Everett Coogler

One night 37 years ago, Bill woke me up. “Listen to this.” He read me the first Everett Coogler poem. I thought, He’s gone completely around the bend, but in the morning I realized that wasn’t it at all. He had created a wonderful character and what would become the first of many poems about Coogler. Bill is a wonderful reader of his own poetry, not too dramatic, but dramatic enough, not the usual drone. People laughed uproariously and Coogler became much beloved.

The Lament of Everett Coogler

After
17 years at
The same stand,
I,
Everett Coogler,
Would say,
That life is a stream rushing on,
Alive with
Red
Herrings.

A True Account

Too generous
I threw out stale
Jelly donuts to my
Friends the grackles
Along with their seed

And now one poor
Fellow staggers and falls
His foot plunged deep
In soft raspberry center

Free at last he rolls and flies
Perching one-legged on a birch limb
He cranks the other foot
Up and down in the morning air
To see if it will dry

And yells at me
Shuddering with rage
Or the sheer feeling of repellent novelty
“Do you mind telling me
What the hell this is
I’ve got between my god-damned toes?”

Bill Bauer

A Benefit of Age

I have received the first negative feedback on my column. I am surprised I didn’t receive it before. The president of the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick denounced me for writing about the spiraling down of the organization. I am pleased with myself because this didn’t bother me at all. In the past I would have been upset. When I said I would write this column, my son said that at my age I had earned the right to write boldly what I wanted. Only one of the six columns, however, has been negative.

I am now polishing a column about the negative impression that the rest of Canada has about New Brunswick and how art contributes to this impression. When we have guests from other parts, they are invariably surprised at what a nice place this is, how beautiful, how friendly and courteous the people are. I was discussing this with a doctor who has come from British Columbia into our neighborhood. I mentioned that when we try to get out of our subdivision onto the busy street leading to the malls, we never have to wait more than a minute; someone always stops and lets us in. His face lit up with a smile because he too had noticed this. He is impressed with how collegial the medical community is.

Once Again With Music

In my six columns I have written about visual art, crafts and literature, but I haven’t written anything about music. I determined I must do something about the lack and started writing about music, but the column seemed thin and whiny. Last week I bought a new book by Daniel Levitin, This is Your Brain on Music, hoping it would inspire me. It inspired me so much that now I have too much to deal with – the piece is thick and unwieldy. I got panicky and wrote another column I had in mind, one I could do more easily. But I have a hiatus because this Saturday the editor decided to devote the whole of Salon, the art section of the paper, to reproductions of the paintings that the Beaverbrook Art Gallery must give back to the Beaverbrook Foundation. So the column for yesterday can be printed next Saturday, I have two more nearly ready to go for the two weeks after that, and I can concentrate on the music one. Music is the art I know the least about, although in my younger days I knew quite a lot. I played the piano (not well) and the baritone horn in the high school band and had a fabulous music 101 course in college. One of the first purchases we made after we were married was a state of the art stereo. But in the last twenty years I have neglected it because I was often asked to write about the other arts (some 80 articles.)

The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, generously stocked by Lord Beaverbrook with wonderful paintings, has been in a hassle with the Beaverbrook Foundation which claims that the paintings weren’t gifts, but loans. Last week the judge ruled that 87 of the paintings in question belong to the BAG and 48 to the Foundation. It is alleged that Lord Beaverbrook’s grandsons want the paintings to sell because they have gone bankrupt. One of the paintings, J M Turner’s Fountain of Indolence, is said to be worth $25 million. It is one that does belong to the gallery. In the past the Foundation has taken paintings from the collection under the pretense that it was going to have them restored, but instead sold them. The judge ruled that all of these belonged to the gallery and the foundation must compensate for them.

Names and Music

Friday I updated my The Writers’ Union of Canada page and today googled myself to see if it was there. The URL for the old one comes up and says it is not longer viable. I saw that there were 90,000 entries for Nancy Bauer, but I continued on for quite a few (400?) and the newly revised web page didn’t turn up. I see by this googling that I share the name with many others, the most prominent being a Tufts U professor. There is even another Bill and Nancy couple who run a farm in the American Midwest. Yesterday in the Globe and Mail there was a review by a UNB professor, Mark Anthony Jarman. He has taken to using this middle name, and I think I know why. I googled him last week for some information for my TJ column and found that there are several writers named Mark Jarman. I had to go quite far in to get the Jarman I wanted. I am thinking now that I should have added my maiden name as my public name on books and articles, but at the time I first published, “poetesses with three names” were satirized. Ah, pride and vanity, what problems you create.

I updated my TWUC page because the organization has now arranged it so that you can do it yourself. You used to have to go through them. I was introduced at a reading last week and realized the introducer had got her information from the page. The photo I had used was now nearly 20 years old.

I haven’t written about music for my State of the Art column because of all the arts, I have the least expertise in it. I decided I should give it a try. I don’t even listen to the late night music programs on CBC because I discovered that music keeps me awake and talk puts me to sleep. We have a new station which broadcasts the Ottawa Senators’ games. I turn it on, and I am asleep in minutes. I think the part of my brain given to music must have atrophied. I was thinking this morning that maybe Bill and I should begin again to listen to music. It might be good for him in reestablishing the synapses that were damaged in his stroke, and it would be good for me to revive my interest in music.

synchronicity or maybe just coincidence

Yesterday I was looking for a book (which I didn’t find) and was amused that someone had put our two copies of Wallace Shawn’s The Fever on opposite ends of the bookshelf. A few hours later I was reading the latest copy of the NY Times Book Review, and saw that there was a review of the memoir of Wallace’s brother, Allen, illustrated with a photo of the brothers. I hadn’t thought of Wallace for quite a few years, and here he was, turning up twice.

In October of 1992, someone, I forget who, asked me if I would host the well-known actor Claire Coulter. This was something of an experiment, using people’s living rooms as a theatre. I was to invite people to come, and they were to pay, but I can remember only Ted and John although there were others. I can’t remember how much they had to pay. Coulter sat in our large maroon leather armchair and delivered a Wallace Shawn monologue in a normal tone of voice. Hosting the performance was a strange experience. over there were our usual friends, sitting in their accustomed places, and over here was a stranger, talking on and on. Ted told me later that he was afraid he would go to sleep and Bill agreed.

Did she perform The Fever? I don’t remember. I do have the two copies, one she gave us and one I bought for our daughter. I don’t know why I didn’t send it to her. Grace once got Bill to watch Shawn’s My Dinner with André with her. Was it on TV or did they go to the movies?


I thought it was a successful event, and I imagined other actors following her lead, but it never happened again. Our traveling actor friend Ellen Pierce would visit us occasionally, carrying with her all her worldly goods in various canvas bags. She was a master at making herself a cozy private nest within our house, pleasant to have around, not at all in the way. I would get her some gigs. One time she thought she would be paid on the spot, but red tape meant that she couldn’t be, so I had to lend her $30 to buy a bus ticket to her next engagement.

Both women weren’t just traveling mountebanks but were deeply committed to theatre and willing to make sacrifices to engage in it. I wish someone else would come along to enliven the scene.

Kollwitz

Kathe Kollwitz is one of my favorite artists. I had a reproduction of her “Seed Corn Must Not Be Ground” on the bulletin board in my office. It was her last print, a lithograph, done in 1942 when she was 75, in defiance of Hitler. I cut a photo from the newspaper of an Iraqi mother in a ditch, sheltering her children in just the same way, her expression and those of her children so like those in “Seed Corn.” She had been warned by the German authorities about her activities but was never imprisoned. The title is a line from Goethe. Someone who saw her a few months before her death in 1945 “had the feeling that she was living in a bright and serene inner world, more and more withdrawn even from her own art.” Her husband had died in 1940 and a son and a grandson had been killed in the two wars.

New Brunswick Chapbook

The drawing of Bill was done by Marjory Donaldson.

New Brunswick Chapbook

Here is Kent Thompson's chapbook. The drawing of him was done by Bruno Bobak.

Stephen May

Stephen May

Our friend Stephen May has an exhibit at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery this month and one at Gallery 78. The images below and above are from the Gallery 78 web site. He did the drawing of me that appears in my profile. I needed one for a short story being published in The Fiddlehead. The editor had decided that instead of photos, she would use drawings. I bought the drawing, and he obliged by framing it. We have two other works of his. One is a self-portrait and one is a drawing of our son. Stephen is widely regarded as one of the best artists in New Brunswick. His BAG exhibit was curated by our Lieutenant Governor, his Honour Hermenegilde Chiasson.

Stephen May

Being Reminded

In the Globe and Mail this morning is a thoughtful column by Neil Reynolds, the second in a series about an economics book by Dan Usher. Reynolds is one of several excellent Globe columnists, world class, in my opinion. He, Rex Murphy, Margaret Wente, and Christie Blatchford all have the ability to look at the world with fresh eyes and let me see various sides of any discussion. My idea of a good columnist is that he/she surprises me. When I read many columnists and letter to the editor writers, I know what they are going to say on any side of an argument.

Neil Reynolds was the editor of several newspapers. When he was the editor of the Kingston Whig-Standard, he made it into a newspaper with an excellent reputation, especially for its coverage of the arts. Later he became editor of the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal, turning it into an exciting paper. He hired several investigative reporters who uncovered all sorts of skullduggery. He created a Saturday magazine, The New Brunswick Reader. Near its beginning, he asked me to write for it, and for two and a half years I wrote weekly articles on craftspeople and artists. I even had the heady job of selecting the photo for the front cover.

My education in the arts began when my friend Joe Sherman became editor of ArtsAtlantic in 1979. Because he couldn’t find anyone from NB to write about the arts, he enlisted me. I had not been educated in arts and crafts, although my father was both, so I was reluctant to write. To compensate for my ignorance, I spent an immense amount of time educating myself on the particular art or craft I was to write about. It was my first foray into becoming an autodidact, quite exciting. Later I was asked to write an introduction for a book on NB crafts. Reynolds, a lover of crafts, read it and asked me to write for the Reader. I had always wanted to have a weekly column, and although it was immensely time-consuming, I enjoyed the job. Bill and I traveled all over New Brunswick interviewing artists and craftspeople. The ArtsAtlantic and Reader experience has been an important part of my journey from birth to where I am now. I should write more about it. When my father got sick and we were spending a lot of time visiting him, meeting the Reader deadline became too hair-raising, and when Joe left ArtsAtlantic, there was no one to badger me out of my inherent laziness.