JOURNAL ENTRY: VISITING RUSSELL ATKINS for the HOLIDAYS

JOURNAL ENTRY

Sunday, December 19th - 

I drove in the driving rain to visit Russell, taking a pink poinsettia (one of his favorite colors), cookies, a thermos of very hot, sweet coffee, two prints of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and a homemade book of 30 perfume-paged samples, titled Aromatics for Russell.

When I arrived, he was asleep and a curious attendant shook him brusquely, raised the headboard just a bit  and hollered, "Wake up, wake up. You have a visitor."  Russell responded, "I'm dying. I'm dying." "No you're not," the attendant harumphed. I said, "He's fine. He'll wake up. Or I'll just sit here." The attendant walked out.

Gradually, Russell came to, and I offered plastic spoonsful of coffee, which really woke him up. He loves strong caffeinated very sugared up coffee and was wide-eyed, cheerful. Not always coherent but he talked on many topics, often coherently

He tried three of the "aromatics" pages, including Chanel No. 5, which he has always loved, and he claimed to perceive all of them. (I have some doubts. A lot of people lose smell with age or covid, both of which he's had.)     

 Then I had him look at the two CMS cards. One is a postcard that shows the building in daytime and then in dark (its lights go on pink) as you tilt it. He could see it, and we used it to talk about the night Paul and I took him to accept the Cleveland Arts Prize for Lifetime Achievement. I reminded him he was the only one who received a standing ovation that night. That was after he gave his (unplanned) speech, and Sunday he seemed pleased for me to recall it. Then we looked at the other card, based on a painting by an artist who won the CA prize the year before Russell, "And Russell," I said, "he died a year later." "He what?" "He died, the year you won it" And he smiled and laughed softly, not disrespectfully, at the irony, so surprised he is at "still kicking."

Although he wasn't always coherent, he was talkative and cheerful. We spoke of the Simons. I told him I am trying to write an article on Adelaide. She died so young (of breast cancer) that a lot of people have forgotten her, but she was a big part of Free Lance,  I said. "Yes, she was," he repeated emphatically. He recalled the photo of Martin Simon that I showed him this past summer, and he remembered it: "A large photo of Martin at his cello," that ran with Martin's obituary.

Russell ate two mini-cupcakes (one chocolate, one vanilla, though his preference is white cake with chocolate frosting, which I couldn't find), a 2-bite brownie, and a homemade soft chocolate chip, which he spit the nuts out from. (He has no teeth and is on all soft food now.) This on top of the lunch he had polished off half an hour earlier. "All of it," the attendant reported. "He still has a really great appetite." He drank the whole large cup of coffee, three sugars. (May his nurses and diabetes forgive me, but he so loves it.)

I was hoping I could bring myself to stay for 45 minutes, but I looked at my phone, and an hour and a half had fled by, and I needed to get out before the Browns' fans hit the highway. Russell grew pensive and said, "I've done writing and music. I wonder what I'll do next. I think I'll try painting." 

I looked at him, nearly flat on his back and said, "How about if I bring you a set of pastels?"

He looked at me, "But that wouldn't be paint, would it?"

"But Russell, where would we put the paint? Here in the bed. How about water colors?" At least, I thought, we could just rinse the brushes with water.

He looked at me and began to outline the problems with working in water colors: it pools, the paper gets wavery....

I flashed on a mental photo of Kahlo, lying back, a canvas propped over her, a paint brush in her hand. Who cleaned up after that? 

He is having problems gripping. He couldn't even grip the cupcake. I had to help. But I know if I brought paint in, he'd paint with his teeth if he had to. 

He is bull-headed, just like another Russell I knew: my dad, whose birthday was one year and one week from Russell's. The two knew about each other, but never met. Some people might call Russell a nicer word like "persistent" or "determined." But I am sticking with the word "stubborn." It means "not open to change," and it fits.  Russell was change, and he wasn't about to change even when the whole literary world ignored him, bid him write about protest and the present and forget his wacky punctuation and syntax, his interest in Cleveland and buses and cemeteries. The world came around, thanks to Kevin Prufer, his editor and literary executor. 

Russell will be 98 in February. If you haven't read him yet, read his book World'd Too Much. Catch up with him.

AI Takes a Crack at Being my Poetry, and I'm Like "Wha?"

Recently, my dear friend Robin Johnson sent me a poem titled "Silent Stones," prefaced with, "So what do you think of this?" 
I dread getting poems from strangers who want to know what I think when what they mean is,  tell me this is a great poem, ready to publish. I usually try to answer as politely as I can that I prefer not to respond to work of someone I don't know, suggesting they find a poetry group to get feedback from, thanking them sincerely for thinking of me, but how I am overwhelmed just now (as I have been most waking moments of my life).  I was going to hold off showing it to you, but here we are in the narrative, so here it is:

Silent Stones

The stones are silent,
But they carry the weight
Of a thousand stories,
Whispers of forgotten lives.

They've seen empires rise and fall,
Watched as time slipped away,
Witnessed the joy and pain
Of generations come and gone.

And yet, they remain still,
Steadfast and resolute,
A testament to endurance,
An anchor in an ever-changing world.

So when you pass by a stone,
Take a moment to listen,
For within its silent surface
Lies a tale waiting to be told.

But Robin is no stranger, and I knew this wasn't her writing. She does write, but I think of her primarily as an actress and director in Minneapolis-St. Paul (and a wonderful one, best known for her portrayal of Elizabeth I in Timothy Findley's Elizabeth Rex.) She also is worlds ahead of me in using technology; she builds a website in the time it takes me to pull up a page. I thought it might be the poem of a friend of hers who was desperate for...something. I skimmed it, cast my eyes to the skies, looked up the title and saw a new book with the same title as the poem so replied, hoping to sound more insightful than I was being, "Nice. Is it a Susan Cummins poem?"

Robin replied, way too enthusiastically:
Oh, thank God you approve! (maybe not for much longer) I was messing with ChatGPT last night and I asked it if it knew who you were. It responded yes and proceeded to list your CV. I then asked it to write a poem “in the style of Diane Kendig” and this is what it came up with. After I shared it, I thought “What will you say if she tells you she hates it?” I don’t know how you feel about artificial intelligence, but there it is… aspiring to be you.

I reread the poem over and over, trying to see what of me was in that poem. I have never written about stones. I may never have written the word "stone." Not crags or rocks or overhangs. To my discredit, I seldom write poems about nature at all, especially not her more inanimate subjects. A bit on deer, skunks, dogs, a coyote... okay, one on water. Still, no stones. The end-stops of most of the lines drove me crazy, and ending with the imperative struck me so hard, I went back and re-read all of my poems online. Not a single imperative in any of them. Oh, and I only ever capitalized every line in ONE poem in which I was trying to capture an 18th century feel, and it's not online. And the

clichés were killing me: rise and fall, joy and pain, ever-changing world, tale waiting to be told. Yikes!

And then, my decades-asleep paranoia awoke, and I thought, "What if other poets think I write like this?" (Note, I didn't think, "Do I write like this?" ah, haha.) And I sent it to my monthly poetry group, saying, "I can give you the backstory if you want it, but don't spend too much time on this one." We never give backstories until we have eviscerated the poems, but I hated to think of Laurie, Laura, and Richard trying to breathe life into this, or pick at commas in order to have something to say. No one wanted a backstory.

Still, when the group met, I couldn't help myself and against all our protocols, I quickly blabbed a one-sentence backstory. One person said, "I thought to myself, 'This doesn't even sound like Diane.'" I so should have shut-up and listened to what they thought on their own reading, but I couldn't because something about this really unhinged me. (For one thing, it thinks I am my CV, so there's that.) I don't even know ChatGPT, but it purports to know me. It might say, like my students used to, "But I didn't have enough ti-i-i-ime," which is how Robin explained it:

BTW, that poem was generated in about 10 seconds. It took that little time for it to scan the ‘web and cull from your work.

 I sent Robin an email pointing out the many troublesome aspects of this poem I would never write, and she pointed out that it was her first go at working with ChatGT, and one would need to be much more specific in telling it what to do. I mean, uh, coaxing it along.

She's right, as was exemplified in the recent NYT article "A.I. Is an Expert At Making Bad Art." The article insists that the right artist can get A.I. to do better, just as a good teacher can help a willing student to write better. The article follows a visual artist as he coaches A.I. in improving its imitation of him: "[S]ome of the first experiments were underwhelming: blobby landscapes, figures drawn without brushstrokes, flat abstractions...." And then, the artist critiques A.I., and the work improves.

But where would I begin with instructing this particular poem? Suggest a new topic, like my current landscaping endeavors? No land(es)caping endeavors. Think about what Rebecca Dunham is saying about contemporary pastorals. About Keats. Did he write about stones? (*googling*): One stoney metaphor's all. That's enough on stones. Maybe grass. Fescue as one poet recently wrote. 

I think I'd just prefer to read a poem. Or write another poem. Which is exactly what I am going to go do. It will not be about stones.

(Many thanks to Robin for continuing to show the way through technology and art and education. )

MY SUMMER AUTHOR EVENTS:

Workshops, Writings, Booksales, & more! 

(Most of these are open to the public. *NP if not public)

June 2 - First Friday in Canton, 5-9 p.m.

My book of poems and essays about the Spanish artist Maria Blanchard, Woman with a Fan goes on sale in the Canton Museum of Art Gift shop. The Canton Museum of Art is free on First Fridays. Come on downtown and see me in the museum 5:00 -7:00 and visit all the neat activities for this month's theme, "Chalk the Walk," in the museum and out on the street.

June 3 - Street Poetry Project in Cleveland,  5-7 p.m.

 I will be joining the "Free Poetry Project" to write poems on request using typewriters. The brain child of Geoff Polk, I will join him and Cherie Bullock to fill pages with poetry on demand for a private gala fundraiser for the Cleveland Borderlight (Fringe) August 3-5 Festival. The Chicago version of our event is "Poems While You Wait," by Kathleen Rooney, et. al. Read about them here. 

June 10 - Perry Township Picnic in the Park, Noon-3:00

Along with my neighbor, Vance Voyles, author of Soldier's Heart and other works, I'll be selling and signing my books, including Prison Terms, about my 18 years in medium security, and Woman with a Fan, about Spanish Painter, Maria Blanchard. At Hartwick Park, on the 13th Street, between Perry H.S. and Edison Middle School. Bring a picnic!

*NP July 5 & 26 - Creative Writing Workshop for families

The Canton City Schools are sponsoring arts workshops for homeless families, and I am excited to be a part of this activity, leading  participants in making "Cut-Out" poems and "Color-Out" poems.