April Lindner's Blog, page 15

This is our Time: A Night at Mexicali Live with Willie Nile

Willie NileFor a musician who draws so much inspiration from the hard-edged New York punk scene, Willie Nile is a gentle soul.  You can hear it all over his lyrics--"One Guitar"--a pacifist anthem about the power of music, for example.  Or in "The Innocent Ones," a song that bursts with empathy for the vulnerable and powerless.  But Willie's music brings an edge of punk intensity to balance out his big-hearted idealism.  That's true on his new album, American Ride, and even more true live, when Willie and his band--bassist Johnny Pisano, guitarist Matt Hogan, and drummer Alex Alexander--never fail to play their hearts out.  


Matt HoganAndre and I have seen Willie and his band live before, but never as headliners, and we've always been left wanting more.  This year on my birthday that wish came true.

We traveled to Mexicali Live in Teaneck, New Jersey:



 for dinner and tales of concert-going misadventures with some warm and welcoming Nileaholics:



And then, of course, there was the show itself, as high energy and full of great new material and beloved old standbys as we could have hoped.  Matt Hogan is a marvel, and nobody defies gravity like Johnny Pisano.


Johnny PiAnd as an added birthday bonus, after the show we got to hang with the band.  Johnny Pisano, known to his devoted fans as Johnny Pi, happens to be a longtime friend of my cousin, actor/musician Michael Jeremiah, and he welcomed us with stories of the old days in the neighborhood and on the road.  (For a brief time, Johnny played in Michael's band XDavis.)  

And I got the chance to add to my collection of Selfies With The Stars:


With Johnny(Okay...not technically selfies, since Andre took them.  Maybe I should rename this series Spousies with the Stars?)


Willie and meIf you don't know Willie's music, you should.  Here's a taste from the new album:

And a Few More Odds and Ends

Volcanic rocks and cookie fortunes


Poet Bernadette McBride, the second of my Round Robin Blog Tour invitees has posted her own blog on the writing process.  Check it out here!

And thanks to the book bloggers who have been giving some lovin' to the gorgeous Love, Lucy book cover.

BiblioPunkk included in their list of recent Cover Porn.

And Daisy Chain Book Reviews listed it as a Book Cover of Awesome.

Late March Odds and Ends

Last weekend, Andre and I ventured into the swamps of Jersey to celebrate my birthday and see Willie Nile perform.  (He and his band are one of our favorite live acts, but this was the first time we'd seen them as headliners.)   I'll be posting about that show soon, but you know how it is: the better the weekend, the worse the Monday.  I'm still getting caught up.

In the meantime, though, I wanted to mention a thing or two.

Thing One: this coming Sunday, March 30, I'll be doing a book signing from 1 to 4 at Books-a-Million (BAM!) in the Springfield Mall.  (That's Springfield, Pennsylvania.)  If you're in the neighborhood (1250 Baltimore Pike), please drop by.

Thing Two: Remember the Round Robin writing process blog tour?  Well, Anne Higgins, the first of my two invitees has posted her response.


As for me, there's a lot of classes to be planned and several big, fraught campus-wide meetings to attend.  But I hope to come up for air soon.

James Franco (patron saint of MFA programs) looks on while I read student stories.

Play Date: Out to Lunch

Spring came to Pennsylvania yesterday, one day behind schedule:  morning birdsong; crocuses finally splitting the earth.  After so much snow, so much road salt, so many killer potholes, it's hard to trust that it's really here.   (If any snow has been forecast for next week, please don't tell me!)

This winter has kicked my butt in more ways than one, but today I got to celebrate the new season by going out to lunch with my dear friend Diane.  We took a mini version of one of our Thelma-and-Louise-style roadtrips, and ventured to The Local, a cozy (and delicious) little farm-to-plate restaurant in a former train station depot.  I got to glimpse a charming little town I'd never seen before-- 


Add caption--which made me realize I've been traveling in a rut these last months, from work to home and back again, with hardly any detours.   I've clocked a lot of miles--1,000 at least count--but they've almost all been on my treadmill desk.  

When I'm trying to squeeze writing time into the interstices, I can forget how important it is to wander off the beaten track, to breathe fresh air and see new places.   And to try a little peanut butter pie:


 Today, the third day of spring, is a good time to remember.  

Adapting Jane: PRIDE AND PREJUDICE at People's Light and Theater

Jessica Bedford as Jane BennetThere's nothing I love more than an adaptation of a classic Brit lit novel...especially if it's one by Jane Austen. I'm endlessly interested in how great works are translated--into film, literary retellings, and stage performances.  What gets kept in, left out, transformed?  I'm hungry to find out.  

So I was thrilled when People's Light and Theater Company in Malverne, Pennsylvania, invited me to attend their production of Pride and Prejudice, coupled with a pre-show open house.    

Part of the festivities included a brief lesson in regency dance. That's my husband Andre in the front and to the right, prepping for the Netherfield ball.



But of course the night's highlight was the play itself, a spirited and swift production in which dance was used to bridge key dramatic moments.  



The entire cast was splendid, the set spare and elegant.  Electricity crackled between the two main couples, and Robert DePonte (Mr. Collins) and Tom Teti (Mr. Bennet) were laugh-out-loud funny.


Marc LeVasseur as Mr. Darcy

There's still time to catch the show, which runs until March 30.   and Julianna Zinkel as Elizabeth BennetI'm also eager for People's Light's upcoming production of Sarah Ruhl's Dear Elizabeth, a dramatization of the correspondence between two of my favorite poets, Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop. 

Having a Blast

Paperback and Ebook
Today a post of mine about the new paperback cover of my novel Catherine goes global, thanks to Jaime and Rachel at Rock Star Book Tours.  They've set up a cover blast, encouraging book bloggers to sign up and run my post as part of their energetic campaign to help Young Adult connect with readers.

So instead of posting here, I'm going to invite you to  read my post at one of the many great blogs that are featuring it.  I wish I could post a link to each and every one, but here are a few blogs that caught my eye.  Click on one...or discover them all!

Talking Books

Ladybug Literature

Kimberlyfaye Reads

Book Hounds

Thanks to these book bloggers and to Rock Star Book Tours for doing what they do with so much energy and savoir faire.


Hardcover

How I Write: A Round Robin Blog Tour

A Round Robin

There's nothing quite like a discussion on the writing process to make us writers long to drop everything and get back to work.  So when my friend, the brilliantly talented poet and blogger Ann E. Michael invited me to discuss my process in this year's Round Robin blog tour, I very happily said yes.

Here's how it works: writers are asked four questions about the writing process and the projects they're working on now.  Here are Ann's answers to the those questions.   And here are mine:  
1)     What am I working on?
These days I’m writing the first draft of a young adult novel set on a study tour in Greece and inspired by Jane Austen’s Persuasion.  I'm about one and a half chapters away from the finish line...an exciting place to be.
2)     How does my work differ from others of its genre?
I’ve written three young adult novels, all of them contemporary retellings of classic literature; I’ve retold Jane Eyre ( Jane ), Wuthering Heights ( Catherine ), and A Room With a View(the forthcoming Love, Lucy ).  

Literary retellings have become huge in the Young Adult world lately--so huge, Epic Reads invented a chart to help a reader make sense of this boom.  My retellings fall into the category of contemporary realism; I transplant characters like Jane Eyre, Heathcliff, and Lucy Honeychurch into the present, exploring how they might remain themselves and how their story would be changed--by cars, jet planes, cellphones, the internet, and evolving social mores.  Maybe everyone who writes retellings would say this, but when I write I'm very conscious of trying to be true to the spirit of the novels I'm retelling.  

3)     Why do I write what I do?
There's a very particular challenge to retelling a story people already know and love, and I really enjoy walking that fine line between respecting the old and experimenting with it.


I write poetry too, some of it formal, and in a way riffing on an existing plot is not unlike writing contemporary poems using very old poetic forms.  Both projects involve working within parameters somebody else set a long time ago, and taking liberties to make something new.
Also, I can only write about subjects I care deeply about.  I've always been obsessed with the classics; that's why I became an English professor in the first place.  And setting retellings in the present allows me to bring in other elements that fascinate me—rock music, in my first three novels, the culture of backpacking in Love, Lucy, and photography and filmmaking in the book I’m writing now. 


4)     How does my writing process work?
When I decide to retell a novel I reread it; I might also watch film adaptations and listen to it on audiobook as I sleep at night, letting it seep into my subconscious.  After a while, though, I put the book aside, trying to gain a little distance.  I come up with a plot outline which I then follow loosely, and sometimes diverge from altogether.  It helps to have a framework, but also to feel free enough to make discoveries along the way.  
As far as the actual act of writing goes, I wish I could write faithfully every day as writers are told to. I tend to get so  lost in my imaginary world that I am likely to forget to go to work, so I only write on days when I've got nothing else urgent to do--one day a week during the school year, if I'm lucky, and five days a week during the summer, or spring and winter break.

I start one of those writing days with coffee--lots of it.  I read a bit of the newspaper, or fiddle around on Facebook, all of which helps me to feel a bit less tense about settling down to write.  Writer's block terrifies me, so anything I can do to ease myself into writing is helpful.  

The goal is to get somehow into that blessed state when the characters start talking to each other and I feel like I'm listening in, taking dication.  It doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's the best part of the process.
***Next up on the round robin Writer's Process blog tour are two very fine poets.  Their answers to the blog tour questions should be up on their blogs around about March 25th or 26th, so be sure to drop by!







The first, Anne Higgins, teaches English at Mount Saint Mary's University in Emmitsburg, Maryland, and is a member of the Daughters of Charity.  She has had about 100 poems published in Commonweal, Spirituality and Health, The Melic Review, The Umbrella Journal, The Centrifugal Eye, and a variety of small magazines.  She was invited to give a reading at the Art and Soul Conference at Baylor University in February 2001, and at the Calvin College Festival of Faith and Writing in 2002.  Garrison Keillor read her poems "Open-Hearted" and "Cherry Tomatoes" on The Writer's Almanac on October 8, 2001, and August 8, 2010, respectively.
Four full-length books and two chapbooks of her poetry have been published: At the Year's Elbow, Mellen Poetry Press 2000, Scattered Showers in a Clear Sky, Plain View Press 2007, Pick It Up and Read, Finishing Line Press 2008, How the Hand Behaves, Finishing Line Press 2009, Digging for God, Wipf and Stock 2010, and Vexed Questions, Aldrich Press, 2013.  Visit Anne's blog here.



The second, Bernadette McBride, is the author of Waiting for the Light to Change (Word Tech Editions, 2013) and Food, Wine, and Other Essential Considerations—an Alphabet, forthcoming this year from Aldrich Press. She has taught writing at colleges in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey, including poetry and fiction writing at Temple University and gives workshops in memoir, fiction, and poetry writing, as well as on the intersection of art and writing. A Poet Laureate of Bucks County, PA, her work has appeared on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor, has been recently published in the UK, widely published nationally in both journals and anthologies, and has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She directs the monthly poets’ reading series at Farley’s Bookshop in New Hope, PA. Visit her blog here.  

***
Finally, I want to give credit where due for the awesome angry robin photo at the top of this page.  It was taken by missfortune11, and more of her lovely photographs may be found at Deviant Art.

Ecstasy of Saint Teresa: Bernini's Glorious Statue and a Poem it Inspired

On this, the last official day of spring break (weekends don't count), I thought I'd share a poem inspired by a piece of art that has fascinated me ever since I encountered it in Art History 101.  A couple of years ago, I tracked the sculpture down to its home, Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome, and everything that was mind boggling about it in photographs is even more so in person--the body language, the facial expressions, and especially the various textures of cloth, cloud, wing, and flesh.

So I wrote this poem: 



St. Theresa in Ecstasy
after Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini
The angel, when he comes at lastin a trumpet blast of lightglistens like a newborn, smoothof cheek and chest, his slender waistcinched in wind-washed gauze.  She’d willed this visit, prayed for days, refusingsleep and food.  Now he appearsbeside her, naked arm drawn back.His fingertips caress a spear,point it at her heart; his smilebetrays amusement.  This could bethe moment just before his arrowplunges through her breast--as ifto pierce my very entrails,she would write--or it could be the aftermath.  Her heavy vestmentslift and rustle; from their depthsshe swoons, lips parted, body curlingupward toward that flame-tipped arrow,that cauterizing point, and thoughthe whole tableau is stone, she vibrateslike a harp string as the hand draws back.  One bare foot clings to earthas, limp, she crests a wave of painsurpassing sweetness, tasted onceand hungered after: Now the soul
is satisfied with nothing less.
This poem and others like it may be found in This Bed Our Bodies Shaped, my second poetry collection, published by Able Muse Press.

Lovin' Bloglovin'

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Please excuse the above weird posting.  I had to put it here so that I could also put up the button (to your right) that lets you follow me via bloglovin.  I'm finding bloglovin to be a really fun and easy way to keep track of my favorite blogs.  So I wanted their button, even if it does make for one awkward post!

Nico says: please consider clicking on the bloglovin' button...or on the Google +1 button (also to the right).  






And who could say no to Nico?

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