Archive for: Review

AQ14 Autumn 2015 Book Reviews
by Bryan R. Monte

Nights at Rizzoli by Felice Picano. O/R Books, ISBN 978-1-939293-67-1, 224 pages.
The Don’t Touch Garden by Kate Foley. Arachne Press. ISBN 978-1-909208-19-3, 61 pages.
The Magic Laundry by Jacob M. Appel. Snake Nation Press, ISBN 978-0-9883029-9-0, 134 pages.
When I was a Twin by Michael Klein, Sibling Rivalry Press, ISBN 978-1-937420-91-8, 63 pages

My mailbag was much heavier this summer due to readers’ responses to my short, diaried memoir of Philip Levine and the books I received from publishers and authors. I have had plenty to read and I have selected one memoir, one book of short stories and two books of poetry to review for a good mix of genres.

The memoir, Nights at Rizzoli by former New Yorker and now Southern California resident, Felice Picano, is a small, handsome book with beautiful cover art—NYC building fronts (front) and artists, (back) by Max Wittert. It describes Picano’s work at the Rizzoli bookstore in “snotty, pushy, Upper Midtown Fifth Avenue” (across from Tiffany’s) in the 1970s, the store’s multi-national, polyglot staff and their celebrity customers. These included among others Mick Jagger, Philip Johnson, Salvador Dali, Rose Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Picano presents most of these encounters with celebrities as things that just happened to him, not meetings he sought since he fails to recognize both Kennedys until well into their first meetings and, in fact, he turns down a date with Johnson at his “nine-room penthouse suite overlooking the city.” Then there are the more unusual encounters such as the man who was building a new house in Montana who asked Picano one evening for suggestions on what sorts of books he should stock there to make his artist guests feel at home. Seven thousand dollars worth of books later, Picano helped him find an answer.

At his job interview, Picano is asked to make suggestions on how the store can improve its sales—“get more intellectuals and college students coming in…by offering Garcia Marquez, Octavio Paz, Lezema Lima.” Rizzoli continues to expand as Felice convinces the store manager, Mr. M., to display English-language, best-seller books in the store more prominently, especially Jaws for which Picano makes a special poster composed of “a pair of snorkel goggles I owned, splashed…with nail polish and added in my old rubber swim fins…chewed up with a box cutter.” Picano also assists in setting up Rizzoli’s art gallery next door whose opening features Erté’s work and includes the appearance of the legendary dancer, Josephine Baker, who arrives in a white Rolls Royce.

In addition to his bookstore duties, Picano also describes his activities as a nascent gay activist, as the leader of the Purple Quill gay men’s writers group and as a volunteer in an ad hoc vigilante squad through which on “Thursday(s)” from “midnight to 3 A.M.” he protected the gays and their suburban daddies who had sex in the empty meat and produce trucks parked “beneath what was left of the elevated West Side Highway” from teenage gangs from “the projects above 14th St.” Picano’s partner in this squad was an Afro-American transexual called Marsha Johnson who “kept three sharpened-to-stiletto-point Afro combs in her big “do.”” Picano’s memoir takes you close to the action—physical, historical and sexual. His writing style is very clean and his description has just the right number of details to place his reader firmly in the milieu making his memoir not only informative, but also entertaining.

The second book is The Magic Laundry by Jacob M. Appel. This collection represents his third prize for fiction writing in about a year. Winner of the Serena McDonald Kennedy Fiction Award, The Magic Laundry is a collection of eight interesting and quirky short stories. By accident, I was sent a few extra copies. Appel wrote that I could keep the copies for myself. I wrote him, however, that I would give them to my workshop students with the adage: “This is how you write good short stories!”—and that’s true. These stories are composed of characters from many walks of life all dealing with life’s unexpected twists and turns—from within or without—a university professor and Darwin descendant, whose daughter returns home at X-mas break with an orang-utan she liberated from her university’s animal laboratory, a Turkish watchmaker in Brooklyn who decides to join the fight against the construction of a sports facility in his neighbourhood because leading the charge is a very attractive woman only to discover, accidentally, that he has a talent for public-speaking and politics, and the cover story about a man who wants a nice, quiet job so he can study the classics and play baseball, whose parents set him up in the coin laundry business whose machines mysteriously seem to heal people’s ailments, creating problems with his customers and competitors. This collection marks the post-Modernist end of the Hemingway code where heterosexual men avoid “talky time.” Appel’s main characters are well-rounded, articulate (at least internally) and caught in multi-tiered conflicts, whose outcomes this reader usually found (seven out of eight times) delightfully unexpected. If you want to know more about how to write contemporary fiction, read this book.

Even though the old adage goes: “Never judge a book by its cover” the cover of Michael Klein’s new poetry book, When I Was A Twin, is certainly very attractive. Looking like “Wolverine goes to Fire Island,” Klein stands tall on the front cover with his brushed back hair and beard and big hands, wearing a P-coat on a wooden boardwalk which winds out towards the ocean. This is another exquisite cover from Sibling Rivalry Press—cover photos and art by Shef Reynolds; cover design by Seth Pennington.

The poem “Harmonium” begins this collection. It’s a haunting update about what has changed in the poet’s world and life (with a reference to Allen Ginsberg’s trademark harmonium playing at his readings) since the death of the person to whom it is addressed. The poet mentions Bruce/Caitlan Jenner’s transition, gay marriage, not going to cinemas anymore to watch films and: “Websites: So many websites like radium./There’s a website that consists entirely of lists/Whenever I look at a list with names on it/I think of death and awards.” With this poem, Klein deftly introduces the three subjects—death and lists and fame—which his book explores throughout.

His structural alternation of block prose poems with more experimental list poems, whose imagistic links change sometimes from line to line, and his use of these two forms to explore subjects such as film, theatre, actors, actresses, and horse racing, caught and kept my interest through the entire book. And the list poems with their fast changing-linking-build-your-own-narrative, rather than covering up or confusing the subjects actually strips away and clarifies them. Klein, like Trinidad in this issue, also has a poem about 9/11, “The planes I said and then the nothing afterwards,” which describes the cruel chance that determined who survived that day: “Did they ask for more/living at the intersection of alive and not living?” and the bewilderment of those survivors who lived to see the disaster wrought by Hurricane Sandy a few years later: “And now, or just last week, more disaster: the predicted water/took up something furious to wreck the houses down in Queens.”

But it is the sorrow for a sibling slowly drowning in depression at a distance which is the main theme of this book, an experience rendered painfully accurate in “The Motivation of an Actor”

….I watched my brother live, but couldn’t touch the flame around his life. And I didn’t want to be absorbed by art. I didn’t trust art to throw me back….

Klein’s poetic rendering of his relationship with his twin brother rings, unfortunately, very true to my own with a schizophrenic, artistic relative.

And I do have another confession to make. Even though I’m gay, I must admit I have more of an affinity for Klein’s poems about horses “Other Horses” (experimental poem) and “The Lives of Horses” (prose poem) than for those about the theatre and film, “Music for the Theater” and “Giuliette Masina” having gone yearly to watch a cousin compete in the equestrian arena at the state fair. I do still, however, enjoy Klein’s list poems such as “Things that Might Be True” and “The Medium” having also started to write my own series about past boyfriends and therapists and why things went wrong.

When I was a Twin is a book of well-written poems, some more challenging and experimental than others. (which, in my opinion, is exactly what a poetry book should offer). I think readers will experience much leesplezier (reading pleasure) as we say in Dutch from this thin volume of poetry, which I wholeheartedly recommend.

Last is a poetry book by British-born, Amsterdam resident and local treasure, Kate Foley. The Don’t Touch Garden is a compilation of poems from six of Foley’s previous books. These poems are about birth, adoption, childhood, family and and the search, albeit too late, for one’s biological parent. This new edition of these poems by Arachine Press is bound in a cover which includes a photo of a garden with a gate and a bench which, despite the book’s title, seems to welcome one in. This book, like Klein’s, is small enough to fit into a coat pocket and is the type of book I would read and meditate on when I was younger as I wandered around my town “looking for the trapdoor out of suburbia.” In “Bison” Foley comments on her almost lifelong lack of knowledge of her biological parents: “My pre-history is as blank as a people without pots/or bones.” Or with advancing age, suddenly finding our parents in the mirror as we begin to resemble them unwittingly physically and psychologically. The poem “Paradox” also discusses this voyage of discovery of parentage: “Mirror, mirror on the wall/the old joke goes/I am my mother after all.//but which ?” It also illustrates her advice in the introduction to this volume: “to parent the face we find in the mirror.” It is a brave book, which recreates what some children growing up were probably told to (and would like to forget), but which others feel impelled to explore to understand who they really are.

The Don’t Touch Garden includes poems about war-time Britain, (the title poem being the longest and the most interesting in this collection to me due to its historical nature), poems about young parents, “Corchipoo,” (including a young child overhearing her parents having sex) and an abusive, adoptive uncle “The Man on the Bike.” In this poem, the adoptive mother asks: “Tell me! What did he say?”//She means ‘What did he do?’” The tensions between wondering about who her birth parents were, to trying to find a place in a home where she doesn’t seem to fit due to her expanding poetic perception and her parents’ more restricted worldview (whom she takes care of as they age) continues throughout the book including the poem, “The End of a Long Conversation” where Foley meditates on her parents’ death and final separation without a proper good-bye. The Don’t Touch Garden is small, beautiful, thought-provoking book, which should be in every English-language collection about adoption and searching for one’s true parentage.

AQ12 Spring 2015 Exhibition Reviews
by Bryan R. Monte

Ed Atkins, Recent Ouija Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 21 February to 31 May 2015
Rembrandt van Rijn, Late Rembrandt, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam  12 February to 17 May 2015

Is Anyone There?

“Is anyone there?” was usually the first question asked at the beginning of a Ouija board game, played during adolescent sleepovers just before bed. Ouija is a game which requires the suspension of disbelief that one or more persons whose hands are resting on the planchette are not actually pushing it around the board to produce answers rather than supernatural powers. Recent Ouija is the name of Ed Atkins’(1982) has chosen for his one man, multi-media show held at Amsterdam’s Stedelijke Museum until 31 May 2015. The show in the museum’s basement is divided into nine spaces: #1 Warm, Warm, Warm Spring Mouths, 2013; #2 Counting 1, 2, 3,; 2014 #3 Bastard, 2014, #4 Ribbons, 2014; #5 Happy Birthday!!, 2014; #6 Untitled, 2015, #7 ‘No-one is more work than me’ flextime redux, 2014; #8 Even Pricks, 2013 and #9 Material Witness OR A Liquid Cop, 2012.

Gallery #1 features a computer generated model, one of Atkins’ avatars, which recites poety as its hair grows longer. One of the poems it recites (and one of the high points of this exhibition for me) is Gilbert Sorentino’s “The Morning Roundup” from his book, Corrosive Sublimate. Sorrentino’s meta-poetry and meta-fiction is intended to stand for itself with images that come fast and change quickly so that one must (at least partially) construct one’s own narrative to make sense of what is going on. (I was introduced to Sorentino’s work when I published my literary magazine, No Apologies, in San Francisco in the ’80s). Borrowing on Sorrentino’s modus operendi, Atkins offers meta-poetry and meta-imagery in his Recent Ouija paintings, video and audio pieces in which the visitor is to construct his/her own narrative. The Ouija effect, however of these installations (where meanings are to arise spontaneously as if created by the incorporeal other and not from the self as in when someone “consults” a Ouija board to find answers to questions) is not all that apparent to me nor was I surprised, perplexed, challenged, etc. by what I saw, heard or felt. In fact, the only image from Atkin’s work that momentarily startled me was on the cover of his Zürich/Mainz Kunsthallen/Julia Stoscheck Collection exhibition catalogue—that of a small hand grasping a much larger than scale thumb which momentarily appeared to me as another body appendage.

Perhaps it’s because I am aware of some of the sources of Atkins spoken or sung texts and visual iconography—classical music, advertising, postmodern poetry, gay culture, world events—that I readily made associations from my own experience or world events for his images and avatars so that this installation didn’t seem magical or its meanings did’t seem to come from unknown sources.

For example, the video of the male avatar in gallery #4 (Ribbons, 2014), naked and hiding under a café tables or shirtless with his head resting top of the café table, a cigarette burning to ash in his hand reminds me of Warmostraat backrooms from the 1990s and the Straight to Hell videos of a decade later, in which various straight-identified, young men were subjected to various sorts of gay sexual bondage and humiliating words for various bodily orifices or appendages were written on their heads. (Although the Internet is full of images and videos of many straight lager lads have also had some of written some of the same phrases on their foreheads of their inebriated, unconscious friends). However, I can’t remember too many of these young men with their heads on café tables singing “Erbarme dich, Mein Gott” (Have mercy upon me, My God) from J. S. Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion where Peter begs God tearfully for forgiveness for denying he knew Jesus thrice to save his own life. (Although this pairing of high-brow music with low-brow culture has also been used before in the film, Clockwork Orange, for example). Even the disembodied head in gallery #5 (Happy Birthday!!, 2014) with a bit of blood below its nose emploring: “Look at me, look at me!” and reassuring with: “It’s just a bit of blood” didn’t make me look or feel squeamish as I am of real blood. Thus, this technology and installation did not suspend my disbelief.

Perhaps for less literate, apolitical, twenty-something, virtual-native, X-box, thumb jockeys, these installations blur the distinction between fantasy and reality. But for this literate, political, 55+, virtual émigré (computer mainframe and personal computer user from 1984 onward), X-box virgin, I found Atkin’s Recent Ouija exhibition unsurprising and disappointing. I was always aware I was watching simulations, not reality. My senses were not tricked and delighted as they are when I viewed Rembrandt’s “The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis” with its mysterious, phosphoric-yellow light that seems to radiate from the canvas itself or saw Stanley Kubrick’s ride through time in 2001, A Space Odyssey during which the double planes of speeding lights on the screen made my theatre seat seem to move. Perhaps if Mr Atkins had tried harder to merger high- and low-art as did Kubrick in Clockwork Orange, then his work would be more interesting to me and accessible to older audiences. In addition, if it were possible to talk or interact with the avatars and installations and not know if their answers were computer or human generated (someone behind a screen somewhere) then they would blur the barrier between physical and virtual reality which is the goal of Ouija. Instead, I feel Recent Ouija is a poor example of what a combination of more conventional art and music and modern virtual art and technology can offer.

The Old Man’s Still Got It

From a completely different era, another one man show, not more than a few hundred metres away, the Rijksmuseum’s Late Rembrandt tries to unlock the secrets of the great man’s last years by bringing back together prints, etchings, pen and ink and drypoint drawings and paintings from all around world (but mostly from the UK). These media help demonstrate Rembrandt’s virtuosity and inventiveness even in the last decade of his life including some exceptional portraits he painted in those years.

These different media have been hung together into galleries with the following themes: “From Life,” “Conventions,” “Emulation,” “Light,” “Experimental Technique,” “Intimacy,” “Contemplation,” “Inner Conflict” and “Reconciliation.” The temporarily assembled collection (this exhibition will hang for only 100 days) includes the addition of the life-size Portrait of Frederik Rihel on Horseback, 1663 two versions of Lucretia from 1664 and 1666, The Jewish Bride, (which according to Vincent Van Gogh, was Rembrandt’s masterpiece) and which hangs next to the Portrait of a Family, both from 1665 and sharing some of the same poses and hand gestures and, of course as previously mentioned, The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, 1661-1662 with its mysterious yellow light which seems to radiate from the canvas itself. With so many media and paintings from the same decade, this once-in-lifetime exhibit should have something for everyone interested in Rembrandt’s later life. A good guide for making your way through the galleries is the Rijksmuseum’s own pamphlet, Late Rembrandt, which individually names and describes all 105 items in the exhibition. This pamphlet can be found in a rack in the stairway beyond the lift in the “entrance” hall and is available for a free-will donation.

Despite the richness of this collection however, it’s shame that the galleries are so filled with people that it is difficult to see many of these masterworks, let alone move about. (Note: De Telegraaf, a Dutch national newspaper reported on 25 February, five days after my visit, that the number of visitors per two hour slot would be reduced from 1,500 to 1,000).

Hopefully, by reducing the number of people present by one-third, visitors will have more of a chance to view the masterworks and perhaps even sit down to contemplate some of them occasionally. Another problem, however, is that the etchings, drawings and prints, are hung at eye-level for visitors standing up. Those in wheelchairs have difficult viewing them even though the usual metal curbs have been removed in most places so it is possible to roll up right under them.

It’s unfortunate there wasn’t room available in the middle of the galleries to put these prints in glass cases, but of course, with the great number of visitors and the necessary safety precautions, this probably wasn’t feasible. Even with all the overcrowding, I’m sure visitors will see things they will remember and enjoy for years to come. However, they should also consider booking twice to come back and see what they’ve missed before this exhibition closes on 17 May 2015.

AQ11 Autumn 2014 Book Reviews
by Bryan R. Monte

The Heart Imagining Itself (and other tropical dreams) a journal for imagining the heart by Yolanda V. Fundora, 2014, UrbanAmish.com, 978-1-50028-053-6, 46 pages.

Mysterious Acts of My People, Valerie Wetlaufer, Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014, 978-1-937420-66-6, 87 pages.

Phoning Home, Essays by Jacob M. Appel, South Carolina Press, 2013, 978-1-611117-731-0, 177 pages.

Planetary Emotions by Yolanda V. Fundora, 2014, 978-1-50028-533-3, UrbanAmish.com, 121 pages.

The Talking Day by Michael Klein, Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013, 978-1-937420-27-7, 64 pages.

During the summer reading period, I received five books that I felt merited a review or mention in this issue. Two of the five books are books of poetry, two are journals (one blank and one illustrated), and the last is a book of essays. Two of the books “authors” are male and two are female and they discuss subjects in Jewish, Latina, lesbian, gay and straight American and European cultures.

Jacob M. Appel has worked as a Brown University professor of bioethics, as well as a doctor, attorney and New York City tour guide. He has written more than 200 articles, and in the last year, has had three books published including a collection of essays, Phoning Home, about his upbringing and thoughts as a third-generation, Flemish-Latvian-American Jew. Appel’s essays describe how his family’s relations over the last century and on two different continents have been influenced, tempered, tested, broken and even erased through exile, emigration and genocide.

What makes Appel’s essays so interesting and unique is his candid, stastical or professional approach and/or non-melodramatic description of his relatives’ experience. For example, in “Caesura—Antwerp, 1983” when one of his uncles happens upon a long-lost friend from the Antwerp Jewish Ghetto in a small Spanish village while searching for someone to repair his watch, Appel does not describe a Schindler’s List reunion. Rather, the two old men just embrace, shake hands and talk for as long as it takes to repair the watch, then go back to their lives on different continents.

Appel’s ability to see and write about things clearly, rationally and without melodrama also permeates his discussion of bioethics related to healthcare and the quality of life, “Opting Out,” “Charming and Devoted” and “Livery” and limits of political discourse in America due to death threats he’s received related to his openness about his opinions on end-of-life decisions, “Our Incredible Shrinking Discourse.” I must admit that Appel’s wish, “for the medical staff to place a plastic bag over my head during my sleep” once his body no longer functions as he wants it to, differs somewhat from my own wish to stay connected to whatever apparatus necessary as long as I can still write by moving an eyeball à la Jean-Dominique Bauby. However, he makes a good case for his own situation and that of his relatives. He is a keen observer with a wide and precise vocabulary and his sentences and passages vary in length and rhythm making them a pleasure to read. The essays in Phoning Home could certainly be used as a model and a source of inspiration for others trying to capture somewhat quirky family histories from a novel, detached but also realistic point of view.

AQ10&11 artist and contributor Yolanda V. Fundora submitted two journals she created. The first journal, The Heart Imagining Itself (and other tropical dreams), features richly illustrated images from Latina culture opposite empty, lined pages. This journal will be especially good for writers who benefit from visual prompts include a series of representations as to how the heart imagines itself as the the first day of spring, the sun, the moon, a cloud, a star, etc., in addition to those of the Virgin, a mermaid, the hanging woman, a cactus and different types of fruit trees. The colours are so vivid and the subjects sequentially-placed that I can’t image an ekphrastically-oriented or inspired writer being unable to discover or create new material working in this journal.

In contrast, the only illustrated part of Fundora’s second journal entitled, Planetary Emotions, is its cover which includes a representation of the stars in the winter sky revolving around the North Celestial Pole in prismatic colours. The 121 lined pages inside this 6×9 inch (15×23 centimetre) bound, paperback journal are blank and should provide enough space for one’s thoughts at least for a season (based upon the use of at least one page per day). It will certainly be small and light enough to take along on journeys or to work or class and should also be the right size to be stored later in a bookcase next to your favourite books.

I discovered poet Michael Klein’s book, The Talking Day, while “surfing” Sibling Rivalry Press’ website this summer. I had not heard of Klein before, and I found the four “example” poems, “Cartography,” “from “When I was a Twin,”” “Provincetown 1990,” and “The Poet” to be intriguing. These four sample poems are exceptional in their range and description. The first poem, “Cartography,” demonstrates the power of the poet’s imagination and how a map for him is like the backdrop to a story—in this case a village with smoking rising from it and a woman walking down a road. The next, “When I was a twin” is an elegy and expresses the poet’s shock at his loss. This shock is even stronger because the nature of the loss isn’t revealed until halfway through the poem. “Provincetown 1990” is a very chilling poem that describes both the force of sexual desire and the spread of the AIDS epidemic, and how it passed by the two men and changed them. The last poem is an account of the poet’s development, his ars poetica and his awareness of his history and that of another writer.

Other subjects covered by Klein include alcoholism, gun rampages in America and their aftermath (referring to the book’s title), aging, and urban gay life. Stylistically I find his prose poems, “Florida” and “Movie rain and movie snow” the most arresting due to their sudden turns right at the end. In addition to its excellent poems, The Talking Day, has an eye-catching, camp, erotic cover photo featuring a tan, naked man shown in a side pose in a garden, framed by hula hoops and some sort of net. This cover is certainly as intriguing and as beautiful as Klein’s poetry. I don’t know how I could have missed Klein’s career. I have only my emigration to the Netherlands twenty-one years ago and my ex-pat teaching career as an excuse. This being his third acclaimed (poetry) book, I feel I have some catching up to do.

Mysterious Acts of My People is a remarkable, debut poetry book by Valerie Wetlaufer. It covers a wide range of subjects such as love, loss, sex, violation, nature, religion and madness. The book’s title poem introduces a world in which life is cheap and violent. “They say you can get two redheads/for the price of one in this town,”… “More of my bones were broken in hospitals/than on playgrounds.” Wetlaufer also describes this world masterfully using a variety of typographical formats. Whether in “The Canyon” where she describes the natural world in prose poem blocks to draw her inner landscape or in “The Mind’s Boil” where words float all over the page to describe madness, Wetlaufer expresses herself in ways that are both arresting and memorable.

In addition to typographical variation, Wetlaufer is also able to employ monologue effectively to describe herself and her fictional and historical figures. “Insomnia with Solomon” (a page and a half column with no stanza breaks) describes Wetlaufer’s thoughts one after another starting with a phone call by her mother and thinking about the neighbour’s barking dog, why she should “stop eating red meat, take the train more often,” juxtaposed with “get my car washed, my eggs harvested,” etc. a long list of the important and the mundane which continues until it ends with the thought again of her mother’s call. Other interesting monologues include “Needle Pointing North,” about a settler gone mad, “The Window Smasher Speaks,” and “Glass Makes a Clean Cut,” by Mary Sweeny an asylum escapee and even an “erasure” poem, “The Margin of the Lake,” with lines from Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal: “I wore a dress of whisper to touch it feels smooth surprise/my face now flame colored.”

I hope you have a chance to explore Mysterious Acts of My People, or one of the other books mentioned above, during the long autumn and winter evenings. ‘Til March 2015!

Amsterdam Quarterly (AQ9) Spring 2014 Book Reviews by Bryan R. Monte

One Day Tells its Tale to Another by Nonnie Augustine, The Linnet’s Wings, ISBN 978-1480186354, 90 pages.
Poland at the Door by Evelyn Posamentier, Knives Forks and Spoons Press, ISBN 978-1-907812-69-9, 48 pages.
The Satirist, America’s Most Critical Book, Volume 1, by Dan Geddes, Omin Press, ISBN 978-90-819997-0-0, 180 pages.
The Wolf Inside by Donald Gardner, Hearing Eye, ISBN 978-1-905082-71-1, 56 pages.

Four books landed in my mailbag this quarter that I thought were worth reviewing in Amsterdam Quarterly. Two are by writers living in Amsterdam and the other two are by poets who make their AQ debut in this issue. In total there are three books of poetry and one collection of satirical essays, poetry, reviews and stories. In addition, three of the books were printed in the European Union.

I’ll begin with Amsterdam resident Dan Geddes’ The Satirist, America’s Most Critical Book, Volume 1, a collection of his satirical essays, poems and stories some which have appeared online on his website at www.thesatirist.com. In his book, Geddes satirically criticizes cults, politics, religion, wealth, taxes, self-help, etc.—the usual suspects. For example, Geddes book begins with a satirical essay, “The Seven Habits of Highly Efficient Cult Leaders,” the title reminiscent Steve Covey’s very popular self-help book.  Geddes’ seven traits include for example, grooming, delegation (“delegate all undesirable tasks,”) time management (“do not waste time on trivial personages within the cult,”) etc. He also mentions the importance of a First Disciple: (“(F)ind someone who believes in you implicitly… who is willing to walk through fire for you and who will hopefully be unfazed by the frequent contradictions you will be uttering.” Geddes mentions the ideal place to start a cult—a college campus—and to promise answers to life’s most vexing questions.

Geddes continues this contemporary satire with his “A Modest Proposal to Convert Shopping Malls into Prisons,” a nod to Jonathan Swift. He argues that using the malls will cut construction costs, guards can easily mount monitoring equipment and guns from the upper floors and skylights and merchants would easily profit from increased sales, especially from prisoners who couldn’t leave and who would be forced to feed themselves at the mall’s food courts. His calculation of 25k per prisoner per year he says would save US authorities 15K per year.

Other pieces in The Satirist include “Are You a Conspiracy Theorist? Take the Test” and Geddes’ reviews or reports of imaginary news, books and movies (the latter including, for example, Quentin Tarantino’s “Scent of a Banknote,” and Disney’s “1984” and “Animal Farm”). The Satirist is a book that, despite your religious or political background, will not fail to elicit at least a laugh or two.

Donald Gardner is an Englishman and Amsterdam resident. His book, The Wolf Inside, is a collection of 32 poems that describe his life in Amsterdam and England from the viewpoint of a mature poet. The Amsterdam poems include “Moonrise,” “In the Vondelpark,” “New Plans,” “Lady with a Little Dog,” “In the Berenstraat,” Those about the vicissitudes of growing old are, among others, “Reading the Poet as his Poetry,” “Kept Alive by Modern Medicine,” “Under the Weather,”and “Angela will see to my Correspondence,” which begins with the lines: “When I’m dead/I won’t need to meet any deadlines” or “Fear of Writing” the first two stanzas of which are: “The pollution of the white page/the lewdness//exposing myself to the world/best to keep it to myself” or “Old Age Express: “Getting older/I move slower//but my life/runs out faster.” Gardner’s strong poetic openings are definitely attention getters and his use of the short line, especially in “Morning Shift,” “Nothing on TV,” “Blown up by my own Time-saving Device,” “Retirement Benefits,” and “Old Age Express” show Gardner at his best. The Wolf Inside is a book that will inform poets and readers of all ages, but especially those who want to know more about an ex-pat’s life in Amsterdam.

The second book of poetry is Evelyn Posamentier’s Poland at the Door. It is a collection of short (one to six line) poems, each beginning with the title of the book. Poland can be read (as I did) as a sort of psychological exploration of the tenuous existence of that country (especially in the last two centuries due to repeated incursions by its German, Russian and Austro-Hungarian neighbours). The book has a very attractive cover design with a sepia map entitled: “Poland 1814” in a green frame on a cream background. (Unfortunately the book’s cover designer is not mentioned in the credits). What I interpret as invasion anxiety, for example, is exemplified in this short segment: “this is not a dream/Belarus is next door./ i invite minsk in./ oh, god I’ve left/ the door unlocked.” It also portrays the paranoia due to surveillance often found in the literature of Eastern bloc states: “just don’t answer it/it’s no one you know./ the ring of the phone/ alone in its secret code./ my code of madness/ like yours my friend.” Even the natural world seems oppressive: “the clouds with their sky/press against the door.” And its conclusion is an eerie confrontation of the past with the present: “the footsteps have followed history/into the town square./ they have passed. Posamentier’s collection of short poems is artistically arresting. It is a little book worth having if one is interested in writing very short, psychological poems that revolve around one theme or subject.

One Day Tells its Tale to Another is a book of poetry written by Nonnie Augustine who makes her AQ debut in this issue. Augustine is a former ballet dancer who co-founded the Albuquerque Dance Theatre, taught at the University of New Mexico and who later became a special education teacher. One Day Tells its Tale to Another is an interesting collection of poems, the most powerful of which are those that describe the natural world and European locations with an eye for detail. For example, her short poem, “Stone Poem,” moves like its subjects: “You stoop to select a stone/to toss down the lazy path./It rolls, reaches level ground, stops/Stays in place when you pass. Actions and moments in the present are balanced by those of the past and the distant future. The poem concludes with: “and then the stone is home/for another thousand years.” Her poem, “When George Took Me to Greece,” which contains some of her best writing, is also concerned with time over the centuries and its ending with short lines is worth mentioning here to show how atmospheric her writing can be: “The setting sun lit the hill/And the golden temples floated/above the shadowed slope./My back against the ancient/ teaching rock, I dissolved.” “Wine and Cheese Villanelle,” demonstrates how Augustine can use a traditional form to express the feelings of a group of contemporary women discussing their problematic and sometimes failed relationships. “We women talked of kids and men/and Carrie poured more Zinfandel/ We were four good friends in Alice’s den.”

Augustine’s power of observation and description also shows forth in her poem entitled: “After Dinner with Ted at the High Noon Café.” Her use of a combination of long and short lines shows how fast she can shift gears from describing a romantic encounter to seeing a murderer: “As Ted caught and kissed me, I glanced past his shoulder/to see young Emilio standing under his porch light/in a blood spattered shirt/Against his thigh dangled/ the glint of a knife.” These poems show Augustine’s writing at its best and I hope to read more of her poems in the future.

Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum Reviews, Summer 2013 (AQ7)
by Bryan Monte

In the last two months, two very important museums have reopened on Amsterdam’s Museum Square or Museumplein as the Dutch refer to it. These are the Rijksmuseum (the Dutch national gallery) and the Van Gogh Museum. The opening completes the triad of museums along the square including the Stedelijk (which reopened last autumn) and, which with the Concertgebouw just to the South, make up the cultural heart of Amsterdam. The reopening of the Rijksmuseum was the most dramatic having been closed for ten years due to construction problems, cost overruns, and the bicycle path under the museum’s main galleries that had to remain open and which forced the architects and builders to change their plans. (Bicycles are one of the Netherland’s sacred cows. Cylists are given more leeway in traffic than pedestrians and motorists).

The Rijksmuseum was reopened by Queen Beatrix, with fireworks, military and marching bands and speeches. The Queen also held a state dinner in the “Hall of Honour” with visiting dignitaries and royalty from around the world just before her abdication and the investiture of her eldest son and his wife as King William Alexander and Queen Maxima respectively.

Now that the smoke has cleared, the museum is open and the crowds of visitors in their thousands have returned (300,000 in one month according to the Rijksmuseum’s website), it’s time to take a look at the remodelled Rijksmuseum and evaluate its improvements. The jewels in the Rijksmuseum’s crown, paintings by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Vermeer, Jan Steen and other 17th century notables, have been returned to their rightful places in the second-floor galleries. The paintings have been rehung on walls which are now a dark grey which makes the predominantly gold, brown, and grey tones on the canvases stand out.

At the end of the hall and the centre of attention of course is Rembrandt’s “Nightwatch.” It is hung just high enough so that viewers of the painting are the same height as some of the crowd characters on Rembrandt’s large canvas, so that from a distance, these viewers merge with the characters in the painting. The paintings in these galleries are on par with the Louvre’s best, but are presented in a much more intimate viewing environment. Few canvases are behind glass and viewers can walk within a meter or two of the paintings and take photographs unless specifically prohibited.

There are other improvements to the museum in addition to the darker gallery walls and access to the art. The paintings in many galleries are complimented and made more tactile by objects such as models, weapons, porcelain and furniture placed in the centre or to one side of the galleries. For example, spears and cannons are arrayed together in a gallery with paintings from the Netherland’s Indonesian or “Batavian” colonial period and ship’s model is the centre of a gallery with mostly maritime paintings. This breaks up the monotony of gallery after gallery of paintings and helps show artistic expression in the same period in different media and disciplines. Another improvement is the new Asian wing whose main features are a statute of the Hindu God, Shiva Nataraja, upstairs and two Japanese temple guardians downstairs.

Other major changes to the Rijksmuseum include its new main entrance and lobby area in two, underground, glassed-over, marble-lined courtyards bifurcated by the controversial bicycle path. The lobby can be reached by two, large, accessible, clear glass lifts on both sides of the bicycle path towards the North entrance along with two staircases at the South entrances. The new lobby/reception area includes a café, museum shop, bookstore, coat check, and restrooms. In addition, the second-floor lobby frescos, which were original to the building and Cuypers’ design and which had been covered over, have been restored.

Whilst the Rijksmuseum’s presentation of the paintings, sculptures, furniture and other artefacts in the various galleries is to be applauded, the layout of the museum’s new lobby, signage about how to navigate in the museum and the number and quality of facilities for the disabled invites criticism. Aesthetically, the museum’s new bifurcated marble and glass lobby is not welcoming but rather echoing, sterile and impersonal. Its clear glass roof is not as evocative or playful as rolling blue, glass roof over the British Museum’s courtyard, but more akin in construction to the hothouse roofs that dot the Dutch landscape. In addition, the restored Cupyers murals reveal why perhaps over the years they’d been painted over. Their idealized scenes of virtues and Dutch history are naïve, lifeless and flat compared to pre-Raphaelite or other Art Nouveau murals. Furthermore, the basement lobby’s hanging, treble-caged, white light and sound damping installations don’t lighten the lobbies’ atmosphere, but rather dangle heavily overhead like shark cages as was my experience when I ate in the café.

The café’s seating and service leaves much to be desired. The three times I’ve visited the museum, the café has been filled to overcapacity with people waiting on the staircases at both ends. The museum’s restaurant has not opened yet, so I assume once it does, this will take care of the overflow and shorten the wait for a table. The seating itself is disabled friendly with wide aisles although the sofa (lounge) chairs are set a bit low. There are conventional café chairs at round café tables that can be removed to accommodate someone in a wheelchair, but I did not see any tables specifically designated for disabled customers. Furthermore, what I also found lacking about the café was its service. When I sat down at 5 PM after my third visit, I had to literally, after waiting five minutes, flag down a waiter to take my order and then again later to pay my bill.

Signage in the museum is also too small or confusing. Immediately after visitors enter the museum through its marble portals, they see a sign which says: “To the Collections” which unfortunately sends visitors to the right through the medieval galleries and not to the left through the Renaissance galleries which lead to the lifts to the second floor Galleries of Honour which contain the 17th century paintings that most visitors want to see. Floor descriptions next to the lifts and signs for the toilets are generally too small for older patrons to read.

It’s also difficult following routes in the museum even though each floor on the official map has been colour-coded. I heard one gentleman in the Asian wing exclaim: “How do I get to the second floor from here?” meaning probably that he was trying to get there to see the “Nightwatch.” In addition, signs like those for the lift with a standing figure and arrows going up and down, are perhaps not understandable to non-European visitors. Directions in Chinese, Russian and one Romantic language in addition to Dutch and English would be advisable based on the composition of the crowds on the days I visited.

Futhermore, as you could probably predict from my last review of the reopened Stedelijk in AQ6, the museum needs be far more sensitive to accessibility for disabled people in its lobby, cafe, shop, bookstore, and toilets. When I first visited the museum, the weekend before the Queen Beatrix’s state dinner, access to the café, shop and bookstore was restricted to only the able-bodied who could use the stairs. Anyone wanting to use the lifts to these areas had to ask the security guard to use his/her magnetic key to unlock the lift. In addition, there are no handrails along the sides of the staircase (along the marble walls), just in the middle. Thankfully, on my second and third visits a few weeks later, one could operate these lifts without having to ask a guard for a key. However, the toilet in the sub-basement level is only wide enough for the able bodied and the doors to the bookshop are far too heavy for some disabled people to open.

Another area of concern in the lobby is unimpeded access to ramps – especially the ones on the north side leading to the toilets and one on the south which is a gallery exit. Access to these ramps was taped off on my two most recent visits to the Rijksmuseum. Both times when I exited the Delft’s Blauw and Keys Gallery 0.7 and wanted to descending into the lobby along a ramp, I found the ramp to be roped off at the bottom. Both times I tried unsuccessfully to get a guard’s attention to lift the tape so I could pass. Both times, I had to move one of the poles myself so I could squeeze around it with my Zimmer frame.

On my last two visits, I’ve also had to ask a guard to remove a tape barrier at the entrance of a lobby ramp so I could roll up to the main toilets. Furthermore, there’s only one disabled toilet on each side and the hallway that connects the two toilets areas in the bifurcated lobby, has four steps, which make it impassible for a disabled person to go easily from one side to the other side, should one of the two toilets be occupied.

In comparison with the Rijksmuseum, the newly reopened Van Gogh Museum just down the street has plenty to crow about, not only due to the quality and depth of its exhibition about its namesake, but also due to the quality and accessibility of its bookshop and café. Reopened not more than a month ago, the renovated Van Gogh has maintained the original integrity and design of its Gerrit Rietveld building and assembled perhaps the most complete exhibition of Van Gogh’s work one will probably see in his/her lifetime. Paintings are on loan from Dutch museums such as the Amsterdam Stedelijk, the Boijmans Van Beuningen, and Van Gogh Kröller-Müller, as well museums outside of the Netherlands, and most importantly, from private collections.

The Van Gogh exhibition has been chronologically arranged with early works on the ground and first (American English second) floors and his later periods on the second and third floors, so as one ascends, one goes forward in time. In addition there are many studies and versions of paintings such as the Potato Eaters, the Weaver (one from the Van Gogh, and one from the Kröller-Müller) and Sunflowers, (one from the Van Gogh, the other from the National Gallery in London). Viewers can thus compare Van Gogh’s execution of the same subject but with slightly different perspectives and/or colour pallets. The Van Gogh has also added interesting videos in different areas about Van Gogh’s history, his various styles and the conservation of his works.

As far as accessibility is concerned, the front entrance is accessible by a wheelchair lift at the far left of the staircase, though a museum guard had to lift the tape barrier so I could use the express lane with my museum card to enter. There are two lobby elevators: one for eight people and another for 21 people— both large enough to accommodate a wheelchair and a pram simultaneously. Even with busloads full of tourists, the flow in the museum on the two days I visited (one weekday afternoon and one Sunday afternoon) was well-managed.

The two bookshops both in the lobby entrance and the basement extension, have aisles wide enough for wheelchairs and a good selection of art books about various painters. The one in the basement extension is also a bit quieter and has comfortable surround chairs and a table where patrons can sit and leaf through books. The self-service café is also welcoming and accessible. The aisles in the dining room are wide enough for wheelchair users, though the tables themselves are a bit too close together. The food is very good. I had a coffee and a slice of the lemon cheese pie on my first visit and found both delicious. The salad, apple pie, and caffe latte on my second visit were also good. There are more than enough chairs and tables inside and outside the café to accommodate visitors and there is a large lift downstairs (all the way to the end of the seating area outside) to the toilets in the new extension.

Here, however, is where the Van Gogh falls short—with its disabled toilets. There is only one disabled toilet downstairs in the new wing and unfortunately, this space is also shared with a diaper changing area. On the second day I visited the second disabled toilet, at the entrance lobby, was out of order. Exiting the museum also required that I get a guard’s attention so that she could lift the tape by the entrance so that I could go from the exit lanes to the entrance lanes to get back to the disabled lift.

If you are pressed for time when visiting Amsterdam and can only see one of these two museums (especially if the queues to the Rijkmuseum are wrapped around the building), then I would recommend visiting the Van Gogh. I doubt, as I mentioned above, that a collection of this depth, with paintings, drawings and watercolours from many museums and private collections, will ever be assembled in one place in my lifetime. The Rijksmuseum’s paintings, though of equal importance, can wait for another visit, or if that’s not possible, many can be viewed on the museum’s website. But do try to visit both museums. It will be more than worth the effort.