STOIMEN REVISITED

A decade ago, the Lyman Allyn Museum welcomed the master painter, Stoimen Stoilov from Bulgaria for an extraordinary one man show. Stoimen created heroic canvases assembled in the museum itself which have not been available to the public since that remarkable show. On June 7th, the Provenance Center is pleased to offer a brief second look at these works, in preparation for a major retrospective to take place at the Slater Museum next June, 2015.

In the New London Day review of that Lyman Allyn Show, NEW WORKS FROM EUROPE COMBINE A MASTER’S TOUCH WITH AN ARRESTING VISION, Day critic, Rick Koster writes that the works, “display a paradoxically futuristic interpretation of the mysticism and mythology appropriate to both eastern and western Europe. Fasten your seatbelt, then, and join the ghosts of other travelers who’ve apparently been inside his brain a while: Hieronymous Bosch, Albrecht Dürer, Pan and his eclectic and recurring entourage of Greco-Roman deities and mythmakers, Leonardo DaVinci and maybe the painter/patricide Richard Dadd.”

In addition to the massive murals, STOIMEN REVISITED features etchings from ECHOES, the art folio book “illustrating” the poetry of William Meredith. This limited edition masterwork can be found in special collections libraries at Yale, Princeton, the New York Public Library, and Connecticut College among others, but can now be viewed easily, without a library card or special permission.

In Stoimen’s native Bulgaria, when winter seems finally over and to greet the spring, people offer each other a martenitsa, small amulets made of red and white yarn that one must tie to a tree for luck when they see the first bird of spring. And throughout the summer, birds’ nests across the country have these red and white threads woven into them. In this spirit of luck and affection, the William Meredith Foundation is pleased to offer this small jewel of an exhibition to welcome summer and all the joys it portends. Come raise a glass with us at the opening reception June 7th 7-9:00.

We are pleased to announce the publication of CONGREGATION as the 2014 William Meredith Award for Poetry given to US Poet Laureate, Natasha Trethewey. Individual copies can be purchased through Poets-Choice. Com at the Pay Pal donate button for $12.95 (with free shipping.)

CONGREGATION will soon be available on Amazon at the following link:
http://www.amazon.com/Congregation-Poems-By-Natasha-Trethewey/dp/1928755240/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399140539&sr=8-1&keywords=congregation%2C+Poems+by+Natasha+Trethewey

Book Store DISCOUNTS for bulk sales available by contacting:

MarathonFilm@gmail.com or telelphone 860-961-5138

Richard Harteis

FROM THE FOREWORD of CONGREGATION:

The William Meredith Foundation is honored to present the 2014 award for poetry to Natasha Trethewey. Beyond the fact that both poets served at the Library of Congress, the award recognizes a shared aesthetic and level of achievement. When Meredith was writing poems, his goal was that they be "useful," that they speak to audiences "In the heart's duress, on the heart's behalf." For Meredith, poetry is essentially an act of communication in the language of the human tribe, not an exercise in intellectual posturing or exhibitionism. His work is accessible and deceptively simple. He speaks to us with a moral authority and finally, like Trethewey, feels impelled "to offer somebody/uncomprehending, impudent thanks." Congregation is such a document, a "love letter to the Gulf Coast, a praise song, a dirge, invocation and benediction, a requiem for the Gulf Coast." Here are the people of the Mississippi Gulf Coast after Katrina, speaking to her with the folk wisdom, and faith, of the survivor. "Without faith, we is victims," one church marquee proclaims, and another, with a different kind of eloquence, "God is not/ the author of fear." A pilgrim, she returns to the Gulf Coast and her people, but finds home to be "but a cradle of the past." She cannot enter the church service, "standing at the vestibule - neither in, nor out," and can only watch, her face against the glass, attempting to face the things that confront her. By the end of the cycle, however, she has earned the Whitmanesque final line of the poems, "native daughter: I am the Gulf Coast."