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Parallel Press Releases 'From the Sketchbooks of Vanessa Bell' by Allison Funk

Posted 3/19/2002

Cover: From the Sketchbooks of Vanessa BellMADISON, Wis.—Poet Allison Funk explores the intricate family relationships of painter Vanessa Bell, sister of writer Virginia Woolf, in "From the Sketchbooks of Vanessa Bell," the latest chapbook released by Parallel Press. Like a painter at an easel, Funk allows rich and descriptive language to create a work of art that captures the complexities of kinship.

Born in 1879, Bell entered the Royal Academy Schools to study painting in 1901. Her portfolio includes examples of British modernism and the combination of Postimpressionism with interior design. Bell led a complicated life that included the death of a son and the flirtation of her husband with her sister, Woolf, which strained the sisters' relationship. She exhibited work until her death in 1961.

"From the Sketchbooks of Vanessa Bell" marks the 18th chapbook release by Parallel Press, an imprint of the UW-Madison Libraries. The chapbooks are small-format literary works, usually poetry or essays.

Allison Funk has published two books of poems, "Living at the Epicenter," which won the Samuel French Morse Prize, and "Forms of Conversion." The Sheep Meadow Press will publish her third full-length book in 2002. She has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the George Kent Prize from Poetry magazine, the Celia B. Wagner Prize from the Poetry Society of America and the 1995 Award for Poetry from the Society of Midland Authors. Her work was included in The Best American Poetry, 1994. Individual poems have appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Shenandoah and other journals. Educated at Columbia University, she is professor of English at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.

Here is a poem from "From the Sketchbooks of Vanessa Bell":

"Study for an Interior With the Artist, Leslie Stephen and Virginia Woolf"

A green eyed brat?
Not quite, but Virginia was always Father's favorite,
just outside the room

when he slammed his fist against the book
shouting, "I am ruined. Have you no pity,
standing there like a block of stone?"

Though she could see through the door standing open
how, as skillfully as the best models at the Academy,
I did not blink, did not stretch a limb,

she couldn't have known how much I missed Mother,
dead then two years, how alone without her,
the eighteen-year-old mistress of the house,

I feared the inquisition those Wednesdays
Father checked my accounts,
weeks I was ten, eleven pounds over.

No one knew
how by picturing a scene
I learned I could leave it.

I am drawing Vanessa still,
now, as then, determined not to alter a feature
in my rendering,

the arms ending at her waist
in one quiet fist.
Eyes marooned in that resolute face,

she could be at sea, so far
is she from her father,
who, in his rocking, gets smaller

and smaller, his voice fading away
until it makes no difference if his mouth still moves,
she no longer hears what he's saying

Each Parallel Press chapbook is $10; annual subscriptions for six are $50. Please order by writing:
The Parallel Press
372 Memorial Library
728 State St.
Madison, WI 53706

For information, visit http://parallelpress.library.wisc.edu or call 262-2600. E-mail inquiries may be sent to kfrazier@library.wisc.edu.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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