Thanks, everyone. Friday was art day. Charlie Beck, young at 88, brought me the three woodcuts we're using for the outside and inside covers of Mortal Stakes/Faint Thunder. They are stunning, recent work. This brings the number of Becks used in my work to eleven, and all will be exhibited at the three book launches in ND and Minn. Here's a site with a lot of material on Charlie:
http://www.mnartists.org/tourItemDet...pageInd ex=20 Here is the Cathedral Forest, the outer cover:
http://www.mnartists.org/tourItemDet...te mId=171864 And inside the book, here's the cover of Mortal Stakes:
http://www.mnartists.org/tourItemDet...te mId=171866
That morning I received the ten drawings commissioned for Hunter's Log from the great Eldridge Hardie. Here is Pheasant Hunters, the cover painting for the book:
http://www.eldridgehardie.com/eldrid...allery=hunting Nope, the link just takes you to a huge page of upland thumbnails. Well, it's in there!
When I was seventeen, and determined to become a poet, I could never have dreamed that I would someday collaborate with artists of this stature. Though these are not my first rodeos, lucky Tim still gets excited when I start reading proof and seeing the art integrated into the books.
Here's a great story El sent me Friday night: "I have to tell you a story. In my junior year in high school we studied American poetry for a semester. We were to make a booklet of some of these illustrated with pictures clipped from magazines. Instead, I made drawings. When our teacher handed back the assignment, she singled mine out, saying how moved she was by it. She wanted to keep it, and I consented. It was the most affirming thing that had ever happened to me in school and , I'm sure, had a lot to do with shaping my future. I guess I've come full circle.
Thanks for the opportunity, El"