ProetryPlace Blog 23 Artists and Authors

    The Carrollton Cultural Arts Center occupies a few acres just off the downtown historic square. This past weekend it was host to local and visiting artists in great variety vending their wares, some 70, 80 or more in all, including potters and painters, carvers and ceramicists, singers, dancers, makers of fine jewelry and of musical instruments, purveyors of pulled pork and about a dozen writers  who are members of the Carrollton Creative Writers Club, including me.

    Books for sale included southern fiction, western fiction, sci-fi, young adult, children’s, fantasy, poetry, and whatever else I may have overlooked. Some of our authors sell their books as a livelihood, some as a hobby. For some it is an activity approached with trepidation and even loathing. For these, motivation is more in the form of desire to share their creative works than by expectations for profit.

    While we have, at this and similar events in the past, purchased many hand-crafted items to grace our home or serve as fine gifts, this was my first experience as a vendor with my book of poetry, Another Season Spent, up for sale in competition with all the other vendors for customer dollars.

    As it happens, I did sell enough to cover the vendor fees and other costs with some left over to take my wife to lunch at one of the quaint local beaneries or buy a couple of new books of my own. More rewarding was the experience itself. I found special satisfaction when total strangers stopped to hello, pick up my book, flip a few pages and declare, “Okay, I’ll take this one.”

    Adding to the enjoyment, both Saturday and Sunday were beautiful, bright autumn days by Georgia standards and would have passed for the finest of summer days in the North. I enjoyed the lull times that provided opportunity to chat with my fellow writers on matters of writing or trivia or personal import. I people-watched the art-loving public as they strolled by in greater variety than the art on display. I listened with amusement to my neighboring author, T. L. Gray, spiel her sales pitch with as much skill as she applies to her writing. I even found time to draft a few new poems.

    Several of our group of writers also took turns on the outdoors performing arts stage reading some of our lighter and shorter works and serving as emcees to introduce other performing groups.  I read:

Senior Center Moment

The sound of numbered marbles

Rattling in a wired cage

Stills the talk around the tables

Hushes voices hoarse with age.

We all hear the caller’s voice to say

O’er the dwindling murmur of the crowd

Are you ready? Are you here to play?

Yes! But, call ‘em slowly, call ‘em loud.

Then here we go, and your first number is

The little baby, little old B-one.

Can you hear me call the numbers,

And is everybody having fun?

The next number is the old gray man

O-seventy five, O-seven-five,

And we’ve covered the entire span

From babe in arms to glad to be alive.

My darling wife loves to play this game

Of chance, perhaps to win a prize.

Though she’s deaf she loves it all the same.

As each number’s picked, she strains her eyes

To read the caller’s moving lips:

It’s the little train, he says, I-twenty-two,

And all the players echo back the quip:

Two-two, too-too, toot toot.

My poor dear wife is not amused

By this ritual of fantasy.

Extraneous voices leave her confused

By humor she cannot hear nor see.

The next one flies like a silent bird

Past straining eyes and deafened ears

To stay unseen, to remain unheard

And I nudge and point to allay her fears.

N-forty-four, N four-four

She glances at me for confirmation

Then fills that space, needs just one more

And she’s wired with anticipation.

G-sixty- three. G-six-three.

She glances again, I shake my head;

She frowns and sighs dejectedly.

The caller selects a numbered bead

Turns the orb and brings it to his eye . . .

I-thirty, he calls, I-three-O!

Eyes on fire, her hand shoots high—

Bingo. . . Bingo. . . Bingo!

Richard Allen Anderson http://richardandersonblogs.blogspot.com