<br />

users.etown.edu/k/kenleyd<br />

David Kenley<br />

Dr. Kenley is Professor of Chinese History and<br />

Director of the Center for Global<br />

Understanding and <strong>Peacemaking</strong> at<br />

Elizabethtown College. His teaching and<br />

research interests focus on Chinese intellectual<br />

history and overseas migration. Some of his<br />

representative publications include New<br />

Culture in a New World: The May Fourth


War Memorials: Picturing Peace or Graphic Reminders<br />

of Violence<br />

They were arranged in neat rows, one on top of the other. Each was a<br />

dingy greyish color, not the bright sun-bleached white you often see in the<br />

movies. Row upon row they were stacked up, reaching to the ceiling at the<br />

top of the pagoda, maybe 20 or 30 feet above my head. It was, in essence, a<br />

sacred cathedral constructed of discolored human skulls.<br />

Should I take a photo of them? Should I stand in<br />

front of the pile and ask someone to take a photo with<br />

me in it? Certainly this wasn’t the right time for a<br />

“selfie.” That was beyond the question. But what is<br />

the right thing to do at a place such as this? Some of<br />

those around me were crying, but the overwhelming size<br />

of this pile of skulls was quite numbing, leaving me<br />

feeling strangely dumbfounded.<br />

When Cambodia’s government authorities decided to<br />

build this Killing Fields Memorial to the victims of<br />

Pol Pot’s murderous Khmer Rouge regime, how exactly<br />

did they want me to respond as a first-time visitor?<br />

More importantly what do the souls who formerly<br />

possessed these skulls think about this monument? After being beaten,<br />

tortured, and beheaded, are they happy to contribute to this massive jigsaw<br />

puzzle, or to they feel doubly victimized to be publically displayed for<br />

the purpose of shock and awe? Is this the proper way to memorialize the<br />

dead, and if not, is it justified to use them to educate others, forcing<br />

them never to forget?<br />

As a professional historian, I am fascinated with the ways in which<br />

politicians, journalists, film-makers, and museum curators seek to preserve<br />

the past and teach appropriate lessons for those who will follow. For<br />

better or for worse, I have visited and studied many war memorials around<br />

the world. Some, such as the World War II memorial in Washington, are<br />

celebratory and triumphalist. Others, including its neighboring Vietnam<br />

memorial just a stone’s throw away, are serene, somber, and quite literally<br />

reflective. Many, including the memorial in Cambodia, are graphic,<br />

disturbing, and even nauseating. Like the Killing Fields pagoda, the Rape


of Nanjing memorial in China also relies on skulls and human bones to shock<br />

its visitors. By contrast, the Hiroshima Peace Park in Japan uses life-size<br />

wax figurines of small children. Portraying the moments after the atomic<br />

flash, the flesh on these children drips from their arms, much like a<br />

melting candle. In the War Remnants museum in Saigon, curators display<br />

actual dead babies, floating in clear glass jars of formaldehyde. Their<br />

tiny deformed bodies are meant to be a warning — and a condemnation —<br />

against the US government’s use of the dreaded Agent Orange. Closer to<br />

home, American museum directors have also resorted to such methods when<br />

constructing their exhibits. At the National Holocaust Memorial in<br />

Washington, visitors enter a large room filled with old shoes. A poem on<br />

the wall reads:<br />

We are the shoes, we are the last witnesses.<br />

We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers<br />

From Prague, Paris, and Amsterdam,<br />

And because we are only made of fabric and leather<br />

And not of blood and flesh, each one of us avoided the hellfire. 1<br />

The use of such graphically violent symbols has all the subtlety of a<br />

sledge hammer.<br />

For those committed to peace, truth, and reconciliation, how should we<br />

feel about war memorials? Do they promote reconciliation, or are they<br />

counterproductive, producing feelings of disgust and even anger? Like me,<br />

the Vietnamese-American Viet Thanh Nguyen has asked many of these same<br />

questions. Nguyen warns that war memorials are themselves implicated in<br />

power politics. Those with access to power — including politicians, film<br />

producers, and well-funded curators — continually seek to dictate the<br />

parameters of historical narrative and public memory. But power, Nguyen<br />

cautions, “even when carried out with the elevated intention of justice,<br />

incites rebellion from those below and suppression from those above.”<br />

Continuing, Nguyen argues, “As fraught as engaging with power may be, one<br />

must confront it and hope that one can manage it, and oneself, ethically.<br />

Our use of power must be done with the full awareness of our own humanity<br />

and inhumanity, our capacity for both good and bad.” 2<br />

What should a war memorial look like? How can we picture peace if we<br />

remain committed to graphically portraying past violence? How do we account<br />

for unequal power relations in the construction and maintenance of war


memorials? Most importantly, how do we gain an awareness of our own<br />

capacity for both good and bad as we seek humanely to remember the past?<br />

While there are no easy answers to such questions, we must ask them of<br />

ourselves and others.<br />

After visiting the Killing Fields Memorial, I spent the rest of the<br />

afternoon wandering somewhat aimlessly through the streets of Phnom Penh,<br />

contemplating the awful scenes I had witnessed. By the end of the day, I<br />

was hot, exhausted, and emotionally drained. Fortunately I found a<br />

wonderful ice cream parlor overlooking the beautiful confluence of the<br />

Tonlé Sap and Mekong Rivers. As I ate my sundae and reflected on my day, I<br />

came to a banal yet provocative conclusion: the world needs fewer war<br />

memorial and more ice cream parlors. Until then, I will keep visiting these<br />

memorials, asking tough questions that defy simplistic answers.<br />

David Kenley | August 9, 2017<br />

1<br />

This is written by Moses Schulstein and the shoes were from prisoners in<br />

Poland’s Majdanek Concentration Camp. See Jenny Edkins, Trauma and the<br />

Memory of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 152.<br />

2<br />

Viet Thanh Nguyen, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War<br />

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), 253.


Rand Hess. She was the literacy coach and<br />

design specialist for Book-in-a-day and<br />

worked as regional coordinator in Northern<br />

and Western Maryland for Poetry Out Loud,<br />

a national poetry recitation contest.<br />

She is a Jin Shin Jyutsu (a Japanese healing<br />

art) practitioner in Baltimore, MD, and is<br />

currently working on a children's novel-inverse.<br />

www.deannanikaido.com<br />

Deanna Nikaido<br />

Deanna Nikaido is a graduate from Art<br />

Center College of Design in Pasadena,<br />

California, with a degree in Illustration and<br />

has authored two collection of poetry,<br />

Voice Like Water and Vibrating with Silence<br />

and the children’s book, Animal Ark, coauthored<br />

with Kwame Alexander and Mary


May It Be<br />

Before I knew skin was separation<br />

or had any sense that the body was boundary,<br />

I was everything you are.<br />

Everything sky is.<br />

Or ocean does.<br />

The way a flock of birds migrate as a single wing.<br />

Or a school of fish fit to water.<br />

The way my grandson sees the world<br />

without words<br />

barefoot and antenna.<br />

Picasso tried<br />

to peel away the strokes<br />

with his first set of eyes.<br />

Lessen the weight of all his looking.<br />

Shed what isn’t there—<br />

What would it take<br />

to remember<br />

that we are all strung like stars<br />

in constellation?<br />

Inseparable from.<br />

The center of.<br />

Completement<br />

for each other.<br />

Whatever ingredients you hold,<br />

may they be kind<br />

may they add to the wholeness of<br />

shining itself.<br />

Deanna Nikaido


In 1996, Miller delivered the commencement<br />

address at Emory and Henry College and was<br />

awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of<br />

Literature. He has been a Fulbright Senior<br />

Specialist Program Fellow to Israel in 2004 and<br />

2012.<br />

Miller is often heard on National Public Radio.<br />

He is host of the weekly morning radio show<br />

On the Margin which airs on WPFW-FM 89.3.<br />

Miller is host and producer of The Scholars on<br />

UDC-TV, and his E-Notes has been a popular<br />

blog since 2004. On April 19, 2015, Miller was<br />

inducted into the Washington DC Hall of Fame.<br />

In 2016, Miller received the AWP George<br />

Garrett Award for Outstanding Community<br />

Service in Literature and the DC Mayor’s Arts<br />

Award for Distinguished Honor.<br />

E. Ethelbert Miller<br />

E. Ethelbert Miller is a writer and literary<br />

activist. He is the author of several collections<br />

of poetry and two memoirs. Miller serves as<br />

the board chair of the Institute for Policy<br />

Studies (IPS), a progressive think tank located<br />

in Washington, D.C. and is a board member for<br />

The Community Foundation for the National<br />

Capital Region. For fourteen years he has been<br />

the editor of Poet Lore, the oldest poetry<br />

magazine published in the United States.<br />

His latest book of poetry, The Collected Poems<br />

of E. Ethelbert Miller, edited by Kirsten Porter<br />

and published in March 2016 by Aquarius<br />

Press, is a comprehensive collection that<br />

represents over 40 years of his career as a<br />

poet.<br />

www.eethelbertmiller.com<br />

Image Credit: Rick Reinhard


THE LAST RITUAL<br />

We need to wash our bowls.<br />

Place them in the sun.<br />

Ah - the belly is filled with joy.<br />

No more hunger for Peace.<br />

E. Ethelbert Miller


Vermont Studio Center, and is currently<br />

Director of the Bowers Writers House at<br />

Elizabethtown College.<br />

Jesse's fiction, poetry and non-fiction work has<br />

been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes,<br />

and has appeared nationally and internationally<br />

in such journals as The Adirondack<br />

Review, Coal Hill Review, The Cortland Review,<br />

Cimarron Review, Iowa Review, River Styx,<br />

Slide, Story Quarterly, Southeast Review,<br />

Sycamore Review and others.<br />

His first collection of poems, HUMAN<br />

RESOURCES, was published by Inkbrush Press in<br />

2011. Jesse's first collection of short fiction,<br />

SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT was published<br />

in March of 2018 by Paycock Press.<br />

www.etown.edu/centers/writershouse/staff.aspx<br />

Jesse Waters<br />

A winner of the River Styx International Poetry<br />

Contest, runner-up for the Iowa Review Fiction<br />

Prize and Finalist in The Starcherone Prize, the<br />

DIAGRAM Innovative Fiction Prize and the Paul<br />

Bowles Fiction Award, Prof. Jesse Waters is a<br />

recipient of a NC Artist’s Grant to attend the


An Apple from Dachau<br />

It's the eighteenth day of Nissan,<br />

the first month of the Jewish year, April 21st –<br />

Passover's third day. I’m on a backways cobblestone street.<br />

"Liebling" a woman selling apples says to me<br />

but I don't speak German. She smiles, and nods<br />

to the euro coins in my palm.<br />

It's one fine apple, shining up at me<br />

from the center of my hand. And still<br />

I have no idea how to be sacred.<br />

Any fruit, even just the core<br />

or shed skin, is holy when you’re lonely.<br />

At dusk, with a cup of rum-laced tea, I watch<br />

out my window to where the vendors stay out at their carts<br />

until the light goes dead, eating whitefish<br />

from wax paper, and one half of an orange.<br />

Something so beautiful as to give up seed<br />

is lonely, and to shed its skin for hunger is holy.<br />

If you plant an apple seed in the far town field<br />

where snow never stays, even in winter,<br />

and that seed lives, it’s a holy, holy thing.<br />

Not like Gefilte fish. Right now<br />

thirteen hours east, my mother<br />

is in Brooklyn buying two pounds<br />

of Whitefish, Carp and Pike flesh,<br />

chances are the fishmonger<br />

knows her: You'll never find bones,<br />

it's why my relatives always have<br />

Passover at my parent's house.<br />

Keep the shed skin, my mother will tell the Fishmonger<br />

but she's keeping the head, seed and core. The first<br />

spring I remember smelling those fresh<br />

fish bones, I was five. It was the salt smell<br />

fleshwork of my young hunger. My mother will grind


the fish together with seltzer water, nutmeg,<br />

white wine and finely diced celery ribs<br />

while thinking about something sacred.<br />

Anything so beautiful as to give up its hunger<br />

for holiness, and shed its skin for the sacred childheart<br />

is still not enough, won’t show me how to love. And there's nothing<br />

edible in this poem. Nothing holy.<br />

Only an apple, which tastes like apple, smells<br />

like an apple. What else can an<br />

apple mean here, in any other holy place it's the same, sweet fruit –<br />

but on this cobblestone street<br />

in Dachau where my grandmother<br />

is said to have been beaten to death<br />

and no one said Kaddish until a few minutes ago, I would eat<br />

six million perfect apples as the one here in my palm and never feel full.<br />

I’d embrace hundreds of loving and hating<br />

Germans, Koreans, Catholics, Laotians, real women<br />

and men, anything to let go of the ancient shadowboxer<br />

in me who snorts nation<br />

with each jab and wide hook – the one<br />

seed who's never known an enemy<br />

besides his own, dark imagination.<br />

I can't start my life over. The landmarks<br />

I know are all in poems, not in people's hearts.<br />

There are no clear landmarks in this poem.<br />

When I cross back over the Atlantic to Troy,<br />

New York – home -- her milling ball quarry machines<br />

and cookie factories burned like figures<br />

my own youth had no time for – inside the American<br />

womb of plenty up above our sacred, holy world<br />

I'll eat this apple, I'll split it with<br />

my mother and sisters over halvah, macaroons.<br />

Jesse Waters


Her poems were awarded a 2009 NEA<br />

fellowship and a Pushcart Prize and appear in<br />

numerous anthologies.<br />

She thinks about the relationships that writers<br />

have with the communities and places they<br />

come from and also those places they choose<br />

to inhabit. Past projects along these lines<br />

include a collection of essays, The Body and<br />

the Book: Writing from a Mennonite Life,<br />

winner of the 2002 Book of the Year Award<br />

from the Conference on Christianity and<br />

Literature, and a monograph, Fixing Tradition:<br />

Joseph W. Yoder, Amish American. She has<br />

worked on new editions of Yoder’s 1940 local<br />

color classic Rosanna of the Amish, which is<br />

set in Centre and Mifflin Counties and Fred<br />

Lewis Pattee’s The House of the Black Ring, set<br />

in Centre County. With Michael Tyrell she coedited<br />

the anthology, Broken Land: Poems of<br />

Brooklyn.<br />

Julia Spicher Kasdorf<br />

Julia Spicher Kasdorf has published three<br />

collections of poetry with the University of<br />

Pittsburgh Press, most recently Poetry in<br />

America.<br />

She is currently working with photographer<br />

Steven Rubin on a poetry project to document<br />

the impacts of natural gas development in<br />

Pennsylvania.<br />

www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/julia-kasdorf<br />

Among the previous collections, Eve’s<br />

Striptease was named one of Library Journal‘s<br />

Top 20 Best Poetry Books of 1998, and Sleeping<br />

Preacher won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry<br />

Prize and the Great Lakes College’s Association<br />

Award for New Writing.


Among Landowners and Industrial Stakeholders, the<br />

Citizen with Too Much Memory Seeks Standing to<br />

Speak of Recent Events in Penn’s Wood<br />

When I drive south on I -78, diagonal highway from New York to Harrisburg,<br />

the Blue Mountain presses my right shoulder for miles, dividing coal<br />

tipples from hex signs on barns, French and Indian territory from the<br />

British colony. At Shartlesville in the parking lot of Roadside America, a<br />

giant Amish couple on a spring wagon marks my ancestors’ settlement at<br />

Northkill, the Hochstetler cabin, torched in 1757.<br />

After the fire, Lenape and Shawnee warriors marched Jacob and two of his<br />

sons for 17 days to the French Fort at Erie. Seven months later, Jacob<br />

escaped, walked nine nights and days through forest, eating grass. At the<br />

Susquehanna, he lashed logs with grape vines and floated south for four<br />

days until British soldiers fished him out, nearly dead, at Fort Augusta or<br />

Shamokin, now Sunbury, corporate headquarters of Weis Markets.<br />

Growing up, we knew the Hochstetlers had guns but would not shoot; the<br />

warriors killed Jacob’s wife, whose name no one recalls, because she<br />

refused to share fruit with them. When we misbehaved, Dad threatened to<br />

give us back to the Indians. We didn’t know that Christian Hochstetler kept<br />

running back to his captors after he was returned to his parents. We didn’t<br />

know Barbara Kauffman grabbed an ax and hacked the fingers of braves as<br />

they tried to climb through her cabin window. The men ran screaming into<br />

the forest.<br />

Penn’s surveyors carved initials into the trunks of great trees—white oak,<br />

black oak, red oak, hickory, and walnut—sighted a compass from the trunk of<br />

the corner tree and stretched iron measuring chains to make boundaries.<br />

Corner trees they called witness trees. When Shikellemy ruled the refugees<br />

at Shamokin, he implored the Lenape, Seneca, and Tutelo to grow corn,<br />

squash, and beans but to refrain from planting apples and peaches for fear<br />

they would create a plantation.<br />

During the French and Indian War, braves from the Forks of the Ohio, now<br />

Pittsburgh, attacked six European families near a trading post on Penns<br />

Creek, slaying 14 and capturing 28, among them the wife and children of


Jacob Beyerly. A woman was found with a chain draped around her neck, a man<br />

with a tomahawk, freshly inscribed with English initials, sunk in his skull<br />

like a log. Bierly is the name of the lawyer who filed papers for my<br />

divorce.<br />

About to swing his ax into a tree, Hannes Miller—three of his children<br />

married Speichers—was shot by an Indian. He was called Wounded Hannes,<br />

Crippled John, or Indian John until his death in Somerset. Some insist they<br />

can hear old trees shriek the instant an ax hits. The Northkill Amish moved<br />

west, seeking more and better land. I live near fields some of them farmed.<br />

By the 1850s, ridges around here were bare, trees baked into charcoal to<br />

fuel the iron furnaces.<br />

In 1955, my father, driving a feed truck for the Belleville Flour Mill,<br />

lost his brakes on Nittany Ridge. He shifted down, laid on the horn, flew<br />

off Centre Hall Mountain, thick with hemlock and rhododendron, and blared<br />

through Pleasant Gap without incident.<br />

In the ten miles I drive to work, I pass three prisons. The oldest opened<br />

in 1915, the year M. G. Brumbaugh became the last ordained pacifist<br />

governor of Pennsylvania. At Rockview, called the Honor Farm, inmates<br />

learned to prune apple trees and tend a Victorian glasshouse. I have seen<br />

guards on horseback beside dark-skinned prisoners swinging scythes in the<br />

ditch along Benner Pike.<br />

In 1939, my great grandfather was killed by a tree that fell the wrong way<br />

when he was logging on Jack’s Mountain. Around that time, the Klan in<br />

Pleasant Gap prevented white Catholics from building a high school in<br />

Bellefonte.<br />

Behind Rockview Prison, in a copse of hemlocks at the foot of the Nittany<br />

Ridge, an electric chair sits in a former field hospital. By the year I was<br />

born, the state had electrocuted 350 people there. Since then, three more<br />

died by lethal injection. The Dunkers never forgave Governor Brumbaugh for<br />

calling the National Guard to shoot strikers in Pittsburgh or for calling<br />

the Pennsylvania militia to arms during the First World War.


In fifth and sixth grade, on the way to Manor School I climbed a black<br />

wooden overpass that spanned the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad.<br />

Some mornings I stopped and stood in the wind roaring above hopper cars<br />

heaped with coal and iron pellets bound for mills along the rivers in<br />

Pittsburgh, and imagined flight.<br />

At the end of Peight’s lane, not far from where a horse and buggy accident<br />

killed my grandmother in 1948, I spied a Texas Eastern Transmission sign.<br />

This aluminum-sided shed is party to the fourth largest natural gas line in<br />

the nation, which runs from the Gulf of Mexico to New York City. How did<br />

that pipe snake in over Jack’s Mountain without my knowledge?<br />

When they clear-cut the right of way to lay pipeline over the Nittany Ridge<br />

in 2009, gas men left good lumber to rot, my handyman says. The Centre<br />

Relay Compressor Station stands on a former cornfield in Pleasant Gap. The<br />

pipe runs past Weis Market, recently built on a razed farm, and ends in gas<br />

storage fields at Leidy, under the Tamarack Swamp. I, who have never eaten<br />

grass out of necessity, drive home and cook my groceries on a gas stove. 1<br />

Julia Spicher Kasdorf<br />

1<br />

Among Landowners and Industrial Stakeholders, the Citizen with Too Much<br />

Memory Seeks Standing to Speak of Recent Events in Penn’s Woods” is<br />

factual, to the best of my knowledge, except that my father’s feed truck<br />

lost its brakes driving off of Tussey Mountain into Stone Valley, instead<br />

of Mount Nittany into Nittany Valley.


included writers such as Kenneth Rexroth, Gary<br />

Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac.<br />

Ferlinghetti is the author of more than thirty<br />

books of poetry, including Time of Useful<br />

Consciousness (New Directions, 2012); Poetry<br />

as Insurgent Art (New Directions, 2007);<br />

Americus, Book I (New Directions, 2004); A Far<br />

Rockaway of the Heart (New Directions, 1997);<br />

and A Coney Island of the Mind (New<br />

Directions, 1958). He has translated the work<br />

of a number of poets including Nicanor Parra,<br />

Jacques Prevert, and Pier Paolo Pasolini.<br />

Ferlinghetti is also the author of more than<br />

eight plays and of the novels Love in the Days<br />

of Rage (Overlook, 1988) and Her (New<br />

Directions, 1966).<br />

Lawrence Ferlinghetti<br />

On March 24, 1919, Lawrence Ferlinghetti was<br />

born in Yonkers, New York. After spending his<br />

early childhood in France, he received his BA<br />

from the University of North Carolina, an MA<br />

from Columbia University, and a PhD from the<br />

Sorbonne. During World War II he served in the<br />

US Naval Reserve and was sent to Nagasaki<br />

shortly after it was bombed. He married in<br />

1951 and has one daughter and one son.<br />

In 1953, Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin began to<br />

publish City Lights magazine. They also opened<br />

the City Lights Books Shop in San Francisco to<br />

help support the magazine. In 1955, they<br />

launched City Light Publishing, a bookpublishing<br />

venture. City Lights became known<br />

as the heart of the “Beat” movement, which<br />

In 1994, San Francisco renamed a street in his<br />

honor. He was also named the first poet<br />

laureate of San Francisco in 1998. His other<br />

awards and honors include the lifetime<br />

achievement award from the National Book<br />

Critics Circle in 2000, the Frost Medal in 2003,<br />

and the Literarian Award in 2005, presented<br />

for “outstanding service to the American<br />

literary community.”<br />

Currently, Ferlinghetti writes a weekly column<br />

for the San Francisco Chronicle. He also continues<br />

to operate the City Lights bookstore,<br />

and he travels frequently to participate in<br />

literary conferences and poetry readings.<br />

www.citylights.com/ferlinghetti<br />

Image Credit: Christopher Felver<br />

Ferlinghetti with Hat | 1981 | Gelatin silver print<br />

Courtesy of George Krevsky


History of the Airplane<br />

And the Wright brothers said they thought they had invented<br />

something that could make peace on earth<br />

(if the wrong brothers didn’t get hold of it)<br />

when their wonderful flying machine took off at Kitty Hawk<br />

into the kingdom of birds but the parliament of birds was freaked out<br />

by this man-made bird and fled to heaven<br />

And then the famous Spirit of Saint Louis took off eastward and<br />

flew across the Big Pond with Lindy at the controls in his leather<br />

helmet and goggles hoping to sight the doves of peace but he did not<br />

Even though he circled Versailles<br />

And then the famous Yankee Clipper took off in the opposite<br />

direction and flew across the terrific Pacific but the pacific doves<br />

were frighted by this strange amphibious bird and hid in the orient sky<br />

And then the famous Flying Fortress took off bristling with guns<br />

and testosterone to make the world safe for peace and capitalism<br />

but the birds of peace were nowhere to be found before or after Hiroshima<br />

And so then clever men built bigger and faster flying machines and<br />

these great man-made birds with jet plumage flew higher than any<br />

real birds and seemed about to fly into the sun and melt their wings<br />

and like Icarus crash to earth<br />

And the Wright brothers were long forgotten in the high-flying<br />

bombers that now began to visit their blessings on various Third<br />

Worlds all the while claiming they were searching for doves of<br />

peace<br />

And they kept flying and flying until they flew right into the 21st<br />

century and then one fine day a Third World struck back and<br />

stormed the great planes and flew them straight into the beating<br />

heart of Skyscraper America where there were no aviaries and no<br />

parliaments of doves and in a blinding flash America became a part<br />

of the scorched earth of the world<br />

And a wind of ashes blows across the land<br />

And for one long moment in eternity<br />

There is chaos and despair<br />

And buried loves and voices<br />

Cries and whispers<br />

Fill the air<br />

Everywhere<br />

Lawrence Ferlinghetti


Geschichte des Flugzeugs<br />

Aus dem Amerikanischen von Klaus Berr<br />

Und die gerechten Gebrüder Wright sagten, sie dachten, sie hätten etwas<br />

erfunden, das der Erde Friede bringen könnte<br />

wenn es nicht die falschen Gebrüder in die Hände bekamen)<br />

als ihre wunderbare Flugmaschine abhob bei Kitty Hawk<br />

ins Reich der Vögel doch das Parlament der Vögel fürchtete sich<br />

vor diesem Menschenwerk-Vogel und floh in den Himmel<br />

Und dann hob ab die berühmte Spirit of Saint Louis nach Osten und<br />

flog über den großen Teich mit Lindbergh am Steuer in seinem Lederhelm<br />

und der Brille der hoffte die Friedenstauben zu sehen doch er sah sie nicht<br />

obwohl er über Versailles kreiste<br />

Und dann hob ab der berühmte Yankee Clipper in die entgegengesetzte<br />

Richtung und flog über den prächtigen Pazifik doch die pazifistischen Tauben<br />

hatten Angst vor diesem komischen Wasservogel und versteckten sich den Wolken des<br />

Orients<br />

Und dann hob ab die berühmte Fliegende Festung starrend vor Waffen<br />

und Testosteron um die Welt sicher zu machen für Frieden und Kapitalismus<br />

doch Vögel des Friedens waren nach Hiroshima nirgends zu sehen<br />

Und so bauten dann schlaue Männer größere und schnellere Flugmaschinen und<br />

diese prächtigen Menschenwerk-Vögel mit Düsengefieder flogen höher als jeder<br />

echte Vogel als wollten in die Sonne sie fliegen um ihre Flügel zu schmelzen<br />

und wie Ikarus zur Erde stürzen<br />

Und die Gebrüder Wright waren längst vergessen in den hoch fliegenden<br />

Bombern die jetzt mit ihren Segnungen heimsuchten diverse Dritte<br />

Welten und dabei so taten als sie suchten die Tauben des<br />

Friedens.<br />

Und sie flogen und flogen und flogen direkt ins 21.<br />

Jahrhundert und dann schlug eines Tages eine Dritte Welt zurück und<br />

stürmte die prächtigen Flieger und flog sie direkt ins schlagende<br />

Herz des Wolkenkratzer-Amerika wo es keine Häuser und keine<br />

Parlamente der Tauben gab und in einem grellen Blitz wurde Amerika Teil<br />

der verbrannten Erde der Welt<br />

Und ein Wind bläst Asche über das Land<br />

Und für einen langen Augenblick in der Ewigkeit<br />

Herrscht Chaos und Verzweiflung<br />

Und verschüttete Lieben und Stimmen<br />

Schreien und Flüstern<br />

Erfüllen die Luft<br />

Allüberall


Winner of the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry<br />

(2004), and the Gretchen Warren Prize from<br />

the New England Poetry Club, she has been<br />

awarded residencies at Hedgebrook and the<br />

Vermont Studio Center, as well as funding from<br />

the CT Commission on the Arts and the<br />

Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation.<br />

Her poems and interviews have been published<br />

or are forthcoming in Agni, Poetry magazine,<br />

The Academy of American Poets, The Writer’s<br />

Chronicle, and The Yale Review.<br />

Leslie McGrath<br />

Leslie McGrath is the author three collections<br />

of poetry, most recently Feminists Are Passing<br />

from Our Lives (The Word Works, 2018), and<br />

two chapbooks.<br />

McGrath teaches creative writing at Central<br />

Connecticut State University and is series<br />

editor of The Tenth Gate, a poetry imprint of<br />

The Word Works Press.<br />

lesliemcgrath.com


Rest in Warning<br />

In the dark before morning lay the living in their beds<br />

and lay we the dead in ours. Each earth-lidded terminus<br />

not a chamber of rest, but a listening ear to the past.<br />

The dead are with you, difficult as this is to believe.<br />

We know how quickly you turn from mourning<br />

back to the distractions you stretch from hour to hour.<br />

You buy green mangoes from the street vendor<br />

and pink tulips from the corner bodega. Finally alone<br />

in your apartment, the bolt slid against strangers<br />

you collapse in exhaustion. No news, you vow<br />

no devices all the long weekend. The cat nuzzles<br />

your tulips and pushes the vase off the kitchen table.<br />

You can’t get her off the furniture. Here in the yard<br />

at the edge of the Old Town, there’s no keeping<br />

the living out. You are our news, constant and uninvited<br />

opening the iron gate to stroll among our rows.<br />

You place pebbles atop granite markers, whisper our names<br />

as though we can no longer speak. We speak<br />

in the dark before morning when the hooligans come<br />

tagging hate and toppling headstones. They give us voice.<br />

Each thud’s a certain warning that the past is never gone.<br />

As long as the beaver slaps her tail on the pond’s surface<br />

as long as the rabbit stomps his hind leg, this sound<br />

the only sound we make, is our sound of warning.<br />

Leslie McGrath


His memoir, Travels in Vermeer, was longlisted<br />

for the 2015 National Book Award. He has<br />

published poetry and prose in The Paris<br />

Review, The New Republic, The Kenyon<br />

Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa<br />

Review, The Missouri Review, The Best<br />

American Poetry, and many others.<br />

White has taught in the MFA program at The<br />

University of North Carolina at Wilmington<br />

since 1994.<br />

www.michaelwhitepoet.com<br />

Michael White<br />

Michael White was educated at the University<br />

of Missouri and the University of Utah, where<br />

he received his PhD in English and Creative<br />

Writing in 1993.<br />

His poetry books are The Island, Palma<br />

Cathedral (winner of the Colorado Prize), Reentry<br />

(winner of the Vassar Miller Prize), and<br />

Vermeer in Hell (winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky<br />

Editors’ Prize).


Woman Holding a Balance<br />

If the painting-within-the-painting, hanging on the wall<br />

behind the standing woman—<br />

with its sinners wailing at Christ’s feet on Judgment Day—<br />

if that might be one way<br />

of looking at it, then the woman herself, who half<br />

obscures the painting, is<br />

another. All we know of her is what we see:<br />

how—weightless, effortless<br />

as flame—she stands to face the lightfall over the umber,<br />

oilcloth-covered table.<br />

How each of the nails on her right hand, at the center of<br />

the composition, burns<br />

like phosphor. How—what word would one use?—beneficent?<br />

her aspect is: the source<br />

of light from beneath her skin, such sweetly sculptural eyelids<br />

& cheekbones, blessing of<br />

her waistline’s fullness. Objects here are neither more<br />

nor less than what they seem<br />

to be: the table, for instance, offering itself—<br />

the ornate carvings of<br />

its vase-shaped legs—to the benediction of her touch,<br />

her left-hand fingertips<br />

alight on its very edge. Or the strand of pearls, with its yellow<br />

satin ribbon, furled<br />

all but unnoticed on the oilcloth there—where three<br />

gold coins, & a silver one,


all but unnoticed on the oilcloth there—where three<br />

gold coins, & a silver one,<br />

have casually been placed. The woman focuses<br />

on the equilibrium of<br />

the scales, which contain nothing except sun-glint . . . Now<br />

the shadow-hand—the almost<br />

subliminal shadow caressing the left side of her linen<br />

bonnet—lends support<br />

to her head, as she leans gently back against the hand.<br />

Behind her, on the wall,<br />

the Bosch-like spirits writhe in faceless terror. Christ,<br />

in his golden nimbus, floats<br />

above their heads. But it barely registers—the Judgment<br />

scene, the reckoning—<br />

as relevant, in light of her, her certitude<br />

suspended in the air<br />

from thumb & index finger . . . It won’t come again—<br />

this equipoise between<br />

the figure & the room. Vermeer is thirty-two—<br />

the death-carts creaking through<br />

the black smoke of North Europe. Twenty-four thousand dead<br />

in Amsterdam this year.<br />

In June, the war with England will resume. So it<br />

won’t come again, I’m thinking,<br />

not with such full-bodied ease. But for the moment,<br />

here she stands. Is realized.<br />

Michael White


Romie Lie wurde 1954 in Langnau im Emmental<br />

geboren. Sie wächst in französischer Muttersprache<br />

auf, Deutsch lernt sie in der Schule.<br />

Ausbildung zur Krankenschwester in Biel.<br />

Auslandsaufenthalte in Europa und USA. Seit<br />

1981 freischaffende Schriftstellerin. Romie Lie<br />

leitet seit 1990 Schreibwerkstätten in verschiedenen<br />

Institutionen. Sie lebt in Wohlen bei<br />

Bern.<br />

Sie schreibt Beiträge für das Radio, für Anthologien<br />

und Literaturzeitschriften.<br />

Seit 2002 veröffentlichte sie sieben Lyrikbände.<br />

In 2010 erhält Romie Lie einen Literaturpreis<br />

des Kantons Bern.<br />

Mitarbeit an «Sammlung der Schweizer Poesie<br />

2013, alla chiara fonte editore, Lugano 2013».<br />

Romie Lie<br />

www.romie-lie.ch


au printemps jamais je<br />

n’oublie<br />

au printemps jamais je n’oublie<br />

to chant<br />

das apfelgebet<br />

joie joie joie<br />

even my life is shorter<br />

als eine blüte<br />

joie joie joie car<br />

the lifeforce runs through me<br />

noch nach meinem tod<br />

éternellement<br />

godly<br />

in gott<br />

in the spring I never<br />

forget<br />

in the spring I never forget<br />

the chant<br />

the prayer of the apple<br />

joy joy joy<br />

even my life is shorter<br />

as a blossom<br />

joy joy joy because<br />

the lifeforce runs through me<br />

still after my death<br />

eternal<br />

godly<br />

in god<br />

Romie Lie | 2018


He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006,<br />

and the Denise Levertov Award in 2014. His<br />

new projects include Descent to the Heart,<br />

verse adaptations of selections from the<br />

writings of Saint Isaak of Syria, and a new<br />

poetry collection, Anaphora.<br />

www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/scott-cairns<br />

Scott Cairns<br />

Librettist, essayist, translator, and author of<br />

eight poetry collections, Scott Cairns is<br />

Curators’ Professor of English at University of<br />

Missouri, and Director of the Low-Residency<br />

MFA Program at Seattle Pacific University.<br />

His poems and essays have appeared in Poetry,<br />

Image, Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly,<br />

The New Republic, Plume, etc., and both have<br />

been anthologized in multiple editions of<br />

Best American Spiritual Writing.<br />

He blogs for the Religion Section of The<br />

Huffington Post. His recent books include Slow<br />

Pilgrim: The Collected Poems (2015), Idiot<br />

Psalms (2014), Short Trip to the Edge<br />

(spiritual memoir, 2016), Endless Life (translations<br />

and adaptations of Christian mystics,<br />

2014), and a book- length essay, The End of<br />

Suffering (2009).<br />

Image Credit: Lancia E. Smith<br />

www.lanciaesmith.com


Beyond Knowing<br />

—η ειρήνη του θεού η υπερέχουσα πάντα νουν<br />

The peace I pray to know is that same peace<br />

surpassing knowledge, that deep peace<br />

one finds most often in the sweet descent<br />

that drops the pilgrim to his knees.<br />

Abandoned at the bottom of the well<br />

the dear belovéd son might still<br />

uplift his eyes to witness through his tears<br />

the calm obtaining mid the stars;<br />

In the belly of the beast, the duly<br />

chastened prophet might yet extend<br />

his arms accepting the embrace that serves<br />

to prove a new serenity.<br />

And here, amid the daily tumult, we<br />

might still descend into what calm<br />

lies waiting in the bower of the heart,<br />

a stillness ever beckoning.<br />

Scott Cairns


city of Nantes, France, Academy prize from the<br />

Royal Academy of arts, science and literature<br />

from Belgium. She is a Humanist Laureate in<br />

The International Academy for Humanism,USA.<br />

She won Distinguished Humanist Award from<br />

Inter-national Humanist and Ethical Union,<br />

Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom<br />

From Religion foundation, USA., IBKA award,<br />

Ger-many, and Feminist Press Award, USA . She<br />

got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for<br />

Promo-tion of the Tolerance and Non-violence<br />

in 2005. She received the Medal of honor of<br />

Lyon.<br />

Taslima Nasreen<br />

Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer,<br />

physician, secular humanist and human rights<br />

activist, is known for her powerful writings on<br />

women oppression and unflinching criticism of<br />

religion, despite forced exile and multiple<br />

fatwas calling for her death. In India,<br />

Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction,<br />

nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped<br />

the best-seller’s list.<br />

Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She<br />

started writing when she was 13. Her writings<br />

won the hearts of people across the border and<br />

she landed with the prestigious literary award<br />

Ananda from India in 1992. Taslima won The<br />

Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from<br />

the European Parliament in 1994.<br />

She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from<br />

Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award<br />

and Human Rights Award from Government of<br />

France, Le Prix de l' Edit de Nantes from the<br />

Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent<br />

University and UCL in Belgium, and American<br />

University of Paris and Paris Diderot University<br />

in France, she has addressed gatherings in major<br />

venues of the world like the European Parliament,<br />

National Assembly of France, Universities<br />

of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc.<br />

She got fellowships as a research scholar at<br />

Harvard and New York Universities. She was a<br />

Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009.<br />

Taslima has written 43 books in Bengali, which<br />

includes poetry, essays, novels and<br />

autobiography series. Her works have been<br />

translated in thirty different languages. Some<br />

of her books are banned in Bangladesh.<br />

Because of her thoughts and ideas she has<br />

been banned, blacklisted and banished from<br />

Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal<br />

part of India. She has been prevented by the<br />

authorities from returning to her country since<br />

1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.<br />

www.taslimanasrin.com


You Go Girl!<br />

They said—take it easy…<br />

Said—calm down…<br />

Said—stop talkin'…<br />

Said—shut up….<br />

They said—sit down….<br />

Said—bow your head…<br />

Said—keep on cryin', let the tears roll…<br />

What should you do in response?<br />

You should stand up now<br />

Should stand right up<br />

Hold your back straight<br />

Hold your head high…<br />

You should speak<br />

Speak your mind<br />

Speak it loudly<br />

Scream!<br />

You should scream so loud that they must run for cover.<br />

They will say—'You are shameless!'<br />

When you hear that, just laugh…<br />

They will say— 'You have a loose character!'<br />

When you hear that, just laugh louder…<br />

They will say—'You are rotten!'<br />

So just laugh, laugh even louder…<br />

Hearing you laugh, they will shout,<br />

'You are a whore!'


When they say that,<br />

just put your hands on your hips,<br />

stand firm and say,<br />

"Yes, yes, I am a whore!"<br />

They will be shocked.<br />

They will stare in disbelief.<br />

They will wait for you to say more, much more…<br />

The men amongst them will turn red and sweat.<br />

The women amongst them will dream to be a whore like you.<br />

Taslima Nasreen


TEIL 3<br />

TEILNEHMENDE STUDENTEN<br />

CHAPTER 3<br />

PARTICIPATING STUDENTS


Adam Way<br />

Adam Way, born in Elizabethtown, is studying<br />

fine arts at Elizabethtown college. His main<br />

focus is on improving his 3 dimensional skills<br />

along with improving and discovering other<br />

techniques in different mediums.<br />

“The expressions we feel as people can be<br />

difficult to explain. Only through the artistic<br />

language and creative experimentation can we<br />

become something more than what we are<br />

now. This is what I hope to accomplish in my<br />

work.”<br />

Adam Way | April 2018<br />

Human Condition #2<br />

Ceramic and wood<br />

25 x 25 x 25 cm | 2017


Cooper Siegel<br />

Cooper Siegel is a sculptor who works primarily<br />

in bronze and clay, exploring emotion and the<br />

human figure. Cooper is currently a student at<br />

Elizabethtown College, majoring in Engineering<br />

and minoring in Studio Art. Cooper has studied<br />

fine art in Rome and aspires to attend<br />

graduate school for a Masters in Fine Art.<br />

“Mans struggle to attain peace has been with<br />

us since the dawn of time. The history books<br />

are filled with accounts of these struggles.<br />

“The Hand That Holds Us” is an attempt to<br />

document the inner struggle to attain our own<br />

individual peace. It is the hope of the artist<br />

that if the viewer can obtain inner peace for<br />

even just a moment then we can collectively<br />

move towards an external peace.”<br />

Cooper Siegel<br />

The Hand That Holds Us<br />

Bronze and marble<br />

38 x 23 x 38 cm | 2017


Georgia Grimm<br />

Georgia Grimm is an Elizabethtown College<br />

student majoring in Philosophy with minors in<br />

Science, International Studies and Visual Art.<br />

She aims to address the issue of climate<br />

change through writing and art with a<br />

philosophical critique of society and an<br />

understanding of scientific concepts. Aside<br />

from art, she enjoys music, caring for her<br />

animals, cooking, and spending time outside.<br />

“Art has always been an important part of<br />

who I am, growing and changing with me as I<br />

have done the same. I particularly enjoy<br />

painting, mixed media, collages, and drawing,<br />

although I like to consider fashion another<br />

form of art that allows me to be expressive<br />

each day. Color and texture both play an<br />

important role in my artistic process, helping<br />

me to create something reflective of what I<br />

am feeling internally. Nature in all its forms is<br />

my main inspiration, captivating me with its<br />

complexity.<br />

collected many small objects with the<br />

intention of using them in a future piece of<br />

art. This work is assembled out of three<br />

different projects: the girl, the mobile, and<br />

the base.<br />

In the same way that this piece was created<br />

out of both found and original objects, I<br />

believe humanity must come together with old<br />

and new ideas to create an ecocentric ethic<br />

for the purpose of healing both society and<br />

the environment. The girl in this piece stands<br />

upon the ground, surrounded by representations<br />

of life and her passionate and spiritual<br />

adoration of the Earth.”<br />

Georgia Grimm | April 2018<br />

Veneration of the Earth<br />

Mixed media<br />

81 x 23 x 23 cm | 2018<br />

The human form in particular is a reoccurring<br />

subject in my works, particularly in my<br />

drawings. Furthermore, my passion for various<br />

philosophical concepts regarding society, the<br />

environment, and metaphysics is another<br />

major theme within my designs, one that I aim<br />

to use to share my own philosophy in addition<br />

to writing.<br />

On “Veneration of the Earth”: This piece is a<br />

reflection of my love of nature and my<br />

concerns about society and the current<br />

environmental crisis. Over the years, I have

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