Tuesday, 23 July 2024, 6 PM
Jefferson Market Library
Willa Cather room on the first floor
425 6th Ave, New York, (212) 243-4334
Lionel Ziprin was a prolific writer, a mystical poet who produced thousands of poems in his time, although you wouldn’t be able to tell that from his published output: In 1990 a small wooden box with ephemera and a flexi-disc was released and 2017 saw the publishing of his book Songs for Schizoid Siblings, there were a few contributions to magazines and that’s it. So it was high time to bring some more attention to Lionel Ziprin.
Deaths of tortoises do not always set things in motion. But obviously, Winnie, the tortoise of Vali Myers and Gianni Menichetti, had always been a little different.
Winnie was a confidant and a source of inspiration to Vali and Gianni and since Winnie had always been around, her death in February 2021 caused Gianni to realize that he was now the only living memory of Vali’s legacy. He had a sense that Winnie’s death symbolized the end of an era. In the period of reflection that followed, he wrote five poems.
A film with Herbie Kearney by Robert O’Haire and Jeff Burns
This guest post by Bill Sasser was originally published in Raw Vision #115 and on billsasser.com. Posted here with permission.
“Have you ever seen a whale?” Herbert Kearney asks perched on a stool in his huge post-industrial art space, just downriver from New Orleans’s French Quarter. “I’ve seen a whale, a big whale, off Alaska. Seeing it you realize we aren’t alone in the universe, big monster fins are skimming under the surface. That big eye looking back at you, it’s the biggest soul in the world. They’re beautiful creatures.”
Just sitting still, Kearney emanates a halo of manic energy. Hennaed hair twisted back in a bun, he wears a wool coat, hat, and gloves—February 2005 is cold and the old hosiery mill is unheated.
A sculptor, painter, and poet who had spent a decade and a half traveling the world, he had arrived two years earlier and found a permanent spiritual home, in a port city where the creative slipstream welcomes newcomers, and art lives in the streets.
Celebrated Dutch photographer Marco Bakker traveled to the Valley of Il Porto, in Positano, Italy, to deliver to his friend, Gianni Menichetti, a first copy of An Ode to Winnie, on which they collaborated. Winnie, who lived to the age of 120, was a magnificent tortoise, beloved of Vali Myers, and of Gianni. During his visit to the Valley, Marco took some beautiful photos of Gianni, featured here, using an old Speed Graphic camera.
For more information on An Ode to Winnie visit runningbeforethewind.com
