THE SUM OF OUR BREATH
Getting together with Lynda and Vinny Calabrese
by M. Scott Douglass(This interview appears in the Winter 2001 issue of MSR which is still available for only $7 at The Main Street Rag Bookstore.)
Lynda Calabrese and I have a history together that goes back almost ten years, so when the time came to interview her about her new book, The Sum of Our Breath (reviewed in MSR Summer 2001), we were both hesitant. We both have a tendency to say whatever crosses our minds and while that makes for some loud interesting discussions, it's not always fit for print.
In addition to that, I've written some things that were not always well received by Lynda. Even so, she honored me by requesting a quote for the back cover of her book for which I wrote, "In The Sum of Our Breath, Lynda Calabrese opens up and shares a treasure chest of familial vignettes with slicing wit and frankness. We hear her voice as sister, daughter, wife, but most profoundly as Jewish-American mommy angst. This collection is a poetic gem for anyone with blood-ties to humanity."
Lynda approached this conversation cautiously and was decidedly wary about being taped. I invited her and husband Vinny to our new home to drink some beer, shoot some pool and have a casual chat about art, poetry, writing and publishing.
During our conversations, we tripped over a few forbidden subjects that were often followed by the nervous, "You can't print that."
We'll see.But The Sum of Our Breath is more than a collection of poetry, it's a corroboration between Lynda and fellow artist and husband, Vincent, who designed the book cover to cover. And therein lies "The Sum" of The Sum of Our Breath. In this edited transcript, you will hear the voices of friends-minus the clack of billiard balls, laughter, and the muted crowd noise as Chris Brown misses another field goal.
MSD: Do you remember when we first met?
Lynda Calabrese: Wasn't it at one of those Psychokinetic Events down on North Davidson?
MSD: I thought it was across the street at the gallery that is now the Blue Pony.
LC: Okay, but the reading across the street, that was a "Bad Poem" contest.MSD: No, no, no—I never did a "Bad Poem" contest. It must have been when I hosted that poetry reading at what is now Wrightnow Gallery. I called Irene Honeycutt and asked for a list of poets–—this, I think, is where we met. She gave me your name and…
LC: Probably Maureen (Ryan Griffin)...MSD: Yes. And Irene read and we dragged on because I decided I was going to read and I gave everyone an assignment to write on a certain subject.
LC: See, I thought that was a Psychokinetic Event.MSD: No, I put that on.
LC: Okay, what was the assignment—'cause I know the poem?MSD: It was something to do with homelessness.
LC: No, it was a persona poem, and I was like an AIDS guy in a Chinese restaurant.MSD: I don't remember that. (laughing)
LC: I still have the poem.MSD: When we met you were taking classes with Irene. Typical question: when did you start writing poetry?
LC: For my fortieth birthday, Vinny gave me my astrology chart and in my chart it said I will write and I will be published and I said, "Hah—I'm a visual artist—where does that come from?" But I always used to like to write diary stuff—we call it journaling now—so I said I'm going to listen to her (the astrologer) 'cause she really knows her shit and I signed up for Irene's class.MSD: And that was when?
LC: I was forty and I'm fifty-three now—or am I fifty-four? (to Vinny) Thirteen years ago, I guess.MSD: This is your second book, and your first book was…
LC: On the Cusp of Something Else
MSD: And that was put out by…
LC: Sandstone Publishing…
MSD: Which was Charlotte Poetry Review?
LC: Right.MSD: I took Vinny back to my office and showed him the "Can of Worms" design he did for CPR—it's still on my wall. You guys were pretty tight with them, weren't you?
LC: I don't know that we were "tight", but we respected each other. I felt like they were doing something brave.MSD: But Vinny was doing covers for them, right? (To Vinny) Weren't you the art director?
LC: I don't think he ever felt like the art director—he just did covers.
Vinny Calabrese: I did a cover for him and then he needed more and it was a fun thing to do…
LC: It was never anything formal.
VC: I liked working with AJ. He was a sweet guy.
MSD: Lay back?
VC: Yeah.
MSD: The reason I asked is because you did On The Cusp and I was thinking CPR was probably your first experience with publishing, correct?
LC: No, I had little things, places where Irene told me to send stuff. Like I had something in The Crucible—I wasn't actively doing anything. Then they started Charlotte Poetry Review and I thought it was really neat that it was a "Charlotte thing" so I sent them a bunch of stuff. And he published almost everything I sent him.MSD: So now you published The Sum of Our Breath through your own label, Manzanita Books?
LC: Yeah, but I don't consider it self-published even though it is myself and we did publish it.
With Manzanita Books, we formed a publishing company because we had so many ideas Some of it may be all of our stuff, some of it may be other people. We don't know yet. It's something we've been wanting to do.MSD: So you started out with Sandstone and here you were putting your own book together—pretty much by yourself…
LC: Vinny did it. I didn't do any of it.MSD: You didn't organize the poems? You didn't decide what went where?
LC: Oh yeah, but it really became a visual thing. First of all, someone else approached me and asked me if I'd like him to do my second book. As we started going through it, we went away to Sedona (AZ) for a month and I took 326 poems with me—that's how many poems I didn't send out. I was excited about doing the book, we were going through a reading every night—there's nothing else to do in Sedona after 9pm—and we were getting all excited, "Remember this one, remember that one?" because it was like so many years, a span from 1994 until now.
Then we started talking to this publisher and he said he'd like Vinny to do the layout, he'd like Vinny to do the cover and all of a sudden Vinny said…
VC/LC: What do we need him for?
VC: It wasn't so much, "Why do we need him," it's just that we were having fun…
LC: We were into it!
VC: And Kevin (Bezner), at the time, had just published something. He said, "That's what you guys should do."
LC: And then Vinny had the idea, because lately I've been doing more visual art than writing. So I have this body of visual art stuff, and Vinny said, "Wouldn't it be neat if you became more…" what was your word? Multidimensional?
VC: Yeah, to SHOW that you're multidimensional.
LC: …to make the chapters be the visual art rather than a title. That helped us choose the poems. Because they were all related.MSD: The other thing you said the other day that I thought was interesting was that you didn't touch-up any of the poems. You don't edit your work?
LC: Oh yeah, but these were all done. I was in a writing group for seven years…
MSD: You said that you had 300 some poems and you whittled it down to what?
LC: Seventy-five. There are still a lot of good poems left, I just wouldn't put them out—to protect the innocent. You know; the children, the grandparents.MSD: One of the things that stood out as I read the book, when you asked me to do a quote for the back of the book—you had to know this question was coming…
LC: I didn't think about what you'd ask me. If I thought about what you'd ask, I probably wouldn't have come. (laughing)MSD: What was your initial reaction to that quote?
LC: My initial reaction to "Jewish-American mommy angst?"
It's the only blurb I remember. My initial reaction was, "Wah!" and I got over that really quick and I thought, "He's right." You're right. You called it what it was. But it could just be "mega" mommy angst, "Jewish-American," I don't know.MSD: From my reading—your writing—there was a lot of Jewish perspective.
LC: It shocks me because I'm really like an outsider.MSD: How so?
LC: The Jewishness. It's not something I really consider
VC: But that's what's in it (the book)—the outside Jewishness.
LC: But I didn't coin that—Kevin (Bezner) did. Kevin said I was an outsider. I never knew until you (MSD) said it and until I went back and read it again how much Jewish stuff was in the book. It's not something I was running away from, but it wasn't something that I was embracing as my own.MSD: Do you think that is a perspective that was forced on you?
LC: No, it's just part of where I was and where I came from. It wasn't forced.MSD: I guess what I'm trying to get at—you said you were an outsider—were you brought up in a devout Jewish atmosphere?
LC: No, my mother was. The holidays were big—that's all that was big. The rest of the time we didn't pay much attention to it. You always got new clothes for the high holy days. You always had good meals. (laughs)
(To Vinny) Aren't you supposed to do something with your ear when I'm fucking up.
VC: I'd have an earache by now.MSD: Poems about your kids—you said you weeded out some to protect the innocent, but you didn't seem to hold much back about your son or daughter.
LC: All the ones about my daughter—and I gave her a much bigger stack—she didn't care if I used any of them. Even the ones that I thought were judgmental—she didn't care. She said, "It's your issue, not mine."
I don't think my son has read any of them yet. The only ones he knows of mine are the ones his girlfriend reads to him.
VC: Fiancée.
LC: —yes, Fiancée. So with him I was careful—I didn't wanted to mention any other women in his life or things he did to screw up.MSD: But aren't screw-ups some of the most fun things to write about?
LC: For me, yes…
MSD: The poems that were about you growing up were some of the funniest and the most enjoyable ones—the ones about your own life. You don't think that's true for other pieces?
LC: Yeah, I do, but I think that some of those poems may have been judging too much. If he wrote them (her son) about the same thing, it would be another story. I didn't want to be the one to tell those stories. Great stories. They'll be in the next book. When he has children or something.MSD: Oh, so it's okay if his children read it?
LC: That's his problem. (laughing)MSD: You told me you weren't writing as much as you used to, but how do you go about writing poetry?
LC: I'm not. I feel like I've said everything I want to say about the "me" factor. I journal more than I write poetry now. I don't feel the need to craft the stuff, but it's important to write it down. And I'd rather do the visual stuff right now. RIGHT NOW!MSD: When you are writing, do you have a set pattern, a time of day?
LC: (Shaking her head) I used to write every late morning—11ish—
laying diagonally across the bed. I don't do that any more. No, I don't have any set pattern, but (my poetry) always comes from a journal. I don't hear a poem in my head and write it down and that's it.MSD: Most of your poems are personal relationship poems...
LC: That's all I know.
MSD: You don't deal much with social issues?
LC: I think I have some, but it always brings the personal back. And that's what I think I've gotten a little sick of.MSD: As a publisher you've gone through the business aspect as well.
VC: Well the business aspect is only a business aspect in the sense of the art—to produce the art. If we can do something with the art in a business way that we're in control of…or is someone else in control of it? That's the reason for self-publishing or starting your own publishing company.MSD: Marketing, you mentioned Amazon.com, have you gotten any sales from that?
LC: They only took three copies and haven't ordered any more. Vinny wanted to go e-merchant so people could buy online and I think we sold ten that way, but we just cancelled it.MSD: You had to set up an account for this?
VC: Yeah, it cost $65 a month and then (after a while) there were no transactions, but the bank still charged $65 a month. Now that's not real good business, but I thought it was a neat way for people we know to be able to buy it easily.
MSD: What do you think of the publishing experience? Do you feel like this is something you would like to do?
LC: I don't think we have the energy to do someone else. When Vinny was working on this book, he would work eighteen hours a day—he was into it. But that was because it was "ours”—you know, a labor of love kind of shit.
It's something that we've always done well together whether it was Peace Child or the things we did for the kids, videos for the parents. We work well together in a creative way. This was another thing that my astrologer friend said, "You will do something professionally together. It won't just be Lynda and Vinny playing."
It feels great, but we don't feel pressured to do another book or anything like that.MSD: I didn't mean it from a pressure aspect. You said Vinny worked eighteen hours a day on this and I know what it's like to start on something and look up and suddenly it's six, eight, ten hours later and not feel the passing of time because I enjoyed what I was doing.
VC: I work eighteen hours a day on anything I work on. I mean, if it's a logo or a book or a painting—whatever it is—I get real focused and into it. Lynda can do it in short spurts, I can't.
LC: That's why poetry always worked for me. It was short, I could carry it with me to the carpool line when the kids were small. I didn't have to labor over it. I didn't have to worry about the paint drying. I would go back to it and back to it. It wasn't like I did it once and that was it.
MSD: Now that you've decided that you're going to spend more time with your visual art…
LC: I haven't decided.
MSD: You haven't?
LC: I never decide.
MSD: Maybe I misunderstood what you were saying.
LC: I just decide to go with it. I'm not going to force myself to write if I'm excited about getting up to the studio and I'm not going to force myself to finish something in the studio if there's something I want to write. I just let it go. I don't force it.MSD: Much of your book is about your travels and the free-spirit way you're talking right now is bound to have some readers asking, "What do these people do for a living that they have time to do all this stuff?"
LC: We're very fortunate. We sold the family business ten years ago and Vinny only had to work three more years for the people who bought it...what was it called?…
VC: It was a contract; a leverage buy out.
LC: It was a whole family's empire almost. When we first talked about selling, my brother said, "Wouldn't you like to do your art all day and not have to work in a factory six days a week?" Vinny was nervous about it, but we took our split and he invested it wisely.MSD: Vinny, how do you feel about it now?
VC: I feel great about it. Every day we're thankful for it. We're very lucky and fortunate. There aren't many artists who can do what they really want to do because they have to make that living.
We've made some investments and most of them have been good enough to keep us in the lifestyle that we've had and still be able to do our art and be able to help other people.
LC: That's why the first four or five years after we sold the business, all we did was volunteer stuff. We almost felt like we were so lucky, we had to give it back. Finally we said, "Okay, what about this artist thing?" and focused on that.
BACK ALLEY / BOOKSTORE / CONTESTS / EDITOR'S COMMENTS / ESSAYS / EVENTS / INTERVIEWS / GALLERY / REVIEWS / SHELF SPACE / SUBMISSIONS
Main Street Rag, 4416 Shea Lane, Charlotte, NC 28227
704-573-2516, contact us