Visual evidence the Ovid marathon really happened

I am still shaking my head that The Pulitzer Foundation of the Arts threw open its doors for two days of the widest variety of St. Louis people reading from Ovid's great poem of change, the Metamorphoses. Before I realized that ink pens were verboten, I made this crude sketch of my friend the poet Stefene Russell reading from the epic.

Stef's huband Thom Fletcher took a shot from the same angle during a different reader's performance.

He also snapped his beloved boning up on her Ovid. I am supposing she was trying to divine where she might come in, based upon how far the marathon had progressed by that point. All any of us knew going in was where in the list of 74 readers we would be doing our 15-minute stint, so there was no reliable way to rehearse.

I also sketched K. Curtis Lyle, who read right after Stefene. He objected that this was more of a likeness to The Wolfman than to himself, but everybody is a critic. Note that both Curtis and Stefene signed my sketches of them during the impromptu happy hour out back at The Pulitzer.

Stefene, Curtis and I all serve on the Poetry Scores board; we have scored Stefene's work and hosted an Art Invitational for poems by both of them; and I am the organization's creative director. So, given that all three of us read in the Ovid marathon, I'll call this almost a collaboration between the monied Pulitzer and the scrappy us.

We plan to shoot for a more official collaboration in the future. After all, we translate poetry into other media, and they host poetry readings in connection to a painting exhibition. We're right there with the thoughts ...

More on the Ovid marathon in subsequent posts, including: Now that we know Rachel Storch wants Jeff Smith's open Senate seat, and now that we know precisely what stretch of the Metamorphoses she read, what does the great poem of change have to say about upcoming changes in her political career?