Washington, DC
Jul. 15th, 2004 09:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
susanstinsonThe reading in DC was very small, but it felt bigger because I was standing near the front door, and people shopping in the store stopped to listen, at least for a while, and some were rapt. All of that motion and intensity felt like reading under water – having the work listened to like that always gives me a kind of swimming feeling. Swimming in the ocean – buoyant, with currents, dangers, exertion, and exhileration. The store staff – especially Robert, who had praised the book so much in his staff pick -- were gracious and excited about the book. He asked beautiful questions and said he would condense his review to send to BookSense to try to get Venus of Chalk, to be one of their picks, which would help a lot. They asked me to read a poem and gave me the present of a book, Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs (haven't looked at it yet), and said what a good event it had been. It's rare for bookstore owners to be excited when there's a small crowd, but Robert said, "Your admirers are a small group, but we're dedicated." Who wouldn't love that?
I stayed with the wonderful, practical, down-to-earth V, and had a delicious time catching up with her. I rode with her to the conference after she got out of work the next day.
In the morning, I went to The Renwick gallery and saw great nineteenth century landscape paintings like Thomas Moran's "Cliffs of the Upper Colorado River, Wyoming Territory (1882, oil, 16x24 – small), loaded with both beauty and the very ugly idea of manifest destiny. I grew up in the west, and there's a lot for me to see in looking at those paintings, not least, my brother's face. (His name is Don Stinson, and he's a painter of landscapes that almost pulse with beauty and feeling, too.)
I also saw What Remains, a very intense exhibit of photographs about death by Sally Mann at the Corcoran Gallery. She looks at decomposition of the body -- her beloved dog after a year buried in the woods, the bodies (very prominently one of a fat woman) outside at a site where researchers study what happens to the body after death – and it was almost too much for me, but it's staying with me in a strong, reflective way, all the rooms in their various ways, but especially the landscapes of the Civil War battlefield at Antietam with all of the bones of the war dead shaping the land, and the close-ups of her children's eyes.
I stayed with the wonderful, practical, down-to-earth V, and had a delicious time catching up with her. I rode with her to the conference after she got out of work the next day.
In the morning, I went to The Renwick gallery and saw great nineteenth century landscape paintings like Thomas Moran's "Cliffs of the Upper Colorado River, Wyoming Territory (1882, oil, 16x24 – small), loaded with both beauty and the very ugly idea of manifest destiny. I grew up in the west, and there's a lot for me to see in looking at those paintings, not least, my brother's face. (His name is Don Stinson, and he's a painter of landscapes that almost pulse with beauty and feeling, too.)
I also saw What Remains, a very intense exhibit of photographs about death by Sally Mann at the Corcoran Gallery. She looks at decomposition of the body -- her beloved dog after a year buried in the woods, the bodies (very prominently one of a fat woman) outside at a site where researchers study what happens to the body after death – and it was almost too much for me, but it's staying with me in a strong, reflective way, all the rooms in their various ways, but especially the landscapes of the Civil War battlefield at Antietam with all of the bones of the war dead shaping the land, and the close-ups of her children's eyes.
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Date: 2004-07-15 12:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-15 01:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-15 07:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-16 04:59 am (UTC)