Serial Flirtations: Rotari’s Muses Opens at Norton Simon Museum

This weekend the exhibit "Serial Flirtations: Rotari's Muses" opened at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California.

As they note in their introduction, "Rotari began his career in his hometown of Verona. As he gained recognition, he traveled widely throughout Italy, studying the works of Venetian, Roman and Neapolitan artists. In these early years, he painted primarily religious and mythological subjects. But by 1750, when he was called to Vienna to work for Empress Maria Theresa, and then Dresden, where he was summoned by King Augustus III, his attention would turn to painting bust-length portraits of elegant members of their courts. In 1755, Rotari was summoned by Empress Elizabeth of Russia to work in St. Petersburg, where he and his prolific studio would produce hundreds of depictions of young girls, all of them demonstrating varying degrees of emotion—subtle, but clearly legible. The painter’s virtuosity for such work earned him great acclaim, both for his talents and his prodigious output..."

As a whole, the installation commemorates Rotari’s inclination to summon his muses and celebrates the 310th anniversary of the artist’s birth. 

This is also the last weekend to catch Van Gogh’s iconic ‘Bedroom’ on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago and see it in person, not just on postcards or a computer, to get a sense of its size and shape, and its true tones and colors as they've endured over the decades  when it was first painted in 1888, nearly 130 years ago. This is the first time this particular painting has ever been displayed on the West Coast!

The Norton Simon Museum is known around the world as one of the most remarkable private art collections ever assembled. Over a thirty-year period industrialist Norton Simon (1907–1993) amassed an astonishing collection of European art from the Renaissance to the 20th century and a stellar collection of South and Southeast Asian art spanning 2,000 years.

Approximately 1,000 works from the permanent collection of 12,000 objects are on view in the Norton Simon Museum’s galleries and sculpture garden throughout the year. The museum is closed on Tuesdays. Adults are $12. Seniors are $9. Students, veterans and youth under 18 get in free. On weekends, it opens at 11 a.m. until 8 p.m. (5 p.m. on Sunday)

Parking is free, and it is located at 411 W. Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena, CA 91105-1825. The turn into the driveway can come up a little fast, as an FYI if it's your first visit there.

Notably, if you time it right, admission is free for all visitors the first Friday of every month from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.

[Poet Spotlight] Hoa Nguyen

Born in the Mekong Delta and raised in the Washington, D.C. area, Hoa Nguyen studied Poetics at New College of California in San Francisco. With the poet Dale Smith, Nguyen founded Skanky Possum, a poetry journal and book imprint in Austin, TX, their home of 14 years.

Robert Tejada of Tripwire praised her book Dark saying "Through a torsion it effects between the representation of memory and immediacy, Hoa Nguyen’s Dark comprises a series of self-portraits weathered into the magenta fade of Kodacolor prints; into the warp of random perspective as viewed from the telescoping lens of time. Nguyen has wrought a music whose candid nature is identifiably her own, with its unique attention to the embarrassments of the spoken.[...] Stretching sense with clamped sound, Dark is articulated in a language that enacts the amazement and discomforts in the transit from childhood to adulthood; the shaping of self from passive recipient to active subject."

She is the author of several poetry collections, including Red Juice: Poems 1998-2008 and As Long as Trees Last.  Her 2016 collection was Violet Energy Ingots, which the publishers noted "contain a sense of dis-ease, rupture, things frayed, and grief—as love shimmers the edges. Ryo Yamaguchi describes Nguyen’s writing as “a kind of stuttering with intelligences, impressions, and emotions flaring up as the words find their pathways.” As grounded in the earth as in the stars, her poems are reminders of the possibilities of contemplation in every space and moment. It was listed in the top poetry books of Fall 2016 by Publishers Weekly.

Her poetry has also been collected in the anthologies Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sound: The Teachers of WritersCorps in Poetry and Prose (City Lights, 2009), The Best of Fence (Fence Books, 2009), For the Time Being: A Bootstrap Anthology (Bootstrap Books, 2008), Black Dog, Black Night: Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry (Milkweed Editions, 2008), and Not for Mothers Only (Fence Books, 2007).

She often has a spare, brief style such as her poem "Pharoah Notes" from Violet Energy Ingots: 

She lives in Toronto, Ontario where she curates a reading series and teaches poetics privately and at Ryerson University.

Liberia Seeks Laos’s Help In Rice Self-Sufficiency

In one of the more interesting international relationships developing, it appears the African nation of Liberia is building ties to Laos in order to address rice production to meet the needs of its population, according to an article by the Liberian Observer.

While today the relationship seems centered on agricultural issues, I would hope to see an expansion of interaction in the future that builds further cultural to one another. For those of you who are curious, this is what life would be like for each of them if they switched places today, courtesy of My Life Elsewhere using data from the 2014 World Factbook.

This year marks the 170th anniversary of Liberian independence, although the US did not initially recognize their independence until the time of the Civil War.  The first and oldest modern African republic, Liberia holds the historical distinction of being the only African republic to have self-proclaimed independence without revolting from another nation, and maintained independence during the European colonial era. 

This is not to say they haven't had challenges, including a relatively recent civil war and controversies of blood diamonds, illegal timber exports, and significant charges of corruption among government officials. 

It's a history worth studying, particularly they way they've implemented truth and reconciliation committees in the 2000s to address their past and rebuild their country.

According to the Liberian Observer, Ambassador Thomas of Liberia remarked "We understand that Lao PDR is self-sufficient in rice production, and is now exporting to China and other countries.”

In the article, he also stated “Liberia’s staple diet is also rice, which the government would welcome a rapid acceleration of efforts to establish a bilateral cooperation mechanism between the two countries, which would help Liberia move from being an importer to that of becoming self-sufficient and an exporter of rice in the West Africa region in partnership with Lao PDR,”

Time will tell what else is possible for the two nations if they can find significant common ground with one another.

Speculative poets of Afrofuturism

As we close Black History Month in the US, here are some of my personal favorite emerging and established poets who've added greatly to speculative poetry and Afrofuturism over the years. There are of course, many more, but I hope this will be a good start to encourage my readers to seek their work out, as well as those whom I have not mentioned in this particular note.

It is my hope you all take the time to get to know their work. We often see the tremendous advances our prose writers and musicians are paving the way for us in Afrofuturism, but I feel it's vital to take the time to let our poets in the community know that they, too, have added deeply to the tradition, and their voice is meaningful and necessary, and at times terrifying and hilarious, as it should be. Keep going, keep creating.

Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy K. Smith is an educator and the author of Life on Mars. Tracy K. Smith earned her BA from Harvard University and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. From 1997 to 1999 she held a Stegner fellowship at Stanford University. Smith is the author of three books of poetry. In addition to Life On Mars, she wrote The Body's Question (2003), which won the Cave Canem prize for the best first book by an African-American poet; and Duende (2007), winner of the James Laughlin Award and the Essense Literary Award.  In 2014 she was awarded the Academy of American Poets fellowship. She has also written a memoir, Ordinary Light (2015). Smith teaches creative writing at Princeton University and lives in Brooklyn.

Airea D. Matthews is the author of the highly anticipated Simulacra coming this year, selected by Carl Phillips as the winner of the 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets. Matthews received an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, where she is currently the assistant director; she also serves as executive editor of The Offing. A Cave Canem Fellow and a Kresge Literary Arts Fellow, Matthews lives in Detroit. This year, she is also a Rhsyling Award nominated poet.

Linda D. Addison is a legendary figure in SFF who was the first African American to win a coveted Bram Stoker Award in Horror for her poetry, for 2001's Consumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes, and she's gone on to win several more. I profiled her recently, along with Akua Lezli Hope, who is the author of Them Gone and a winner of the SFPA SF Poetry Contest in the short form category.

Tlotlo Tsamaase is the first speculative poet from Botswana I've read, but already her work shows great promise in the years ahead.

LaShawn M. Wanak‘s work can be found in Strange Horizons, Ideomancer, and Daily Science Fiction. She is a 2011 graduate of Viable Paradise.

Naru Sundar has just started coming onto the scene but I enjoyed his "Origami Crane / Light-Defying Spaceship" and so many of his other poems that I'm happy to recommend him for those who want to see one of our promising talents in action.

Out in Oakland, Lisa Marie is holding it down, exploring the complex possibilities of being through her poetry, theater, performance art and essays. It's well worth checking out her work.

Brandon O'Brien is a Rhysling-nominated poet and writer from Trinidad. His work has been shortlisted for the 2014 Alice Yard Prize for Art Writing and the 2014 and 2015 Small Axe Literary Competitions, and is published or upcoming in Strange Horizons, Reckoning, and New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean, among others. He is also a performer and facilitator with the.art.is Performing Arts Company, and the poetry editor of FIYAH Magazine. I'm just beginning to become familiar with his poetry, but what I've seen so far tells me we can expect great work from him over the decades ahead.

Nisi Shawl's been involved with Steamfunk, SFF and speculative literature for decades and has been a positive figure and mentor for many around the world.

Somali American Sofia Samatar has been an exceptional trailblazer in Afrofuturism and the world of speculative literature, particularly known for her prose, but I think it's vital to look at what she's doing in poetry, as well, such as "The Sand Diviner" or "Notes Towards a Theory of Quantum Blackness."

Tonya Liburd, whom I've also highlighted recently is an emerging poet who was recently nominated for a Rhysling Award. Based in Canada with Caribbean roots, she's an Associate Editor for Abyss & Apex, she was longlisted for a 2015 Carter V Cooper (Vanderbilt) Prize, and her work has appeared in Space And Time, Cascadia Subduction Zone, Postscripts to Darkness 6, UnCommon Minds, Expanded Horizons, the Mondays Are Murder series, Polar Borealis Magazine, Grievous Angel, and elsewhere. She’s also an affiliate member of the Horror Writer Association.

J.T. Stewart is an accomplished poet, writer, playwright, editor, teacher, and performance artist who has taught creative writing, literature, and film studies at the University of Washington, Seattle Central Community College, and at Fairhaven College (Western Washington University). Her poetry collections Nommo and Ceremony can be found in the University of Washington's archive of Northwest writers. Some of her other work appears in The Seattle Review, Raven Chronicles, Seattle Times, and The Portland Oregonian. J.T. belongs to New York City's Harlem Writers' Guild and co-founded Seattle's Clarion West Science Fiction Writer's Workshop.. She has been an invited writer-in-residence and board member at Hedgebrook, a private retreat for women writers on Whidbey Island, where a distinguished writer's scholarship was established in her name.

The late Octavia Estelle Butler (1947 – 2006) was a multiple recipient of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, She was one of the best-known women in the field. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Fellowship, nicknamed the "Genius Grant," and her poem "Earthseed" remains deeply influential as an example of speculative poetry,

Yusef Komunyakaa is known for many amazing works, but among my favorites of his is his 2001 collection Talking Dirty To The Gods. That book assured me it was more than acceptable to keep on the path of the speculative poet. This collection was structured as "four by four by four-or-so verbal performances stuck together to form an oblique and psychologically intricate antihistory of the human world, from Homo erectus to MTV. The poems keep up particular interests in sculpture; craft objects, from thumbscrews to valentines; sex; insects; and classical and comparative mythography. Polyphemus the Cyclops, Godzilla the movie, a full bill of Greek gods and ancient personages, the Renaissance artist Pollaiuolo, Rodin, W.E.B. DuBois, the minor Modernist martyr Harry Crosby, and (as Komunyakaa's devotees might expect) a team of jazz musicians stand among the large cast of characters."

One of America’s most significant literary figures, Ishmael Reed has published over thirty books of poetry, prose, essays, and plays, as well as penned hundreds of lyrics for musicians ranging from Taj Mahal to Macy Gray. His work is known for its satirical, ironic take on race and literary tradition, as well as its innovative, post-modern technique. Reed’s books of poetry include Conjure (1972), nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, Chattanooga (1973), A Secretary to the Spirits (1978), New and Collected Poems (1988), and New and Collected Poems 1964-2007 (2007), which was named one of the best books of poetry of the year by the New York Times, and won the California Gold Medal in Poetry. Among his most influential poems on me is of course "Beware: Do Not Read This Poem."

Notoriously unphotographed, almost Sasquatchian in that regard, Francis Wesley Alexander is a Rhysling nominated speculative poet based in Ohio and is prolifically writing, while enjoying the antics of two kittens. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in diverse publications such as Disturbed, Star*Line, Prune Juice, Scifaikuest, Illumen, Martian Wave, Trysts of Fate, and numerous others. He particularly writes in shorter forms which I've found engaging and intriguing.

Finally, for this introduction, one of my other favorite poets is Gary Jackson. Born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, Gary Jackson is the author of the poetry collection Missing You, Metropolis, which received the 2009 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in Callaloo, Tin House, 32 Poems, and elsewhere. He is an Assistant Professor at the College of Charleston in Charleston, SC. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/595023 has two of my favorite poems of his, "Tryouts" and "Shazam." Be sure to read his work when you can.