A gallery of 'Snow White' mirror selfies

 

We asked people to take a mirror selfy and title the photograph after a phrase in Anne Sexton's poem "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Here is what we got, presented in the order their titles appear in the poem.

 

 

 

 

"Cheeks as fragile as cigarette paper"
Gina Dill-Thebeau

"open and shut"

Hunter Brumfield III

"She is white as a bonefish"

Kim Wingett

"eaten, of course, by age"

Chris King

 

"You will dance the fire dance in iron shoes"

Nick Barbieri

"The stepmother had a mirror to which she referred --

something like the weather forecast"

Sharon Derry

"And the mirror would reply"

Tim Meehan

 

"Pride pumped in her like poison"

Rene Spencer Saller

 

"Suddenly one day the mirror replied,
Queen you are full fair, 'tis true,
but Snow White is fairer than you."

Prinsess Tarta

"you are full fair, 'tis true,

but Snow White is fairer than you."

Heather Pillow

"Until that moment Snow White

had been no more important

than a dust mouse under the bed"

Gina Dill-Thebeau

"Bring me her heart,

she said to the hunter,

and I will salt it and eat it."

Sharon Derry
 

"Now I am fairest, she said,

lapping her slim white fingers."

Ipek Subasi

"The birds called out lewdly"

Nicky Rainey

 

"The birds called out lewdly"

Gina Dill-Thebeau

"Talking like pink parrots"

Cem Subasi

"And the snakes hung down in loops"

Ann Hirschfeld

"They asked her to stay and keep house"

Heidi Dean

"she came to the seventh mountain"

Robin Street-Morris

 

"Beware of your stepmother, they said.
Soon she will know you are here."

Beth Owen

"While we are away in the mines

during the day, you must not

open the door."

John Parker

"The mirror told"

Ann Hirschfeld

 

"and so the queen dressed herself in rags

and went out like a peddler to trap Snow White."

Ree Cee

"This time she bought a poison comb"

Michelle Koelling

"This time she bought a poison comb,

a curved eight-inched scorpion,

and put it in her hair and swooned again."
Erica R. Brooks

 

"Snow White, the dumb bunny,
opened the door
and she bit into a poison apple
and fell down for the final time."

Dawn O'Neall

"Though they washed her with wine

and rubbed her with butter

it was to no avail."

Stefene Russell

 

"A prince came one June day"

Jay Alan Babcock

 

"And still he would not leave"

Scott Intagliata

 

"The dwarfs took pity upon him"

Scott Intagliata

"First your toes will smoke
and then your heels will turn black
and you will fry upward like a frog,
she was told.
And so she danced until she was dead,
a subterranean figure"

Anita Jung

"And so she danced until she was dead,

a subterranean figure"

Heather Corley

"Meanwhile Snow White held court"

Deb Douglas

"Sometimes referring to her mirror as women do"

Amy VanDonsel

Want to play? Take a mirror selfy, title it from the poem and then email it to brodog@hotmail.com or post it to Poetry Scores on Facebook or Twitter.

This is all part of Poetry Scores' celebration of Anne Sexton's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," done with permission of Linda Gray Sexton and the Anne Sexton Estate.

Hunter Brumfield photobombs the 'Snow White' mirror selfy

Poetry Scores is hustling to put together a celebration of Anne Sexton's poem "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" this Friday at Mad Gallery.

We'll have a good number of contributing artists turning the poem into music, voice and visual art on Friday night, so we will want to offer them a couple of drinks. Schlafly Beer always generously helps us to do this, but some people prefer wine, so we like to buy a big bomber of red wine to augment craft services.

We translate poetry into other media and tend to look to the poem for answers. Right there at the beginning of the poem, Sexton says the virgin has "lips like Vin Du Rhône," like wine from the Rhône Valley, so I picked up a bomber of Cotes du Rhône.

Then a funny thing happened. As I sat the wine down on my basement floor, a cave cricket appeared, apparently out from under the bomber of red wine as I sat it down. It really did look like a magic act. One moment there was a bare patch of bare cement, and the next moment a cave cricket was crawling out from under where the wine got sat down.

The funny thing is, I felt really haunted in this basement after Hunter Brumfield III ended his life. The haunting came in the form of cave crickets. Our friend Tim Rakel had a bug-infested Hunter haunting of his own at that time, the subject of the Union Electric song "Bugs," which Poetry Scores co-published.

My haunting felt especially acute, since the day Hunter killed himself was the very day I moved into this house. In fact, Hunter was going to help me move that day, so in choosing to end his life one of the great many things Hunter must have considered was that he would be blowing off helping me to move into this house.

In the house in Dogtown we had been renting, whenever Hunter and I hung out, it was always in the basement, and in the new house, had Hunter lived and not died, I am sure the basement is where we would have hung out together. So the cave crickets that swarmed my basement so dramatically after Hunter's death felt like a pathetic manifestation of Hunter's spirit, a last weak attempt to hang out.

The experience made me want to write a novel about the scenario, which I managed to do (after I had failed for many years to complete many previous attempts at novels). So at that point I decided to accept Hunter's continued collaboration, however crazy that might appear to others. It seemed to be going somewhere.

I relate this experience to something the British potter Bernard Leach said after the Korean potter Yanagi passed. Leach and Yanagi did their best work bouncing ideas off one other, and after Yanagi died, Leach said he managed to continue their collaboration. "Yanagi is gone," Leach wrote, "but the friendship has deepened."

So when a cave cricket came crawling dramatically, as if magically, out from under a bottle of wine I had translated from an Anne Sexton poem, I realized I was forgetting something. Poetry Scores had not invited Hunter to contribute to the Anne Sexton project!

Hunter was the drummer in the Poetry Scores house band when he killed himself, and probably would have been the drummer in Ann Hirschfeld's "Snow White" band had he lived. Dead men don't drum, and least not reliably on a rehearsal schedule, but we had been inviting Hunter to put work in our art shows. Poetry Scores always has permitted the repurposing of existing work, so we just take one of Hunter's paintings or prints in circulation, retitle it from the poem at hand, and give Fred Friction Hunter's drink tickets at the art show.

As a matter of fact, when that cave cricket amazed me by crawling out from under that bottle of red wine I had translated from an Anne Sexton poem, what else should I lock gaze with but a closeup portrait of Iggy Pop that Hunter had painted, staring me down from the wall?

This painting was a gift to me from the collection of Fred Friction. Andrew Torch and I curated this painting into our art invitational to "Phantom of the dreams' origin," where it took on the title, after the poetry of Andreas Embirikos, "Tranquility did not exist."

As I stared into what Hunter tried to paint into Iggy Pop's eyes, I knew I could find "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" in there somewhere. This poem appears in Sexton's book Transformations, and Hunter Brumfield was Mister Transformation -- in my novel that started with the cave cricket haunting, the Hunter character kills himself, in part, to shift shapes. To break on through.

I looked into the poem and I found Hunter and Iggy right away, right near the bottle of wine they had crawled out from under in the first place.

*

No matter what life you lead
the virgin is a lovely number:
cheeks as fragile as cigarette paper,
arms and legs made of Limoges,
lips like Vin Du Rhône,
rolling her china-blue doll eyes
open and shut.

*

There, I saw it: "open and shut." The eyes in this painting are wide open, but at the same time the man behind the eyes looks hideously shut in. He is at once absolutely open, and utterly isolated. Open and shut. That might also say something about the passageway between the dead and living: open and shut.

I got all excited and wrote to Poetry Scores' guest curator for 2013, Heather Corley, asking if she would accept Hunter's piece into the show at the last minute. Like all of my other ideas for this art show, her answer was no. (It is widely agreed that my influence as an art curator is something Poetry Scores needs to shift shapes far from.)

But I had a backup plan. Poetry Scores board president Scott Intagliata had a brilliant idea for an open commission for people to participate in our celebration of Anne Sexton. His idea evolved into the Snow White Mirror Selfy, where (appropriately for a poem about looking in the mirror) people are invited to translate "Snow White" into the 21st century tradition of a selfy, taking their own picture in a mirror and titling the photograph using a quote from the poem.

So Hunter has photo bombed the Mirror Selfy. Here is his Snow White Mirror Selfy, "open and shut."

 

"open and shut," by Hunter Brumfield III, after Anne Sexton,

on loan from the collection of Fred Friction

Ron translates Anne Sexton into a cocktail

For Poetry Scores' celebration of Anne Sexton's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" this Friday at Mad Art Gallery, Ron Buechele of Mad Art (and Capitalist Pig) is translating the poem into cocktails. Mad Art's cash bar will be serving five distinct Poison Apples.

We had suggested a Poison Apple pouring station where the patron is asked to "name your poison" to mix with apple juice, but Ron is more deliberate than that (and, he said, lots of alcohol doesn't mix well with apple juice).

So Ron has named your poisons. Five of them:

*

APPLE PIE

Pearl Apple Pie (vodka)
Catdaddy (moonshine)
apple juice

*

CINAMMON APPLE

Pearl Apple Pie
Fireball
apple juice

*

APPLE JACK

Laird's Applejack
apple cider

*

APPLE FRITTER

Three Olives Cake (vodka)
Caramel Vodka
apple juice

*

HONEY APPLE

Jim Beam Honey
apple cider

**

Try all five! As long as you're not driving home.

Poetry Scores also will be serving finger foods as translations from the poem, not to mention Ann Hirschfeld's live musical score of "Snow White," interspersed with 12 women reading the poem, and an art invitational of work based on the poem curated by Heather Corley.

Complete event info here.

**

Image borrowed from Tokyo Terrace

Poetry Scores commissions ‘Mirror’ selfies

"The birds called out lewdly, / talking like pink parrots,"
a Mirror selfy by Nicky Rainey

Poetry Scores commissions ‘Mirror’ selfies

Poetry Scores translates poetry into other media, and as we approach our Nov. 8 celebration of Anne Sexton’s poem “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” we are asking people everywhere to help us translate “Snow White” into the 21st century medium of the selfy.

“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” is a poem about what happens after someone looks into a mirror, so we ask that your selfy be a mirror shot. In the spirit of Poetry Scores, we also ask that you read Sexton’s poem and choose a phrase from the poem to title your selfy.

Once you take and title your selfy, please post it or share it, and give us a way to find it. You can post it to Poetry Scores’ Facebook page, Twitpic it to us on Twitter at @poetryscores, put it on any social medium with the hashtag #Mirrorselfy, or email it to Poetry Scores at brodog@hotmail.com with the subject line “Mirror selfy.”

Read “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" at the Academy of American Poets site.

More event info: Poetry Scores celebrates “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” 6-10 p.m. Friday, Nov. 8 at Mad Art, 2727 So. 12th Street in St. Louis, with a reading of the poem by 12 women, a musical score of the poem by Ann Hirschfeld, an art invitational based on the poem curated by Heather Corley, finger food translations of the poem by Poetry Scores staff, and a Poison Apple pour station where you can name your poison (soda, champagne, hard cider, whiskey, whatever) to mix with apple juice.

Even more event information elsewhere on the Poetry Scores blog.

 

Poetry Scores celebrates Anne Sexton’s ‘Snow White,’ Nov. 8 at Mad Art

Anne Sexton, Ann Hirschfeld

Poetry Scores celebrates Anne Sexton’s ‘Snow White’
Live music/poetry performance with art invitational, Nov. 8 at Mad Art



From 6-10 p.m. Friday, November 8, Poetry Scores will host a celebration of the Anne Sexton poem “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” that includes the live premiere of a new musical score of the poem, a reading of the poem by twelve women, an art invitational where more than twenty visual artists respond to the poem, and a translation of the poem into finger foods.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held at Mad Art Gallery, 2727 So. 12th Street in the Soulard neighborhood of St. Louis. Mad Art will run a cash bar. Doors to the art invitational and finger foods open at 6 p.m.

The live musical score will start at 8 p.m. prompt. St. Louis songwriter Ann Hirschfeld has scored Anne Sexton’s poem “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” as a sequence of twelve folk rock songs. She and her band will perform the score in its entirety, with a different woman reading from “Snow White” before each song.

“As Anne Sexton’s poem ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ is a different take on the Grimm fairy tale, in setting the words to music I hope to add one more dimension to the story,” Ann Hirschfeld says. “Harmonious sound evokes powerful emotions. The rhythm and cadence in which the syllables are sung can add to the mood as well. Anne Sexton provided a poem that is perfect for the medium of musical exploration. In breaking it down into twelve songs, I tried to construct a cohesive flow to all the possible visuals this poem can inspire for each listener.”

Ann Hirschfeld (guitar, vocals) will be backed by a crack band of veteran St. Louis musicians: Nick Barbieri (drums), Mark Buckheit (guitars), Heidi Dean (vocals), Michael Martin (bass), Jon Parsons (keyboards) and Tracy Swigert (vocals).

The twelve women who will read Sexton’s poetry before each of the songs are Amy Broadway, Catherine Eiler, Yaphett El-Amin, Leyla Fern King, Joan Lipkin, Mali Newman, Natalie Partenheimer, Heather Pillow, Nicky Rainey, Treasure Redmond, Rebecca Rivas and Stefene Russell.

The live score will be concluded by 9 p.m., but the art invitational will remain open.

"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," Poetry Scores’ ninth art invitational, is curated by Heather Corley, Poetry Scores’ guest curator for 2013. Corley invited visual artists from St. Louis and across the country “to create a new piece in response to the poem or re-contextualize an existing piece.” Each work of art will be titled after a direct quote from the poem, which will dictate where the art is placed in the show. So guests will be able to follow the progress of the poem by walking through the art exhibition.

“I am returning the Poetry Scores art invitational to a gallery exhibition where the focus is on the poem and the visual interpretation of the poem,” Heather Corley says. “I have chosen many artists who have not previously been involved with Poetry Scores and whose work will compliment, challenge and question the poem – conceptually, visually, or both.”

Confirmed visual artists – hailing from Bowling Green, Brooklyn, Chicago, Detroit, Iowa City, Knoxville, St. Louis and Vicksburg – include Kristina Arnold, Jay Alan Babcock, Amy Bautz, Jessi Cerutti, Deborah Chaney, Jon Cournoyer, Deb Douglas, Greg Edmondson, Alice Scott Gross, Andrew James, Anita Jung, Alicia LaChance, Jen McKnight, Tim Meehan, Carmelita Nunez, Lloyd Patterson Jr., Jeremy Rabus, Tony Renner, Snail Scott, Sarah Shebaro, Daniel Shown, Jeff Sippel, Dana Smith, Millee Tibbs, Andrew Torch, Jessie VanderLaan and Michael Woody.

Poetry Scores is an all-volunteer international arts organization based in St. Louis that translates poetry into other media, including music, visual art, cinema, food and happenings. "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is its eighth poetry score, or musical setting of a long poem. Nigerian Nobel laureate in literature Wole Soyinka describes Poetry Scores as “a very special celebration of creative collaboration.”

Ann Hirschfeld is a veteran St. Louis songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who has played key roles in the bands Plaid Cattle and The Deciders. "Snow White" is her first poetry score. She says, “My influences of rock & roll, old-school and modern pop, retro R&B, folk and ska were ever-present in the creation of this piece.”

Heather Corley showed her work most recently at the prestigious Gallery 210 show at the University of St. Louis – Missouri in 2012. She received her degree in printmaking from UMSL in 2004 and her MFA from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2007. She exhibits in the St. Louis region, nationally and internationally, and is a regular contributor to Poetry Scores art invitationals.

Anne Sexton (1928-1974) is one of the most widely anthologized, awarded and beloved of modern American poets. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” appears in her collection of retold fairy tales, Transformations (1971). In his forward to Transformations, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. writes of Anne Sexton: “she domesticates my terror, examines it and describes it, teaches it some tricks which will amuse me, then lets it gallop wild in my forest once more.”

For more information, contact Poetry Scores creative director Chris King at brodog@hotmail.com or 314-265-1435 or visit http://poetryscores.blogspot.com/.


WHAT? Poetry Scores celebrates Anne Sexton’s Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs

WHEN? 6-10 p.m. Friday, November 8. Music/poetry performance is 8-9 p.m.

WHERE? Mad Art Gallery, 2727 So. 12th Street, St. Louis

COST? Admission is free, cash bar, Poetry Scores projects for sale

CONTACT? Chris King at brodog@hotmail.com or 314-265-1435

Free documentary screenings to recruit talent for Jack Ruby silent movie

Poetry Scores is hosting a series of free public screenings of documentaries to recruit cast and crew for its next silent motion picture, Jack Ruby's America, based on the poem of that name by David Clewell.

Anyone interested in helping us make a period (1963) silent film about the Dallas burlesque club owner who shot Lee Harvey Oswald is cordially invited to attend. We need 100 actors of all races, genders and ages, in dual and multiple roles to make this movie, and all sorts of help with location, props, costumes, etc.

Given the time and place, we have a special need for white actors willing to wear their hair conservative (to play cops, federal agents, people on the street), but we also need to cast a Cuban revolution, Ruby's Jewish family, several ethnicities of gangsters and a bunch of burlesque dancers.

Note: Poetry Scores translates poetry into other media. We start by setting a long poem to music. We have done that for Jack Ruby's America and you can download or stream that poetry score on Box. We will shoot a silent movie to that score, so there will be no dialogue, no spoken parts.

These free documentary screenings will be held at 7:30 p.m. on four Wednesdays this summer at Mad Art Gallery, 2727 So. 12th St. Mad Art will operate a cash bar.

Capitalist Pig BBQ will be available any night there are enough pre-orders for chef Ron Buechele to fire up the Pig. Email those pre-orders to Ron@capitalistpigbbq.com.

Jack Ruby's America pre-production screenings

July 24 * JFK: 3 Shots That Changed America

July 31 * Naughty Dallas

August 14 * I Am Cuba

August 21 * Selected mob documentaries

These films are mostly pure period documentary footage. Almost every costume, prop and car we need is in these movies.

The pre-production will continue 4 p.m. to midnight Saturday, August 31 in a costume, prop and vintage car review party with night-swimming at Wesley Fordyce's spread. Directions will be sent later to participating cast and crew.

We will start shooting the movie on the 50th anniversary of the date Ruby shot Oswald (November 24). The shoot will take a year, but most actors will only have two or three days of work,

For more information, contact creative director Chris King at brodog@hotmail.com or 314-265-1435.

DOWNLOADS

The text of Jack Ruby's America. David Clewell's poem is in print as the centerpiece of his newest collection Taken Somehow by Surprise, which any lover of poetry or American history buff should own, but cast and crew can download and read the Ruby poem here.

The poetry score to Jack Ruby's America. This is Clewell reading his entire poem, with musical interludes, posted to our Box account as 59 mp3s (the CD is out of print). This score is what our otherwise silent movie will sound like.Once you are in the Box folder, you can click on track 1, hit "play" and check the "Auto-play next file" and it will stream. Or, when you are looking at the list of all the mp3s, click "Folder Options" in the upper right corner. Click on that for a dropdown list that includes "Download Folder."

A please spoon

This spring Poetry Scores is working with the 1913 Gertrude Stein poem "Yet Dish".

On Saturday Nicky Rainey led a Poetry Scores float that scored the poem for moving "conceptual weirdness," as she predicted it'd appear, in The People's Joy Parade for Cinco de Mayo.

I wasn't able to make the parade but wanted to make some stuff to move with it, so I sketched and colored to a few phrases from the Gertrude Stein poem.

When rain threatened, Nicky asked if my work could get wet and I said it was all totally disposable, as you can see it is.

Trying to make this stuff to "Yet Dish," though, I did hit upon one idea, one conceptual art idea, that I think has lasting value.

The 27th numbered section (of the poem's 69 numbered sections) ends with a suggestive phrase.


XXVII

Nice oil pail.

No gold go at.
Nice oil pail.
Near a paper lag sought.
What is an astonishing won door. A please spoon.


A please spoon! I thought of my friend Larry Krone and how I saw him write the title of the Dolly Parton song "And I will always love you" over and over and over and over again on the wall of a gallery.

So I took an old wooden spoon and wrote "Please" on it in a Sharpie over and over and over again.

The idea is then to give a please spoon to someone with an urgent request, please, which since it was a please spoon, they would have to honor.

Then they had the please spoon and could give it to anyone else with any other urgent request, please, which the other person would have to honor because it is a please spoon.

Our 2013 guest curator Heather Corley was really good to me for the past month, roadying for me so I could rehearse our house band Three Fried Men for a gig and enjoy a few glasses of wine while I was doing it. So I decided to give her a please spoon and I asked her to please take care of herself.

A please spoon. Anyone can make a please spoon. Any spoon will do.