June 2008: Just what I need! A new blog! This one is called Dowsing, for reasons which will become apparent when you take a look at it. If you're interested in that sort of thing, come on over. Dowsing is more personal than my other blogs and will mostly chronicle my search for a new spiritual home, but I'll also be consolidating some stuff from The Perfidy Report, which is gone, and from Spawn of Blogorrhea, which will eventually be getting a name-change, reflecting its book arts focus.
June 2008: Got some new pics of some of my practice Coptic-stitched journals up over at Flickr and here. Take a look. I think I'm getting good enough that I might sell a few, instead of giving away the practice runs to my long-suffering friends.
May/June 2008: Put a couple of new poems up over on the poem page, a very old one that Jen requested for her blog and a brand spanking, new one. Well, maybe not spanking, but brand new. And—TA-DA!—some brand new books! Just coptic journals I've been making for friends, to practice my sewing, but they're cute anyway, made from double-sided wrapping paper and good sketch paper. Check 'em out over on my Flickr page.
January 2008: New poem in The Poetry Center of San Jose's journal Cæsura: "Blind Spots." The issue's theme is poetry about art, and I'm really pleased to have this particular poem published, even though I wrote it years ago. It's a response to David Hockney's photocollages that I saw on my first trip to England.
April 23, 2007: Almost a year after the original edition of two, Border and Frontier is now a limited edition of 25, and I'm launching a new publishing effort called Maelstrom House. Author Carlos Schröder read this past weekend at a lovely place in DC's Takoma Park called the Culture Shop. More details (and pics!) at Spawn of Blogorrhea.
Artist's book, edition of 25. Poems and photographs by Carlos Schröder; book design by Lee Kottner.
the torturer knows this
and lets the victim know
that he can think of the body
as chapters in a book
independent from each other yet connected
then tears the pages
one by one.
© Carlos Schröder, 1998
Artist’s Book. Text, design, and photos by Lee Kottner.
Moving to a new place is always traumatic. Moving to New York is always something else again. Postcards from Home is a collection of a dozen short prose poems about just that. Each poem is a postcard unto itself, collected together with in a unique binding designed by Marcia Gilbert and me, illustrated and “stamped” by Marcia.
November,
O, Love—
The cold is descending. I've been looking for a new winter coat, one as heavy & warm as your arms around me. I've tried on tweeds & leather & second hand furs. They're not the same. Last night, I crossed the tiny triangle MacDougal, Sixth & Prince cut, walking in the early evening with a man I've just met. He's younger than I, another writer—God help me!—blond & barefaced, a little shy & tender. We were on our way to a bookstore; I'd misled us both. On the corner stood a couple: she wrapped inside his arms & coat (see how it comes together?), he with his cheek against her hair, looking off into the distance of Sixth Avenue. They stood still as marble in the dark, only his fingers running lightly over her skin. They did not know we were there and we said nothing as we passed them, but later, just out of earshot, he turned to look and murmured to me, "Sometimes you see things here that are so poignant." I wanted to take his face in my hands then, and kiss him for those words. What makes us confess this to each other, in dark & distance?
It's going to be a cold winter, I think.
THREE LIVES & COMPANY BOOKSTORE
W. 10TH ST., GREENWICH VILLAGE
© Lee Kottner 2004
Short Story collection/novel set in New York City’s Central Park.
If you've been to the park, you know that, in many ways, it’s all things to all people: nature preserve, birder’s paradise, jogging track, playground, performance space, trysting spot. The park has many moods and many personalities, depending on where you enter it, and why you're there. For instance, there’s something intensely wonderous and soothing about standing in the middle of the Ramble and not hearing or seeing the City around you, as though you were miles removed from it, somewhere upstate. But when dusk falls, the Ramble and the rest of the park can be a deeply sinister place, full of shadows and danger, confusingly easy to get lost in with the lack of city landmarks.
The question is, do we change the park, or does the park change us? And what if the park had a life of its own?
