POETRY FROM PARADISE VALLEY

POETRY FROM PARADISE VALLEY
Click Image to Visit the Pecan Grove Press Web Page for Poetry from Paradise Valley

POETRY FROM PARADISE VALLEY web page

Poetry From Paradise Valley

Pecan Grove Press has released an anthology of poems, a sampling of works published in Valparaiso Poetry Review during its first decade, from the original 1999-2000 volume to the 2009-2010 volume.


Poetry from Paradise Valley includes a stellar roster of 50 poets. Among the contributors are a former Poet Laureate of the United States, a winner of the Griffin International Prize, two Pulitzer Prize winners, two National Book Award winners, two National Book Critics Circle winners, six finalists for the National Book Award, four finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award, two finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, and a few dozen recipients of other honors, such as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, etc.

Readers are encouraged to visit the Poetry from Paradise Valley page at the publisher's web site, where ordering information about the book can be found.

Best Books of Indiana 2011: Finalist. Judges' Citation: "Poetry from Paradise Valley is an excellent anthology that features world-class poetry, including the work of many artists from the Midwest, such as Jared Carter, Annie Finch, David Baker, and Allison Joseph. It’s an eclectic and always interesting collection where poems on similar themes flow into each other. It showcases the highest caliber of U. S. poetry."
—Indiana Center for the Book, Indiana State Library

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Helen Frankenthaler 1928-2011



Upon learning the news about Helen Frankenthaler’s death yesterday at the age of 83, I thought I would remind readers that her woodcut triptych, Madame Butterfly, served as the cover artwork for the Fall/Winter 2001-2002 issue (Volume III, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review. Since this issue of VPR was released only a few weeks after the 9/11 events, I believed a light and promising image was ideal for the cover as a contrast to the daily scenes seen on television and in newspapers at that time.

As always, Gregg Hertzlieb, the Director of the Brauer Museum of Art, kindly provided a commentary complementing the artwork, the opening of which I include below:


Helen Frankenthaler (born 1928) is a world-renowned abstract artist whose work heralded in painting’s next significant phase after abstract expressionism in the 1940s. Rather than apply paint in a thick, gestural manner, Frankenthaler chose to stain her canvases with broad expanses of veil-like color that give her finished works a transcendent, mystical glow. Her work is seldom about a distinct figure-ground relationship; instead, the expanses of color immerse the viewer in a space where each passage is of equal weight in a shimmering, decentered field. Frankenthalers early efforts would eventually inspire more austere approaches in the 1960s and 1970s, where painters would suppress painterly gesture even further to focus solely on color relationships.

Frankenthalers Madame Butterfly, a woodcut triptych printed in 2000, is a large work (41 3/4 x 79 1/2 inches) of remarkable complexity. . . .


I encourage visitors to remember Helen Frankenthaler by viewing her works of art, and I urge everyone to read the rest of Gregg Hertzlieb’s commentary.

1 comment:

Maureen said...

I first saw a Frankenthaler in the 1960s and never lost interest in this marvelous artist's work. I admired her for her insistence that she was, first and foremost, a painter, no adjectives attached. And what a painter she was!

Thank you for the Hertzlieb commentary on Frankenthaler's wonderful "Madame Butterfly".