Many of you know I have a great appreciation of nature and poetry so you may have expected me to select Jon Meyer for the Author's Spotlight.
If you are not familiar with Jon's background, he graduated from the University of Vermont. He then pursued grad studies at Rutgers (MFA) and Pratt Institute (MID). You can find his writing in The Village Voice, ARTnews, ARTS, New Art Examiner, Visions Quarterly, CRITS, Q, Dialog, Art New England, and other publications.
Jon is well known for leading a small team that produced a film about one of his students, Dan Keplinger. This film, King Gimp won the Oscar at the 2000 academy awards and appeared on HBO numerous times thereafter.
Jon was kind enough to agree to my interview about his latest book Clouds: love poems from above the fray.
1. Jon, tell me about your latest book and why you wrote it? Clouds: love poems from above the fray.
Clouds have fascinated me since I was a boy. I would look up and ask, “What causes every shape? Why do they move fast? Or slowly drift by? How do they build up, then collapse?”
As a young man, I decided to take glider lessons at Sugarbush Airport in Warren Vermont. It wasn’t expensive at that time, and an extra part- time job paid for it. I was required to study meteorology, with a special emphasis on identifying clouds. After my first solo flight, I could soar up [removed words]and around them, and view clouds from a new perspective. Cloud direction and shapes are determined by air movement and thermal air columns rising up off dark surfaces, from the ground, to a dark barn roof or plowed field.
Winds aloft skew the rising warm air columns, and the primary aim of a glider pilot would be to sense a thermal’s location from the ground to cloud air path, or feel a slight lift on the end of the glider’s wing. I remember quickly cranking the stick over to spiral up into the thermal, like hawks and eagles do. This was an exhilarating visual, and mental experience, relying on natural air movements to bond with clouds while beneath them… and to stay aloft without an engine.
2. What kind of challenges did you come up against while photographing?
Some of the photos required hours of patient waiting for the right light or the right alignment with the sun/moon/clouds or the right time of day or night. They also may have required climbing mountains, flying to remote destinations, trudging through mud or snow, barely avoiding an avalanche, or even riding in a car on a steep mountain road without guard- rails and having the brakes fail.
Clouds: love poems from above the fray has been a project of over four decades containing poems influenced by traveling to many places, giving lectures, and witnessing beautiful vistas, in towns, cities, and above all, in nature. I have studied each of the countries and states that I have traveled to in order to absorb as much of the culture as possible. Over my career as a professor, I have been invited to speak at universities and cultural centers across the US and in a number of other countries, and I took photographs while in those places. Thousands of those photos are now in my archive. Hundreds of five- line quintain poems were written down, from which 64 were chosen for Clouds. These were then matched with photos in my archive.
3. What do you feel has been your most meaningful project to date?
The poems in Clouds: love poems from above the fray seemed to have emanated from the beyond, and almost flew by. I needed to grab them and write them down immediately or they would have drifted away. Some may come from the loving influence of those inspiring ones above. To them, I am very grateful. My wife Deborah has also been instrumental in reading these poems carefully and honestly commenting on their content and language.
I selected these poems from a group of over 700 written down between 1980 and 2021. The style evolved into “short, post attention span poetry,” i.e. quintains (5- line poems) that illustrate the inner and outer states of our environment.
4. What would you like to tell readers about yourself that they don't already know?
I owe a great debt of gratitude to Ghita Pickoff Orth whose enthusiasm for poetic writing influenced me greatly when I studied with her as an undergrad at the University of Vermont. At UVM, I learned about many poets, writers, mystics and Avatars, and was especially drawn to the inspired poetry of Attar, and ghazals of Hafiz. The writings and presence of Meher Baba, Darwin Shaw, and V.S. “Bhau” Kalchuri were also particularly inspiring. I have been reading and thinking about their work every day since being introduced to them. Bhau liked the quotes I embedded in my illustrations for his book, Awakenings, so I have used this technique in this book as well. He listened to some of these poems and specifically encouraged me to keep writing poetry.
Multi layers and poetic devices draw me in, as in the works of Lorca, Angelou, Al ‘Arabi, Tagore, Dickinson, and so many others.
The treasure hunt for photographable images to go with poems has been memorable. I learned much about states and countries that was new to me, even after studying them. In this way, Louis Schwartzberg’s pano drone film shots resonate.
While reading these poems and observing the images, please listen for the sound of lapping waves above the Great Barrier Reef, a windswept Andean mountain range, prayer flags flapping high up in a Nepalese village, the silence of a winter sunrise, the quiet of a rural hill in India. This poetry adventure has deepened my appreciation for living on our planet, and quieted my mind with contemplative views. The rise and fall of inner and outer sounds from poems and images were influenced by the progression of the combinations presented. Our very lives rely on breathing rhythms, and our heart beat -– systolic, diastolic. We can hear both.
– Jon Meyer
More about the Author
Jon Meyer has had his art work in a number of international touring exhibitions, including “Outward Bound: American Art At The Brink Of The 21st Century.” This group of artists representing the US, included Rauschenberg, Dine, Lichtenstein, Flack, Ringgold, Grooms, Fish, Close, and Christo, sponsored by the Mobil Foundation. Meyer has given public lectures and workshops across the US, Europe, and Asia.
His work has been exhibited in over 60 solo and group exhibitions (including 18 museum exhibitions) and has his work in 20 museum and public collections in North America, Asia, Europe, and Africa. He has received 12 research grants/ sponsored projects, including a National Endowment for the Arts grant. Meyer has served in administrative capacities in academe (department chair, dean, chief development officer). He is currently the Vice President of the Independent Publishers of New England (IPNE).
His love for Vermont’s mountain peaks and seasons has inspired him since he was a boy. These helped him discover the inner reaches of Vermont and beyond. The thunderous silence of Vermont woods in winter is especially uplifting. He has been writing poetry for over 40 years, and lives in Vermont with his wife Deborah.