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Beats of the late Blake Parker, poet and performer
Published in ARTiculate Magazine, Spring/Summer 2006
photo: Fred Rosenburg
It’s the hypnogenetic cadence and rhythm of his words. The words sweep from human collapse and crumble to the sublime nature, the one which comes along for the holy, jolly, terrifying ride but isn’t defeated by it.
Book Club Feature published in Porch Magazine, January / February, 2005
[One of a series of articles on books written for this magazine.]
In that aromatic Mediterranean past before the invention of ice-boxes, there was a brief time when meats had to be consumed before they, like the spring, turned green. So “Carnevale” — literally “flesh farewell” in Italian (carne “flesh” and valle “farewell”) — rose from the canals of Venice after the feastday of Epiphany on January 6th as nothing fancier than the chance to clean out the pantry. When plague hit, however, farewells to flesh acquired new urgency and meant so much more than rancid food, especially as communities stagnated under class structures and the punitive creeds of the Counter-Reformation. Citizens of Venice hid their identities behind elaborate masks and costumes so that they could blow off steam; it was a punishable crime to forcibly doff another’s mask.
Porch Book Club Feature at Christmastime.
Published Porch Magazine, November/December 2004.
“Feast of Fools? Sounds like Christmas at our house,” my friend grins to show that his family celebrates the festive season with the same indulgence many North Americans enjoy.
