Sarah Yerkes was in her 90s when a friend invited her to try something new. A graduate of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, Yerkes had had decades-long careers, first as a landscape architect, using brick and stone, and later as a sculptor, creating abstract works in papier-mache. But as she aged, sculpting had become physically challenging. A fellow resident at Ingleside at Rock Creek, the D.C. retirement community where she lives, had started taking a poetry writing class, so she joined too.
Last month, at age 101, she released her first collection of poems, “Days of Blue and Flame,” published by Passager Books at the University of Baltimore. The book is the latest iteration of a creative mind that has worked with form and style for the better part of a century.
It’s hard for me to create new work without loneliness—that sense of expanding in all directions, of falling through space, untethered. My characters need it in order to grow or change. Or they’re searching for intimacy. My writing turns out to be in praise of loneliness. My childhood turned out to be in praise of loneliness. Let us all praise loneliness. Maybe only there, in our desolate landscapes, is there room for our large and complicated selves.
On May 6, 2008, the night of their show’s Broadway debut, Nick Blaemire and James Gardiner sat at a table for three at the Palm on West 50th Street, in the heart of Manhattan’s Theater District. They’d just been served dinner under the beneficent gaze of dozens of celebrity caricatures drawn on the walls. Seated with Nick and James was Eric D. Schaeffer, the director of their show, Glory Days; Nick was the composer and lyricist, and James wrote the book. The trio had been working on the chamber musical for the past four years. The concept was simple: four friends from high school meet up on the bleachers of their old football field one night, during the summer after their freshman year of college. In a few hours, Nick and James would learn what New York’s critical establishment made of their work.
Our technique has improved, thanks to Igor. We have a smoother pull, never dropping our elbows, and a steadier flutter kick. Some days, I swim a little faster than I did before. But even if I don’t, I feel great.
In the end, happiness is a side effect of living well — just like speed can be the result of excellent swimming technique. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the pool.
Cryptically structured, glacially paced but with volcanic flashpoints, Salvatore Scibona’s new book keeps you guessing as to what it’s even about. A mix of war novel, spy thriller and family saga, set in the US, Germany and Latvia, ranging in time from the invasion of Vietnam to post-9/11 Afghanistan, it eventually emerges as a kind of 400-page backstory to its alarming prologue – a bravura piece of writing that reels you in before Scibona starts to make us sweat over his purpose.
“Every Tool’s a Hammer” is both a how-to book and a memoir of Savage’s career as builder of some of Hollywood’s most iconic movie creations. Readers with an aptitude for working with wood, metals and plastics will appreciate his tips for organization of a workshop and his approach to solving mechanical problems. Less handy readers will simply savor his nimble wit and wry humor.