Gwendolyn Brooks
(1917-2000)
Gwendolyn writes like hopscotch and other mazes.
“My last defense
Is the present tense.”
(from “Old Mary”)
Lydia Davis
(1947-Present)
We are terrified by her intelligence, but we really like her short and funny stories.
They Take Turns Using a Word They Like
“It’s extraordinary,” says one woman.
“It is extraordinary, ” says the other.
D. D. Smalley
(1889-1963)
David David Smalley was a mapmaker for the Southern Pacific Railroad. He lived in Hyde Park, a small neighborhood near downtown Houston. Smalley was the keeper of a neighborhood museum in his attic, the Hyde Park Miniature Museum. This was a museum named such not because of its collection of miniature things (though those were there, as well) but for the “miniature” size of the attic itself. Smalley’s curiosities, however, were limitless. The attic included a jar of pencils so short the eraser sat on top of the point, a seed from a cucumber tree in Washington, D.C., and a large telescope lens that Smalley ground himself. No object in the collection was hands-off, and as exhibits were damaged and deteriorated, Smalley would fix and maintain them. During the weekend, neighborhood children counted out stamps steamed from his mail and tied them with string in bundles of fifty and then carefully stacked the bundles into empty cigar boxes. The collection was temporarily revived twice after Smalley’s death, by his grandson Frank Davis. Today it rests in boxes, in storage, slowly gathering dust.
iiiahh hopes one day to be able to revive the museum, and each of the 1,500 artifacts within it, accompanied by a complete inventory. We are currently searching for the equivalent of a neighborhood attic.
Edward Rondthaler
(1905-2009)
Edward was a typographist and ardent supporter of simplified spelling.
He lived to be 104. Please see his video in our March 21, 2010 post.
Raymound Roussel
(1877-1933)
In How I Wrote Certain of My Books, Rousell begins his practice as follows: “I chose two similar words. For example billiards and pilliards (looter). Then I added to it words similar but taken in two different directions, and I obtained two almost identical sentences thus.”
Sonja Sonnenburg
Sonja finds the words on the tip of your tongue, and has a glass of water when you are thirsty. She is the sounding board for iiiahh.
Rogan Whitenails
(?-Present)
Rogan Whitenails is purported to be a fabulist. Allegedly, that means he is a liar. Or a lonely flyspeck on the absurdly empty map of the Australian interior.