Happy Monday, folks! This week is online Open Mic, which means that you have today and tomorrow to submit your work-in-progress, before all submissions go live on Wednesday for 24 hours of wild workshopping.
This month there’s an extra-special treat: we heartily welcome the staff of the U of MN’s undergraduate literary magazine, Ivory Tower,* to Open Mic! The staff will be leaving feedback for our fantastic writers throughout the day.
In honor of our guests this week, let’s take a moment to study towers of all shapes and sizes. And then write a little somethin’ about one. Or two, or three…
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Tower of Babel, c. 1565. Oil on panel. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Alfred Hitchcock, Vertigo, 1958. Film still featuring James Stewart. Distributed by Paramount Pictures/Universal Pictures.
Bastienne Schmidt, Woman in Field with Water Tower, Southampton, 2007. Photograph. www.bastienneschmidt.com
* Mark your calendars for their launch party on April 24, 7:00 to 10:00 pm at The Whole Music Club — it’s free and open to the public!
I’ve been staring at the spine of Audubon’s Birds of America (Popular Edition, 1950) on my shelf for the past few weeks, and now that the weather has warmed and the warblers and grebes and other migratory birds are either returning or passing through, it seems a fitting time to do a Three Things on our feathered friends. I have for you this week a John Martin painting, a photograph by Manuel Presti (which won him the 2005 Wildlife Photographer of the Year award, and which you may recognize from Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky album cover), and, of course, an Audubon.
I thought about pulling out a poem or excerpt featuring fowl, but I’ve decided I’d rather hear your picks instead. What are your favorite bird-related pieces?
John Martin, Assuaging of the Waters, 1840. Oil on canvas. Church of Scotland General Assembly, Edinburgh.
Manuel Presti, Sky Chase, 2005. Photograph. Taken in Rome, Italy.
John James Audubon, Little Blue Heron, Plate 23. From Audubon’s Birds of America. Popular Edition. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1950.
And here’s a bonus thing, because let’s face it: birds can be sinister, sometimes, too. (Disclaimer: if birds frighten you, you probably shouldn’t click.)
