PREFACE

Welcome to MAISON MAX. For some time I've been planning to
publish, one way or another, a book of illustrated poems. I have a
modest background in poetry. For many years I was the editor and
on the staff of CAPE ROCK formerly THE CAPE ROCK QUARTERLY
of Southeast Missouri State. That publication, with the continued
support of the University Press, has been going for some thirty-five
years. . .not bad for any small journal. During my tenure I corresponded
with, sometimes met a number of our country's promising poets. I
remained basically an editor but published some poems in CAPE ROCK,
POET & CRITIC, and a few other publications. I suppose most English
professors desire to be writers. I shared that goal. But I was mostly on
the outside looking in, and remembered more not as a poet but as the
editor who introduced multi-media into our journal. That was all back
in the sixties, seventies, part of eighties.

In my teaching years, sometimes in seminars, occasionally for conferences,
I would be involved in literature and the visual arts--a symposium on
Romanticism, a lecture on Poetry and the Visual Arts (with Howard
Nemerov), among other things. This interest in the interrelation of the
arts has persisted ever since Merrill Clubb taught such a course (regarded
as offbeat then) at the University of Kansas in the late fifties. My passion
was reborn some twenty years later when I attended an NEH seminar under
Carl Woodring at Columbia. As to literature and the arts, that was the
most enlightening time for me. My class project was on William Blake.
I remember some friends in another seminar bought me a blue teeshirt
with William Blake in gold across the front. I was too unbrash then to
wear it to my final presentation. I would do so now. Anyway, Carl
Woodring, equally famous for his knowledge of the Romantics and politics,
was a well of wisdom on the visual arts, even down to the minor arts I
was hardly aware of. The New York museums and theaters were our
"laboratories." Some of my colleagues cried when Woodring's seminar
was over.

The visual arts and William Blake stayed with me. And they persist now
five years after retirement. I was working on a Blake book, still unfinished,
but which gave me a chance to study in the libraries and museums of
England. A month or so ago, I gave a lecture on Faulkner and the visual
arts--part of the worldwide Faulkner Centennial. Bob Hamblim, colleague
and for many years the director of the SEMO Faulkner Center, told me
I was the first who came to mind. Actually I was a novice as Faulkner goes,
but after months of reading, both in Faulkner and criticism, the date came
around, and ready or not, I gave the illustrated Faulkner lecture. I suppose,
for me, the process was more valuable than the end result. One thing
really fascinated me about the Faulkner project. Bob Hamblin said I was
welcome to use some of my own Faulkner illustrations. I did. And from
the response, I was at least encouraged that my some three years of
working hard at computer art (as well as drawing and some acrylic) had
not been in vain. And next month I've been invited to give a lecture on
Shakespeare and the visual arts, focussing on A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S
DREAM. A visiting Shakespeare group is coming to the University. They
will perform the play. I know more about Shakespeare than I do Faulkner,
but the project is humbling still. But, gratefully, I pursue my viewing and
reading of Shakespeare and the arts (stage history, art, illustration, music,
etcetera) with a good incentive. I can use some of my own illustrations.
Web students, surfers, whoever, are welcome to see some of my preliminary
efforts on Shakespeare on this site. Or, if they want more, there are some
Faulkner works here. The largest collection on Literature and the Visual arts,
however, is on my other site,
MAX'S ART GALLERY <http://www. americaninternet.com/maxart/index.
htm>    or   SEE LINKS at the bottom (I've got a couple of paintings
of BOTTOM & TITANIA already!) . . .sorry. . .at the bottom of the frontpage
of MAISON MAX.
   To conclude this rambling preface, let me say that I published some poetry
and paintings in web publications. Now I want to make a more centered
effort. . .a rather lengthy book of my illustrated poems. Both the poems and
illustrations and related paintings are mine except where it will be obvious I've
reproduced other works (usually of the Great Masters) that are alluded to in
the poems.
    I dedicate this project to Carl Woodring. I hope I can approach his standards
of excellence. I also start this in full knowledge of all the help and encouragement
that has come from friends and colleagues, too numerous to name. And,
rather presumptuously, I have always in the back of my mind WILLIAM BLAKE.
You will not see much like his visually integrated works here, but he remains my
ideal. . .that one whom all those young London painters called The Interpreter.
     I begin in a rather easy way. In the next few days I'll be transferring poems
and illustrations to MAISON MAX, specifically to VOICES FROM AN INLAND
CAPE, by Max Edward Cordonnier. The title is tentative; the works goes on
apace, hopefully growing by two to three poems a week. Let me know what you
think through e-mail, guestbook, anyway you want. I welcome ideas about my
poems and artwork, even ideas for new poems and artwork. Right now I have a
lot of finding, collecting, revising to do, of many published and unpublished
works from the last thirty-five or so years.
       I should confess something unfront. As with my lectures on literature and
the visual arts, I'm using this internet book project to give impetus to my artwork.
Who knows, I may foist my illustrated novel (still not finished) on you next.
     Take care, my friends, acquaintances, strangers, whoever,
      Max