Tiptoeing Through Paris

By BARBARA JOHNSON CHASE

From the Parisian cobblestones of rue Galande's flaneuring artist-poet Barbara Johnson Chase come this collector's first-kiss frisson, Tiptoeing Through Paris. With Left Bank winks from Gertrude Stein evoking Baudelaire's Symbolist escapades (Tableaux Parisiens, Le Soleil, Le Cygne), each en pointe lyrical soirée — from The Not-So-Secret Garden ("where artists impart the meaning of art") to Erté ("me on may way to d'Orsay") to Lost in Thought ("just close your eyes and look") —finds its prosody in the sonorous footsteps of Mallarme, Verlaine, and Apollinaire.  And across the Seine: in Right Bank arch support from the leathery insoles of Victor Hugo evincing Lamartine's bon mot Romanticism (Meditations Poetiques, Le Lac, Jocelyn), each of Tiptoeing's stiletto enjambments, word plays, and flirtatious oxytocin-evoking dégagés — from Understated ("walking with light pace") to La Cumparsita ("slow…slow…quick-quick-slow") to Long Evening Ahead ("to hide her gym shoes") to, breathlessly, Leather and Latte ("One whispered secret. One mutual sigh.") — finds its bravura, its fouetté, its cabriole in the iambic footprints of Vigny, Musset, and Nerval. Truly, a must-have Hemingway-esque trek in rhythmic oscillation bestriding Pont des Arts; a "moveable feast" of sentient Parisian after-images for the seriously fun-spirited. Now that, my dear, is Tiptoeing Through Paris.

 

Spec Details:
140 pages

50 original artworks by the author

50 original poems by the author

• Language: English
• Publisher: BARBARA JOHNSON CHASE
• Release date: Jun 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781734322156

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