Tome on the Range

Ever since Ichabod Crane went out for a midnight ride and lost his head, the Catskills have been haunted by the ghosts of artists past. You can feel them at night, gliding down the mountainsides to wander the streets of these country hamlets. There's something about these hills that inspires creativity--quirky, cold-induced, pent-up creativity that gushes forth every Spring like the snow-melt rivers that flood our rocky creek beds and turn them brown and glassy. Other towns and cities have wide-open, sunshine-filled art; our artists huddle isolated in woodland cabins, unknown to neighbors, quietly whittling the toothpicks of their souls, venturing out only for oat bran and the occasional reading, performance or gallery opening. If the artist sees his shadow, it's six more weeks of hard winter.

So it's worth noting when someone takes the time to gather the works of these recluse creators and place them before the public. Bertha Rogers and Bright Hill Press have done just that with Out Of The Catskills And Just Beyond, a collection of prose, poetry and visual art by Catskill creators. Rogers, who moved from Manhattan to Treadwell in 1989, and started the Word Thursdays reading series in 1992, says Bright Hill's latest volume was originally intended to be about 200 pages. But after receiving thousands of submissions from all around the region, Rogers and her husband expanded the project to nearly 400 pages--a veritable Norton's Anthology of Catskill art and literature. Out Of the Catskills doesn't claim to present a complete picture of the region's current literary life--anyone familiar with the who's who of Catskill poets can name a dozen notable omissions--but it is representative in a broad sense.

Of particular interest is a section devoted to works by area high school students, such as Kelcy Kimmerer's poem, "The Bathroom Mirror":

An old, cracked mirror

nailed, crooked,

into the rusty yellow tile

of the bathroom wall.

Doubled specks of toothpaste

crusted against crystal.

A human enters the soul of glass,

gives it life,

as if it could remove itself,

walk away.

Also of note is a section of short stories, such as Ginnah Howard's post-marital still-life, "Rope And Bone." Because prose takes up more space than poetry, it tends to get short shrift in the sporadically-published literary journals that blossom like perennials in these hills and, just as quickly, disappear under the weight of apathy and indigence. Bright Hill's large format allows for longer works.

Out Of The Catskills is published in paperback by Bright Hill Press, P.O. Box 193, Treadwell, NY 13846. The volume sells for $24.95 and is available at area bookstores. ++

Todd Paul