A Sunday Afternoon at the Scarab Club
by Mary Sitto
On February 22, Springfed Arts’ Downtown Literary Art Series presented a diverse mixture of poetry and prose.

The first of five featured authors and poets, Jeff Vande Zande, opened with a poem before reading an excerpt from his new novel, Landscapes with Fragmented Figures: A Novel, which paints a story in a conflicting urban atmosphere through the eyes of artist, Ray Casper. “The sky is a giant canvas,” Vande Zande writes. “Mix visual with emotion and end up with art.”

Eddie Bell read from his courageous free verse collection Eeny Meeny Miney Mo/Time to Lynch a Negro. Bell takes the emotionally charged topic of lynching and presents it in a mindful manner. The reading includes the thought-provoking poem “Aftermath of the Bad Nigger Festival: An old woman’s story.” The poem tells of a white woman who is taken to a spectacle lynching at the age of seven and questions her father “ … Papa, didn’t you think the ghost would come?” A father asks God to forgive the mob that lynched his son in “A Prayer for Reuben.” The blues poem “Collateral Damage,” is about a wife who loses her husband to lynching; “…The earth is quiet and my missin’ man blues/play loud in these hear ears/Come to know it/ Ain’t no cure for my missin’ man blues.”

Robert Downes, fully equipped with photos from his new novel Planet Backpacker, takes the audience through history, myth, unusual characters and humorous encounters. The lively account of backpacking around the world includes stories of sailing down the Nile River in Egypt with a Nubian drum band, blessings from an elephant and lunch with a sacred cow in Mumbi, India. Downes, a Traverse City resident and editor of Northern Express Weekly, was motivated by the spirit of Jack Keroac’s On The Road, as he scribbled notes from Ireland to Budapest and then stopped at over 100 internet cafes around the world to blog his journey.

Poet and author Maria Costantini credits Springfed Arts writing instructor, Mary Jo Firth Gillett, as an inspiration in her writing. The lyrical passages in her Villanelle were influenced by the “villanella,” an Italian dance-song born during the Renaissance. Another poem is created in the spirit of Frida Khalo’s only collage painting, My Dress Hangs There. Costantini’s eloquent voice is captivating, particularly when she re-reads a poem in her native Italian language.
Performance Poet Diamond Dancer and Friends end the afternoon with a mellifluous mix of poetry and music. In a poem about her experience in a hair show where everyone wants to touch her new hairdo, she assures, “and no, you can’t touch it.”