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THE ARTIST & POET ANN McGARRELL 1933 — 2016 _______________________________________________ A number of poets and artists gathered in the early afternoon of Saturday, 9 July 2016 at the hall of the Old Village Church on The Common in Newbury, Vermont to participate in a ceremony to remember and celebrate the uncompromising life and work of Ann McGarrell. She was a noted translator, having won in 1997 the PEN Renato Poggioli Prize for her version of Vittoria Ronchey's “Il volto di Iside” (“The Face of Isis”). But in her true passion, poetry, Ann described herself as “internationally unknown.” Ann McGarrell died on Sunday, 10 January 2016, at 82, surrounded by friends and family. As a child, and throughout the rest of her life, she was a voracious reader : poetry, certainly (Keats, Shelley, Apollinaire, Homer, Ungaretti, Ginsberg, Bernstein), but also mysteries, newspapers, novels. She could zoom through books at light speed, but she could recall them with precision, too. In later life, she quoted to friends lines from novels and poems she had read decades ago — especially The Iliad, which she could recite from heart, stanza by stanza. Ann McGarrell was obscure. Many of her survivors, however, say that that was less from not deserving than not wanting. Other poets would constantly be sending out their work to publication after publication; Ann's, for the most part, remained in chaotic piles on her desk. She had the talent to be amongst them, I think, but maybe it wasn’t her driving force. Maybe it wasn't her deepest hope. _______________________________________________ VERMONT VALLEY NEWS : OBITUARY FOR ANN McGARRELL ... http://www.vnews.com/Archives/2016/02/ALifeMcGarrell-rw-vn-022216 _______________________________________________ Ann McGarrell's last book of poetry was titled GWEN AND OTHER POEMS ... https://www.amazon.com/Gwen-Other-Poems-Ann-McGarrell/dp/0983347212/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468525007&sr=8-1&keywords=Ann+McGarrell The second-to-last poem in this 2012 book is titled “Flo,” after her son, Flo McGarrell, an artist who worked in Haiti and died in the 2010 earthquake near Port-Au-Prince. Born female, Flo had undergone transgender therapy to live as a male, and in the poem “Flo” Ann imagined her child and his identities as one in the disaster. “Quicksilver sister, Daughter whose laughter persists past all loss, Sailor lad, castaway: all dance in a downpour where the storm ferries houses through treetops while you dream of whitecaps and striped jerseys.” The loss of Flo at 35 devastated Ann; at the time, she could not comprehend it. _______________________________________________ GEORGIA KOTRETSOS INTERVIEWED FLO McGARRELL ON FRIDAY, 28 AUGUST 2009 ... http://blog.art21.org/2009/08/28/inside-the-artists-studio-flo-mcgarrell/#.V4fqqksrLcs _______________________________________________ THE RUTLAND HERALD : OBITUARY FOR FLO McGARRELL ... http://rutlandherald.com/article/20100115/THISJUSTIN/1150333 _______________________________________________ THE VILLAGE VOICE : OBITUARY FOR FLO McGARRELL, “THE GENDER OUTLAW” ... http://www.villagevoice.com/news/remembering-flores-mcgarrell-gender-outlaw-and-artist-killed-in-the-haiti-earthquake-6687120 _______________________________________________ Flo McGarrell was the most androgynous man I have ever met in my life. He was the very archetype of the poet William Blake's sense of a COMPLETE human person. Flo had some of the attributes of a man, but also some of the attributes of a woman. Also, Flo McGarrell was a dynamic activist, an energized GLBT activist, and an uncompromising (and very original) artist and poet. He was a revolutionist in every dimension of human life that he touched. Still, since his death by earthquake, I have not forgotten him. But was it Ovid? Or John Cage? Séamas Cain http://seamascain-writernetwork.org/whats_new_1.html _______________________________________________
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